Origin of the Trans-Siberian Railway—At first considered only from the strategic and political point of view—Completion of the Ural Railway—Project of utilizing the navigable routes to unite Russia to the Amur—Difficulties encountered owing to the severity of the climate—Alexander III. in 1891 decides to lay a line between the Ural and the Pacific, and determines the conditions of its construction—The various sections of the line and its deviations across Manchuria—Condition of the works in 1892, and the speed with which it has been constructed—Russia now possesses (1900) a line of mixed communication by train and boat passing from the Ural to the Pacific, and in 1904 a complete line will pass directly from the Ural to Port Arthur, a distance of over 4,130 miles—The monster ferry-boats in course of construction to convey passengers across Lake Baikal—The success of the enterprise. The idea of making an overland road from Russia to the Far East and the Pacific probably germinated in the fertile brain of Voltaire, who, in a letter to Count Schuvarof, dated Ferney, June 11, 1761, said ‘that it ought to be possible to travel from Russia direct to China without having to cross any considerable mountain pass, just as one can go from St. Petersburg to Paris without leaving the plain.’ The matter was even more practically defined, nearer our own time, by Count Mouravief-Amurski, who, after he had annexed the province of the Amur to Russia, favoured the idea of building a Trans-Siberian railway, and, in the meantime, encouraged the creation of a postal highroad from the Urals to the Amur, which, he considered, would greatly strengthen Russian prestige on the shores of the Pacific. The Trans-Siberian Railway, it may be remarked, was not originally designed merely in the interests of Siberia, but as a means of uniting Europe with the rich countries of the Far East, in such a manner as to avoid the necessity of passing any length of time in the rude and sparsely-peopled intermediary territories. Even after the project was definitely accepted by Alexander III., the political and strategical considerations of the problem were deemed of far greater importance than the commercial; but presently it transpired that Siberia was not quite the forlorn country hitherto imagined, but that it possessed certain resources of great value, which might easily be developed, provided rapid communication with the rest of the empire was organized.