Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter XX

After returning to Wladivostok, accompanied by a young Danish gentleman who was kindly lent to me by Messrs. Kuntz and Albers, and who spoke English and Russian, I spent a week on the Ussuri Railway, the eastern section of the Trans-Siberian Railway, going as far as the hamlet of Ussuri on the Ussuri River at the great Ussuri Bridge, beyond which the line, though completed for 50 versts, was not open for traffic. Indeed, up to that point from Nikolskoye trains were run twice daily rather to "settle the line" than for profit, and their average speed was only twelve miles an hour. The weather was brilliant, varied by a heavy snowstorm.

The present Tsar is understood to be enthusiastic about this railroad. During his visit to Wladivostok in 1891, when Tsarevitch, he inaugurated the undertaking by wheeling away the first barrowful of earth and placing the first stone in position, after which, work was begun simultaneously at both ends.

The eastern terminus of this great railroad undertaking is close to the sea and the Government deep-water pier, at which the fine steamers from Odessa of the Russian "Volunteer Fleet" discharge their cargoes. The station is large and very handsome, and both it and the noble administrative offices are built of gray stone, with the architraves of the doors and windows in red brick. Buffets and all else were in efficient working order. In the winter of 1895-96 only third and fourth class cars were running, the latter chiefly patronized by Koreans and Chinese. Each third class carriage is divided into three compartments with a corridor, and has a lavatory and steam-heating apparatus. The backs of the seats are hooked up to form upper berths for sleeping, and as the cars are eight feet high they admit of broad luggage shelves above these. The engines which ran the traffic were old American locomotives, but those which are to be introduced, as well as all the rolling stock, are being manufactured in the Baltic provinces. So also are the rails, the iron and steel bridges, the water tanks, the iron work required for stations, and all else.

Large railway workshops with rows of substantial houses for artisans have been erected at Nikolskoye, 102 versts from Wladivostok, for the repairs of rolling stock on the Ussuri section, and were already in full activity.

There is nothing about this Ussuri Railway of the newness and provisional aspect of the Western American lines, or even of parts of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The track was already ballasted as far as Ussuri (327 versts), steel bridges spanned the minor streams, and substantial stations either of stone or decorated wood, with buffets at fixed distances, successfully compare both in stability and appearance with those of our English branch lines. The tank houses are of hewn stone. Houses for the employes, standing in neatly fenced gardens, are both decorative and substantial, being built of cement and logs protected by five coats of paint, and contain four rooms each. The crossings are well laid and protected. Culverts and retaining walls are of solid masonry, and telegraph wires accompany the road, which is worked strictly on the block system. The aspect of solidity and permanence is remarkable. Even the temporary bridge over the Ussuri, 1,050 feet in length, a trestle bridge of heavy timber to resist the impact of the ice, is so massive as to make the great steel bridge, the handsome abutments of which were already built, appear as if it would be a work of supererogation.

Up to that point there are no serious embankments or cuttings, and the gradients are easy. The cost of construction of the Ussuri section is 50,000 roubles per verst, a rouble at this time being worth about 2s. 2d. This includes rolling stock, stations, and all bridges except that over the Amur, which was to cost 3,000,000 roubles, but may now be dispensed with owing to the diversion of the route through Manchuria. Convict labor was abandoned in 1894, and the line in Primorsk is being constructed by Chinese "navvies," who earn about 80 cents per day, and who were bearing the rigor of a Siberian winter in well-warmed, semi-subterranean huts, the line being pushed on as much as possible during the cold season. For the first 102 versts, it passes along prettily wooded shores of inlets and banks of streams, and the country is fairly well peopled, judging from the number of sleighs and the bustle at the six stations en route. The line as far as Nikolskoye was opened in early November, 1893, and in a year had earned 280,000 roubles. The last section had only been open for eight weeks when I travelled upon it.

Nikolskoye, where I spent two pleasant days at the hospitable establishment of Messrs. Kuntz and Albers, is the only place between Wladivostok and Ussuri of any present importance. It is a village of 8,000 inhabitants on a rich rolling prairie, watered by the Siphun. It has six streets of grotesque width, a verst and a half long each. There is no poverty. It is a place of rapid growth and prosperity, the centre of a great trade in grain, and has a large flour mill owned by Mr. Lindholm, a Government contractor. It has a spacious market- place and bazaar, and two churches. It reminds me of parts of Salt Lake City, and the houses are of wood, plastered and whitewashed, with corrugated iron roofs mainly. A few are thatched. All stand in plots of garden ground. Utilitarianism is supreme. I drove for 20 miles in the region round the settlement, and everywhere saw prosperous farms and farming villages on the prairie, Russian and Korean, and found the settlers kindly and hospitable, and surrounded by material comfort. Nikolskoye is a great military station. There were infantry and artillery to the number of 9,000, and there, as elsewhere, large new barracks were being pushed to completion. An area of 50 acres was covered with brick barracks, magazines, stables, drill and parade grounds, and officers' quarters, and the military club is a really fine building. Newness, progress, and confidence in the future are as characteristic of Nikolskoye as of any rising town in the Far West of America.

