The building of these enormous ferry-boats has been entrusted to a well-known American firm.[12] They are to be larger than the _Père Marquette_, and provided with special contrivances for cutting the ice as they force their passage through it, and they are, moreover, intended to go at the rate of thirteen and a half knots an hour in free water, and four knots when cutting through the ice. The passage will take nine hours in winter and about two and a half hours in summer. Unfortunately, storms are very sudden and frequent on Lake Baikal, and, moreover, in summer travelling is often impeded by dense fogs, and it occasionally happens that boats are detained for hours and even days at a time before they dare venture across. It will certainly be very unpleasant for the passengers to be kept for many hours at Listvenitchnaya or Misofsk waiting for the weather to clear. However, they can take heart of grace; for not so very long ago they might have been detained for days at some out-of-the-way post-house, in company with a regiment of most unpleasant and unnameable bedfellows! The difficulties of obtaining workmen for building this railway were not so great as might have been expected, thanks to the nomadic habits of the Russians, who think very little of leaving their wives and belongings at home, and going hundreds, even thousands, of miles away in search of employment. Then, again, there were already a considerable number of workpeople to be obtained on the line itself; for, as already stated, the population of Siberia is concentrated on the old postal-road, which runs in many points parallel to the railway. Convict labour was not greatly used, and when it was it proved unsatisfactory, and was soon more or less abandoned. The line, however, has taken an unusually long time to finish, because the only season during which work can be carried on in Siberia lasts but six months; but this probably proved attractive to the Russian and Asiatic workmen, as it gave them ample time, when the ground was thickly covered with snow, to return to their cabins and indulge in those day-dreams so dear to them and to all Orientals. It is difficult to estimate the exact cost of the line, but it was at first reckoned at over £40,000,000 sterling,[13] of which unfortunately a considerable percentage was absolutely wasted, if not worse. Grave charges have been brought against a great number of people in connection with this line, and doubtless with reason; for it must not be forgotten that the notions of honesty entertained in Asiatic Russia are apt even now to be distinctly Byzantine. However, be this as it may, Russia can be congratulated upon having completed a brilliant achievement, which no other nation, except perhaps England or America, would have dared to undertake, especially in so short a time. CHAPTER X THE RAILWAY THROUGH MANCHURIA