Next morning we stay for two hours at a station in Manchuria, on the boundary between Manchuria and Siberia, between China and Russia, and here our luggage is examined by the Russian customs officers. We put our watches back one and a half hours--that is the difference of time between Kharbin and Irkutsk. We are now travelling from east to west, in the same direction as the sun. If the train went as fast as the sun we should enjoy perpetual day; but the train lags behind, and we only gain an hour in the twenty-four. The Trans-Siberian railway is the longest in the world, the distance from Dalny to Moscow being 5400 miles. The railway was completed just in time for the war, but as it had only one track, it taxed all the energy of the Russians to transport troops and war material to the battlefields in Manchuria. A second track is now being laid. By using this railway a traveller can go from London to Shanghai in fourteen days, the route being to Dover, across the Channel to Calais, by rail to Moscow, from Moscow to Vladivostock by the Trans-Siberian railway, and from Vladivostock to Shanghai by sea. The sea voyage from London by the P. and O.--calling at Gibraltar, Marseilles, Port Said, Aden, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong--takes about six weeks, which can be reduced to a month by travelling by train across Europe to Brindisi (at the south-eastern corner of Italy), and thence by steamer to Port Said, where the liner is joined. There is still a third route, across the Atlantic to the United States or Canada, by rail to San Francisco or Vancouver, and then by steamer to Shanghai _via_ Japan. This journey can also be accomplished in a month. [Illustration: THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY.]