The farther journey, occupying the greater part of two days and a night, except when near the swamps of the Hanka Lake, is through a superb farming region. Large villages with wind- mills are met with along the line for the first 30 versts, as far as the buffet station of Spasskoje. The stoneless soil, a rich loam 6 feet and more in depth, produces heavy crops of oats, wheat, barley, maize, rye, potatoes, and tobacco. Beyond Spasskoje and east of the Hanka Lake up to the Amur a magnificent region waits to be peopled.

Well may Eastern Siberia receive the name of Russia's "Pacific Empire," including as it does the Amur and Maritime provinces, with their area of 880,000 square miles¹, rich in gold, copper, iron, lead, and coal, and with a soil which for a vast extent is of unbounded fertility. When China ceded to Russia in 1860 the region which we call Russian Manchuria, she probably did so in ignorance of its vast agricultural capacities and mineral wealth.

The noble Amur, with its forest-covered shores, is navigable for 1,000 miles, and already 50 merchant steamers ply upon it, and its great tributary the Ussuri can be navigated to within 120 miles of Wladivostok. The great basin of the Ussuri, it is estimated, could support five million people, and from Kha- baroffka to the Tumen, it is considered by experts that the land could sustain from 20 to 40 to the square mile, while at present the population of the Amur and Ussuri provinces is only 4/5ths of a man to the square mile!

Grass, timber, water, coal, minerals, a soil as rich as the prairies of Illinois, and a climate not only favorable to agriculture but to human health, all await the settler, and the broad, unoccupied, and fertile lands which Russian Manchuria offers are clamoring for inhabitants. To set against these advantages there are the frozen waterways and the ice-bound harbor. It is utterly impossible that an increasing population will content itself without an outlet for its produce. A port on the Pacific open all the year is fast becoming as much a commercial as a political necessity, and doubtless the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railroad four years hence will settle the question (if it has not been settled before) and doom the policy which has shut Russia up in regions of " thick ribbed ice" to utter extinction.

In the Maritime Province, Russia is steadily and solidly laying the foundations of a new empire which she purposes to make as nearly as possible a homogeneous one. *'No foreigner need apply" ! The emigrants, who are going out at the rate of from 700 to 1,000 families a year, are of a good class. Emigration is fostered in two ways. By the first, the Government grants assisted passages to heads of families who are possessed of 600 roubles (about £60 at present), which are deposited with a Government official at Odessa, and are repaid to the emigrant on landing at Wladivostok. The industry and thrift represented by this sum indicate a large pro- portion of the best class of settlers. Under the second arrangement, families possessed of little capital or none receive free passages. On arriving, emigrants of both classes are lodged in excellent emigrant barracks, and can buy the necessary agricultural implements at cost price from a Government depot, advice as to the purchase being thrown in. Each family receives a free allotment of from 200 to 300 acres of arable land, and a loan of 600 roubles, to be repaid without interest in thirty-two years, the young male colonists being exempted from military service for the same period. Already much of the land along the line as far as the Ussuri has been allotted, and houses are rapidly springing up, and there is nothing to prevent this fine country from being peopled up to the Amur, the rivers Sungacha and Ussuri, which form the boundary of Russia from the Hanka Lake to Khabaroffka, giving a natural protection from Chinese brigandage. In addition to direct emigration, large numbers of time-expired men, chiefly Cossacks, are encouraged to settle on lands and do so.

It would be shortsighted to minimize the importance of the present drift of population to Eastern Siberia, which is likely to assume immense proportions on the opening of the railway, or the commercial value of that colossal undertaking, which is greatly enhanced by the treaty under which Russia has taken powers to run the Trans-Siberian line through Chinese Manchuria. The creation of a new route which will bring the Far East within 6,000 miles and 16 days of London, and cheapen the cost of the transit of passengers very considerably, cannot be overlooked either. The railroad is being built for futurity, and is an enterprize worthy of the great nation which undertakes it.^

^I am very glad to be able to fortify my opinion of the solid and careful construction of this line by that of Colonel Waters, military attache to the British Embassy at St. Petersburg, who has recently crossed Siberia, and desires to give emphatic testimony to "the magnificent character of the great railway crossing Siberia," as well as by that of another recent traveller, Mr. J. Y. Simpson, who, in Blackwood's Magazine for January, 1897, in an article "The Great Siberian Iron Road," after a long description of the laborious carefulness with which the line is being built, writes thus: " Lastly, one is impressed with the extremely finished nature of the work."

¹The area of France is 204,000, and that of the British Isles 120,000 square miles.