ortant places
will be served by branch lines. Indeed, the branch to Tomsk is
already finished. It is eighty miles long, and runs down the Tom
valley northward to the city, which is the largest and most important
in all Siberia. Tomsk will become the "hub" of Asia. It lies near
the centre of the new railway system. It has a telephone system, is
lighted by electricity, and possesses a flourishing university with
thirty professors and 300 students. Tomsk, Tobolsk, and Yeniseisk
would be difficult to reach by the main line as they are surrounded
by vast swamps, and therefore the line is thus laid considerably
south of these great towns. They are accessible with ease by side
lines down their respective rivers.

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 alon