The cosmopolitan railway : compacting and fusing together all the world's continents

Preface

My studies of the configuration and climates of the North American continent began by personal observation over half a century ago, when the western part was a primeval wilderness wholly unknown to civilization.

The idea forced itself more and more upon my mind of a widely extended railway system. This system should not only traverse the continent from sea to sea, but should continue its course north and west across the strait of Bering; and across Siberia, to connect with the railways of Hurope, and of all the world. The more I investigated, the more practicable the plan appeared, until the certainty of its consumiation at no far distant day became with me a settled conviction.

Since the time when first these ideas began to occupy my mind, many thousands of miles have been added to the world’s system of railways; many thousands of leagues have been reclaimed from the wilderness and added to the domain of civilization. Already an Asiatic railway across Siberia is approaching actuality; while the several systems in America are drawing nearer and nearer toward the narrow strait which separates the oldest continent known to history from the so-called newest continent. .

The purpose of this book is to throw a stronger iv PREFACE light upon an obscure region, and invest with fresh interest a fascinating subject. In the consummation of the grand scheme of a Cosmopolitan Railway will be forged another link in the great chain of progress, which is slowly, but surely, uniting in one race, one language, and one brotherhood all the peoples of the earth. . It will unfold to man a sea of new possibilities, such as from the beginning nature has ever been revealing, as the human intellect was prepared to understand them. For, although nature abounds in resources, and is lavish of her gifts, it is for man, civilized man, to utilize and draw from them wealth, to economize, and so multiply even these abundant resources.

Long lay hidden the metal of the mountains until _ man should come and make it of use ; Jong bloomed the wilderness, filling the air with fragrance breathed only by wild beasts and reptiles; long, very long, the line of beasts themselves, which came and departed with no higher end or aim than to devour one another, and to roam through the forests, as yet untrod by men or gods. It was reserved for man alone, for the elevation of mind and the immortality of intelligence, thus to transmute the cinders and waste material of this world into the fine gold which ministers to human culture. Science is divine; economy is science revealed, rightly understood, and utilized. :

The North American continent is stupendous in area, and its physical structure is perfect in the economy of its arrangement. It is in these features that we find so marked a contrast in all the continents which make up the subdivisions of the world.

PREFACE y

It has ever been my purpose to elucidate this striking contrast between the old and the new continents in regard to the development of man, and the gradual rise to a higher civilization and a superior order of being consequent in part to the details of continental configuration. The most remarkable of these differences is in the concave structure of America in contrast with the convex structure of the mountain systems, the river systems, and the valley systems of the older world. These differences of structure have much to do with the climatology, the tendency to universal fusion of populations, and the compact order which is the result, and explain the different and various growth, quality, and celerity of progress of the struggle for civilization.

It was first so thought of our continent, from the magnitude of its area, from its sublime economy of structure, and from its being in form a compact island set out in the circumambient oceans. It is this peculiarity of structure, together with a partial isolation, and the exemption from the entanglements and barriers which characterize the older continents, that have made possible and easy the rapid strides in the general development of humanity to a higher and more enduring condition of refinement, and the evolution of institutions propitious to it. Kmancipation by machines, and fusion by railroads, reénforced by a propitious climatology, are here united to urge on our people in the channels of uninterrupted progress.

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Chapter I The Physical Aspect

In the overland journey from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean, there are three well-defined historic points of comparison; namely, the fur epoch, the period covered by the early emigrations to Oregon and California, and the latter-day luxurious railway transit.

The first was a constant warfare on the part of the intruder, with wild beasts and Indians, to secure the skins of the former and avoid losing his own skin to the latter. Escaping this evil, there was the fear of others constantly present, such as dying of hunger, thirst, or disease, or living to become more savage than the savages themselves. |

The second was in some respects an improvement upon the first, and in other respects a retrogression. It lacked the element of chivalrous adventure conspicuous in the other, which combined the sentiment of war with the peaceable results of conquest and colonization. There were plenty of savages left, though now somewhat demoralized by intercourse with white men—the Crows and Cheyennes, the Utes, Shoshones, and other tribes, with not infrequent visitations of famine and pestilence, cholera, dysentery, and fever, mingled with man-eating experiences in the mountains and parched thirst on the plains. Measureless areas of prairie, mountain, and valley, since cut into states and covered by the spirit of our institutions, were then alive with buffalo, deer, and antelope, and filled with natural wealth since exposed by mining and agriculture.

Now, in place of mule, mustang, horse and ox team, we have polished and upholstered sleeping-cars flashing through this so lately primeval wilderness at the rate of as many miles per day as were made per month before.

