Page 4: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (January 1889)

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Columbia ; and the initiative has already been taken by Great Britain in the erection of batteries in the neighborhood of Esquimault.

As early as last May the St. Petersburgh correspondent of the New York

Tribune contributed the following report of the progress of the Grand Trunk

Railway through Central Southern Siberia to the Pacific Ocean and China: "SIGNS OF RUSSIAN PROGRESS. " The completion of the Trans-Caspian Railway to Samarcand marks another stage in the Russian occupation of Asia. That city was the objective point of the earlier campaigns from Orenburg and the sea of Aral, which ended in the conquest of Khiva and Kokan and the establishment of

Tashkend as the military headquarters, with railway connections northward.

Bokhara was reduced to the condition of a protected province and Samarcand was virtually converted into a Russian centre of trade on the border of China.

An interval of twelve years has elapsed, during which Samarcand, already within easy reach from Tashkend, has been gradually approached from the

Capsian Sea. The Trans-Caspian Railway is now in operation from Mic- hailovsk to Samarcand, a distance of 885 miles, by way of Askabad, Merv and

Bokhara. This narrow-guage system, built at a cost of $21,000,000, gives

Russia control of the commerce of Turkestan and completes the circuit of conquest on the borders of China, Afghanistan and Persia. In future military operations in Central Asia this railway, with the northern line running from

Tashkend, will be a most useful base of transportation and supplies. Mean- while, it binds together a straggling series of conquests separated by broad reaches of desert. It is already rumored in St. Petersburg that the Czar in- tends to visit during the summer the great Empire in Central Asia which the valor of his soldiers and the skill of his engineers have created. An imperial journey to Merv, Bokhara and Samarcand will illustrate the wonderful pro- gress made by the Russians during the last twenty years in overrunning

Asia. " The Russian engineer who has completed the Trans-Caspian system is % •now to undertake a new and colossal undertaking. This is the trunk line •through Central and Southern Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. Surveys have already .been made for a railway from Tomsk to Irkutsk, and this line when