The Boy Travellers in The Russian Empire / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with Accounts of a Tour across Siberia, Voyages on the Amoor, Volga, and Other Rivers, a Visit to Central Asia, Travels among the Exiles, and a Historical Sketch of the Empire from Its Foundation to the Present Time

by Thomas Wallace Knox

RUSSIAN CARPENTERS AT WORK.

When the guide and carriage were ready, the party started on its round of visits. From the bluff they looked down upon the harbor, which was lined with workshops and bordered in places by a railway track, arranged so that ships were laden directly from the trains, and trains from the ships. The railway connects with the entire system of the Empire. Doctor Bronson said that if it had existed at the time of the war, the capture of Sebastopol would have been out of the question. Russia had then only a primitive means of communication by wagon-road; she had an abundance of men and war material, but no adequate mode of transportation. The Crimean war taught her the necessity of railways, and she has since acted upon the lesson for which she paid such a high price.

COSSACKS AND CHASSEURS.

Frank and Fred climbed quickly to the top of the Malakoff, and the Doctor followed demurely behind them. The lines which marked the saps and mines of the Allies have been nearly all filled up, and the traces of the war are being obliterated. From the top of the casemate the guide pointed out many places of interest. With considerable animation he told how for twenty years after the war the ruins of the city remained pretty nearly as they were when the Allies evacuated the Crimea; whole squares of what had once been fine buildings were nothing but heaps of stones. But now Sebastopol is being restored to her former beauty, and every year large areas of the ruins are making way for new structures.

"Sebastopol will be a greater city than it ever was before," said Doctor Bronson, as they stood on the Malakoff. "It was a naval port before, and not a commercial one; now it is both naval and commercial, and by glancing at the map of the Black Sea you can perceive the advantages of its position."

Then the guide pointed out the new dock-yards and barracks, the warehouses and docks of "The Russian Company of Navigation and Commerce," the railway-station close to the shore of the harbor, and the blocks of new buildings which were under construction.