"Sir,—May I briefly reply to M. Loicq de Lobel's letter which appeared in your issue of November 23rd. Your correspondent has already violently attacked me in the Paris Journal, his grievance being that he 'claims the paternity' of the projected Trans-Siberian and Alaskan Railway. This fact is probably as uninteresting to your readers and to the world in general as it is to myself, and so far as I am concerned M. de Lobel is also welcome to annex (in his own imagination) the countries through which the proposed line may eventually pass.
"But this is not the point. According to his own showing, M. de Lobel only 'conceived the project' of uniting Paris and New York by rail in the year 1898. As I left New York in 1896 for Paris by land, with the object of ascertaining the practicability of this gigantic enterprise, I think that I may, with due modesty, dispute the shadowy 'paternity' of the scheme, which, after all, is worth nothing from a theoretical point of view.
"The American and British Press of March, April, and May 1897 will fully enlighten your correspondent as to the details of my last attempt, which unhappily met with disaster and defeat on the Siberian shores of Bering Straits. But I trust and believe that a brighter future is in store for the 'Daily Express' Expedition of 1901, which I have the honour to command, and which leaves Paris for New York by land on the 15th of next month.
"If, as M. de Lobel writes, 'the Englishman thought best not to answer' it was simply because the former's childish tirades seemed to me unworthy of a reply. If, however, you will kindly insert this brief explanation, you may rest assured that, so far as I am concerned, this correspondence is closed.
"I am, yours faithfully,
"Harry de Windt.
"Royal Geographical Society,
London,
November 26, 1901."
With regard to the projected railway, let me now state as briefly and as clearly as I can the conclusion to which I was led by plain facts and personal experience. To begin with, there are two more or less available routes across Siberia to Bering Straits, which the reader may easily trace on a map of Asia. The city of Irkutsk is in both cases the starting-point, and the tracks thence are as follows:
No. 1 Route. To Yakutsk, following the course of the Lena River, and thence in an easterly direction to the town of Okhotsk on the sea of that name. From Okhotsk, northward along the coast to Ola and Gijiga, and from the latter place still northward to the Cossack outpost of Marcova on the Anadyr River. From Marcova the line would proceed northward chiefly over tundra and across or through one precipitous range of mountains, to the Siberian terminus, East Cape, Bering Straits.
The second route is practically the one we travelled, viz., from Irkutsk to the Straits viâ Yukutsk, Verkhoyansk, and Sredni-Kolymsk.
From a commercial point of view, route No. 1 would undoubtedly be the best, for of late years a considerable trade has been carried on between Vladivostok and the Sea of Okhotsk. The latter only twenty years ago was visited solely by a few whalers and sealing schooners, but a line of cargo steamers now leaves Vladivostok once a month throughout the open season (from June to September) and make a round trip, calling at Petropaulovsk (Kamchatka), Okhotsk, Yamsk, and Ayan.[88] There is now a brisk and increasing export trade in furs, fish, lumber, and whalebone from these ports, the imports chiefly consisting of American and Japanese goods.