The Siberian line is designed to run through the arable lands of
the fertile zone. The adjacent land will be worth countless millions
of roubles to a Government which has not had to pay a single copeck
for it. On for many hundreds of versts rolls the train through the
pasture lands of the splendid Kirghiz race. The Kirghiz are by
far the finest of the Tartars. They are a purely pastoral people,
frugal, cleanly, and hospitable, living mainly on meats, and milk
and cheese, the products of their herds. Both for pasture and for
the culture of cereals, the vast territory between the Obi and
the Yenisei will be unrivalled in the whole world. Kurgan is the
capital. It will become an Asiatic Chicago.
On the Shim river, a fairly important though minor tributary of
the Obi, is Patropavlosk, with a population already of 20,000.
It is growing rapidly, and fine buildings are springing up, in
attestation of the immense influence of the new line. This city was
once the frontier fortress erected by Russia against the Kirghiz.
It was of commercial importance before the railroad was thought
of, as the emporium of the brisk trade with Samarkand and Central
Asia; great camel caravans constantly reaching it. All the old towns
which are traversed by the Great Siberian are being transformed as
if by magic. From Patropavlosk to Omsk is a distance equal to that
between London and Edinburgh, about 400 miles. New and promising
villages are frequently espied in the midst of the level, fertile
flowery plains, varied by great patches of cultivated land. All
along the track the land is being taken up on each side, and crops
are being raised. We are in the midst of the great future granary
of the whole Russian Empire, and not of that Empire alone.
Reaching the Yenisei river, the grandest stream in Siberia, the
train crosses a bridge 1,000 yards in length. But some time before
this a stoppage is made at the town of Obb, which is a striking
sample of the magical results of the railway. The whole country was
till recently a scene of wild desolation. The thriving community,
busy with a prosperous trade, is typical of the coming transformation
of Siberia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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