of the line, 244 versts (162
miles) long, has involved enormous expense. In fifty-six miles there
are thirty-nine tunnels, and thirteen galleries for protection against
rock-slides. This short section is said to have cost L1,170,000. The
energy with which the Government pushed on this stupendous work during
the Russo-Japanese war yields one more proof of their determination to
secure at all costs the aims which they set in view in and after the
year 1891[486].

[Footnote 486: See an article by Mr. J.M. Price in _The Fortnightly
Review_ for May 1905.]

Other parts of the track have also presented great difficulties. East of
Lake Baikal the line gradually winds its way up to a plateau some 3000
feet higher than the lake, and then descends to treacherous marsh lands.
The district of the Amur bristles with obstacles, not the least being
the terrible floods that now and again (as in 1897) turn the whole
valley into a trough of swirling waters[487].

[Footnote 487: _Russia on the Pacific_, by "Vladimir"; _The Awakening of
the East_, by P. Leroy-Beaulieu, chaps, ix. x.]

All these difficulties have been overcome in course of time; but there
remained the question of the terminus. Up to the year 1894 the objective
had been Vladivostok; but the outbreak of the Chino-Japanese War at that
time opened up vast possibilities. Russia could either side with the
islanders and share with them the spoils of Northern China, or, posing
as the patron of the celestials, claim some profitable _douceurs_ as
her reward.

She chose the latter alternative, and, in the opinion of some of her own
writers, wrongly. The war proved the daring, the patriotism, and the
organising skill of the Japanese to be as signal as the sloth and
corruptibility of their foes. Then, for the first time, the world saw
the utter weakness of China--a fact which several observers (including
Lord Curzon) had vainly striven to make clear. Even so, when Chinese
generals and armies took to their heels at the slightest provocation;
when their battleships were worsted by Japanese armoured cruisers; when
their great stronghold, Port Arthur, was stormed with a loss of about
400 killed, the moral of it all was hidden from the wise men of the
West. Patronising things were said of the Japanese as conquerors--of the
Chinese; but few persons realised that a new Power had arisen. It seemed
the easiest of undertakings to despoil the "venomous dwarfs" of the
fruits of their triumph o