The Chinese had “massed” several thousand of their Manchu troops at Hun-chun, and they had created such a reign of terror that the peasant farmers had deserted their homes over a large area of country. The soldiers, robbed by their officers of their nominal pay, and only half fed, relied on unlimited pillage for making up the deficiency, and neither women nor property were safe from their brutality and violence. So desperately undisciplined were they that only a few days before the Secretary and Interpreter of the Russian frontier Commissioner at Nowo Kiewsk, visiting Hun-chun on official business, narrowly escaped actual violence at their hands, and the Chinese Governor told them that he had no control at all over the troops. It was only the rigid discipline of the Cossacks which prevented scrimmages which might have produced a serious conflagration.
KOREAN SETTLERS’ HOUSE.
CHAPTER XX
THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD
After returning to Wladivostok, accompanied by a young Danish gentleman who was kindly lent to me by Messrs. Kuntz and Albers, and who spoke English and Russian, I spent a week on the Ussuri Railway, the eastern section of the Trans-Siberian Railway, going as far as the hamlet of Ussuri on the Ussuri River at the great Ussuri Bridge, beyond which the line, though completed for 50 versts, was not open for traffic. Indeed, up to that point from Nikolskoye trains were run twice daily rather to “settle the line” than for profit, and their average speed was only twelve miles an hour. The weather was brilliant, varied by a heavy snowstorm.
The present Tsar is understood to be enthusiastic about this railroad. During his visit to Wladivostok in 1891, when Tsarevitch, he inaugurated the undertaking by wheeling away the first barrowful of earth and placing the first stone in position, after which, work was begun simultaneously at both ends.
The eastern terminus of this great railroad undertaking is close to the sea and the Government deep water pier, at which the fine steamers from Odessa of the Russian “Volunteer Fleet” discharge their cargoes. The station is large and very handsome, and both it and the noble administrative offices are built of gray stone, with the architraves of the doors and windows in red brick. Buffets and all else were in efficient working order. In the winter of 1895-96 only third and fourth class cars were running, the latter chiefly patronized by Koreans and Chinese. Each third class carriage is divided into three compartments with a corridor, and has a lavatory and steam-heating apparatus. The backs of the seats are hooked up to form upper berths for sleeping, and as the cars are eight feet high they admit of broad luggage shelves above these. The engines which ran the traffic were old American locomotives, but those which are to be introduced, as well as all the rolling stock, are being manufactured in the Baltic provinces. So also are the rails, the iron and steel bridges, the water tanks, the iron work required for stations, and all else.
Large railway workshops with rows of substantial houses for artisans have been erected at Nikolskoye, 102 versts from Wladivostok, for the repairs of rolling stock on the Ussuri section, and were already in full activity.
There is nothing about this Ussuri Railway of the newness and provisional aspect of the Western American lines, or even of parts of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The track was already ballasted as far as Ussuri (327 versts), steel bridges spanned the minor streams, and substantial stations either of stone or decorated wood, with buffets at fixed distances, successfully compare both in stability and appearance with those of our English branch lines. The tank houses are of hewn stone. Houses for the employés, standing in neatly fenced gardens, are both decorative and substantial, being built of cement and logs protected by five coats of paint, and contain four rooms each. The crossings are well laid and protected. Culverts and retaining walls are of solid masonry, and telegraph wires accompany the road, which is worked strictly on the block system. The aspect of solidity and permanence is remarkable. Even the temporary bridge over the Ussuri, 1,050 feet in length, a trestle bridge of heavy timber to resist the impact of the ice, is so massive as to make the great steel bridge, the handsome abutments of which were already built, appear as if it would be a work of supererogation.
Up to that point there are no serious embankments or cuttings, and the gradients are easy. The cost of construction of the Ussuri section is 50,000 roubles per verst, a rouble at this time being worth about 2s. 2d. This includes rolling stock, stations, and all bridges except that over the Amur, which was to cost 3,000,000 roubles, but may now be dispensed with owing to the diversion of the route through Manchuria. Convict labor was abandoned in 1894, and the line in Primorsk is being constructed by Chinese “navvies,” who earn about 80 cents per day, and who were bearing the rigor of a Siberian winter in well-warmed, semi-subterranean huts, the line being pushed on as much as possible during the cold season. For the first 102 versts, it passes along prettily wooded shores of inlets and banks of streams, and the country is fairly well peopled, judging from the number of sleighs and the bustle at the six stations en route. The line as far as Nikolskoye was opened in early November, 1893, and in a year had earned 280,000 roubles. The last section had only been open for eight weeks when I travelled upon it.