ich lasted without a break for eleven days.

First we have to go back to Mukden, and then a somewhat shorter journey
to the last Japanese station. At the next the stationmaster is a
Russian, and Russian guards replace the Japanese. In the afternoon the
train draws up at Kharbin on the Sungari River, a tributary of the great
Amur. It was towards Kharbin that the Russians slowly retired after
their defeat, and on this very platform Prince Ito, the first Japanese
Resident-General of Korea, was murdered barely a year later.

At Kharbin we have to wait two hours for the international express,
which runs twice a week from Vladivostock to Moscow.

Next morning we stay for two hours at a station in Manchuria, on the
boundary between Manchuria and Siberia, between China and Russia, and
here our luggage is examined by the Russian customs officers. We put our
watches back one and a half hours--that is the difference of time
between Kharbin and Irkutsk. We are now travelling from east to west, in
the same direction as the sun. If the train went as fast as the sun we
should enjoy perpetual day; but the train lags behind, and we only gain
an hour in the twenty-four.

The Trans-Siberian railway is the longest in the world, the distance
from Dalny to Moscow being 5400 miles. The railway was completed just in
time for the war, but as it had only one track, it taxed all the energy
of the Russians to transport troops and war material to the battlefields
in Manchuria. A second track is now being laid.

By using this railway a traveller can go from London to Shanghai in
fourteen days, the route being to Dover, across the Channel to Calais,
by rail to Moscow, from Moscow to Vladivostock by the Trans-Siberian
railway, and from Vladivostock to Shanghai by sea. The sea voyage from
London by the P. and O.--calling at Gibraltar, Marseilles, Port Said,
Aden, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong--takes about six weeks,
which can be reduced to a month by travelling by train across Europe to
Brindisi (at the south-eastern corner of Italy), and thence by steamer
to Port Said, where the liner is joined. There is still a third route,
across the Atlantic to the United States or Canada, by rail to San
Francisco or Vancouver, and then by steamer to Shanghai _via_ Japan.
This journey can also be accomplished in a month.

[Illustration: THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY.]

On the last day of the year we pass through the Yablonoi Mountains and
enter the