Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1893 — SIBERIA NOT A DESERT. [ARTICLE]

SIBERIA NOT A DESERT.

It* Valley* a* Fertile a* Tho#e of Western Ann erica—Great Railroad System, Siberia, coupled as its name Is with stories of Russian barbarity, is not the barren, terrible land of limitless deserts which fiction and the drama have pictured it. The building of the trans-Siberian railway and the extension of lines along the northern frontier of China will greatly change the entire drama of civilization. The railroad from Vladivostock to the Ural Mountains will briug that great Russian naval station within fourteen days’ journey of St. Petersburg, and along this route stations will rapidly grow into towns and offer opportunities for new and striking development. Russia’s enterprise, says the Hartford Globe, stimulates that of China, not only as a matter of Competitive ambition but for strategic reasons. The railways now being surveyed and completed within the Celestial Empire are numerous, and to this end many foreign engineers are employed. Soldiers and convicts are largely employed* a 3 workmen, thus cheapening the cost of labor as far as possible. The trans-Siberian railway extends to a length of nearly .5,000 miles, and it is expected to cost $200,000,000. It is divided into six sections, each section comprising three or more divisions, and the contracts for building is given to these, thus employing a large number of contractors for limited distances.

It is a mistake to suppose that Siberia is a desert, or a glacier, or a mountain fastness, or incapable of being made habitable. The valleys are level plains, and said to be as fertile as the western portion of the United States, and it is not unlike the West in the variety of its resources—in minerals, timbers and in agricultural facilities. It is a marvelous treasure-trove of stored-up opportunities. Its wealth is practically unlimited. With the advantages of railroad communication and telegraph lines, a vast country is added to the world of civilization. The cultivation of the land and the introduction of all the elaborate machinery of enlightened life will, as scientists depict, modify the rigors of the climate, although in Southern Siberia even this obstacle does not exist.