ng the road. A good deal of blasting had to be done to make the
road sufficiently broad for wheeled traffic; then came the important
detour, as we have seen, from Paichinar to Kasvin, so that practically
the portion of the road from Menzil to Kasvin is a new road altogether,
_via_ Mala Ali and Kuhim, the old track being met again at the village of
Agha Baba.

The width of the road averages twenty-one feet. In difficult places, such
as along ravines, or where the road had to be cut into the rock, it is
naturally less wide, but nowhere under fourteen feet. The gradient
averages 1--20 to 1--24. At a very few points, however, it is as steep
as 1 in 15. If the hill portion of the road is excepted, where, being in
zig-zag, it has very sharp angles, a light railway could be laid upon it
in a surprisingly short time and at no considerable expense, the ground
having been made very hard nearly all along the road.

The capital of L340,000 employed in the construction of the road was
subscribed in the following manner: 1,000 shares of 1,000 rubles each, or
1,000,000 rubles original capital subscribed in Moscow; 1,000,000 rubles
debentures taken by the Russian Government, and a further 500,000 rubles
on condition that 700,000 rubles additional capital were subscribed,
which was at once done principally by the original shareholders.

The speculation had from the very beginning a prospect of being very
successful, even merely considered as a trade route--a prospect which the
British Government, capitalist, and merchant did not seem to grasp, but
which was fully appreciated by the quicker and more far-seeing Russian
official and trader. Any fair-minded person cannot help admiring the
Russian Government for the insight, enterprise and sound statesmanship
with which it lost no time in supporting the scheme (discarded by us as
worthless), and this it did, not by empty-winded, pompous speeches and
temporising promises, to which we have so long been accustomed, but by
supplying capital in hard cash, for the double purpose of enhancing to
its fullest extent Russian trade and of gaining the strategic advantages
of such an enterprise, which are too palpable to be referred to again.

So it was, that while we in England relied on the everlasting and
ever-idiotic notion that Russia would never have the means to take up the
loan, being--as we are told--a bankrupt country with no resources, and a
Government with no credit and no cash,--that we fo