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.[33] FOOTNOTES: [32] The area of France is 204,000, and that of the British Isles 120,000 square miles. [33] 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 attaché 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.” CHAPTER XXI THE KING’S OATH--AN AUDIENCE Leaving Wladivostok by the last Japanese steamer of the season, I spent two days at Wön-san, little changed, except that its background of mountains was snow-covered, that the Koreans were enriched by the extravagant sums paid for labor by the Japanese during the war, that business was active, and that Japanese sentries in wooden sentry-boxes guarded the peaceful streets. Twelve thousand Japanese troops had passed through Wön-san on their way to Phyöng-yang. At Fusan, my next point, there were 200 Japanese soldiers, new waterworks, and a military cemetery on a height, in which the number of graves showed an enormous Japanese mortality.