A. railway connecting the northernmost line in British Columbia with the nearest station in Russia, by way of Bering strait, must pass northward through Alaska by one of two routes; that is, either up through the interior and down the Yukon, or around by the seashore. The border lines on both sides of the strait, and around into the Arctic ocean, as well as southward along the shores, respectively of Asia and America, have been pretty well known for a century and a half; the interior of Alaska is but little known to this day.

Bering strait and sea lie for the most part south of the hae between latitudes 60° and 664°, in the latitude of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and “Finland, the cities of Christiania, Stockholm, and St Petersburg being within these parallels.

Before we permit ourselves to be frightened by the snow and cold of Alaska and Siberia, we should consider the old-time maxim that to see St Petersburg comfortably one should go in the winter, and the further fact that Russians wait for winter to cross Siberia, as the roads are then in better condition, and alw yays begin the journey at night instead of in the morning.

In Norton sound ice > usually begins to form in October, but seldom offers serious obstruction until late in winter, as it breaks up and is carried out to sea until the extreme cold solidifies it. Although the climate is warmer on the coast than in the interior, the cold is here more severely felt, owing to the moisture. The ice on the rivers is usually covered with snow in winter, except during the early part of it.

Soundings were early made hereabout, as well as along the Asiatic coast and around the islands of St Lawrence and St Michael. It has long been known that Bering sea is shallow, vessels being able to anchor in almost any part of it. At St Michael’s there are but five fathoms of water, increasing, however, to twenty-five fathoms at St Lawrence’s. The average depth between latitudes 64° and 66° falls a trifle under nineteen and a half fathoms. Between St Lawrence island and Plover bay the average is thirty-five fathoms, shoaling to nineteen fathoms on approaching the bay itself. The bottom consists of soft mud and sand, with here and there gravel.

Lichens and mosses are about the only vegetation seen among the rugged mountains that protect Plover bay on three sides, and make it one of the stillest and safest harbors in the world; but near Emma harbor is an open patch where graze tamed reindeer. Ice begins to form here in October, and in November Plover bay is entirely frozen over.

Imposing volcanoes constitute a leading feature of the peninsula of Kamchatka. Petropaulovski has a good deep harbor well set in among the hills, with a long spit in front, and a smoking white mountain, Koriatski, in the distant background. The climate is no worse than that of Canada and some parts of New England, agriculture being by no means impossible, hay and vegetables reaching full perfection during the short summer. Between the bay and the mountains is a rather level stretch of country, intersected by streams, and covered with rank grass and underbrush.

The Aleutian islands, or insular continuation of the Alaskan peninsula, are the broken bridge which may at one time have connected the continents of Asia and America, and which separate the sea of Kamchatka from the Pacific ocean. Along the whole length of this volcanic chain are warm springs, and now and then a volcano in periodic operation, A cloudy spring and hot summer are followed by a | severe winter. The vegetation consists of low, scrubby trees and bushes, with grasses, mosses, and lichens. Potatoes and other garden vegetables are

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grown successfully, and in places the hardier descriptions of grain.

The trend of mountains in Alaska is northwest and and southeast, the directions a traveller starting from civilization would wish to take in going to and coming from the sea and strait of Bering. It is the frozen horn of the continent, toward which all ranges converge—the continental cordillera, coming all the way from Cape Horn, and the Nevada-Cascade range here joining, while the Coast range from California sweeps round Mount St Elias and breaks into the islands of the Aleutian archipelago.

Says Bancroft in his History of Alaska: ‘“ Standing at Mount St Elias as the middle of a crescent, we see the shore line stretching out in either direction, toward the southeast and the southwest, ending in the former at Dixon inlet, and in the latter sweeping off and breaking into mountainous islands as it continues its course toward Kamchatka.

“Tt is a most exceedingly rough and uncouth country, this part of it; the shore line being broken into fragments, with small and great islands guarding the labyrinth of channels, bays, sounds, and inlets that line the mainland. Back of these rise abruptly vast and rugged mountains, the two great continental chains coming together here, as if in final struggle for the mastery.

“The Coast range along the Pacific shore of Alaska attains an elevation in places of 8,000 or 9,000 feet, lying for the most part under perpetual snow, with here and there glistening white peaks 14,000 or 16,000 feet above the sea.

«And the ruggedness of this Sitkan or southern seaboard, the thirty-miles strip, as it is sometimes called, with the Alexander archipelago, continues as we pass on to the Alaskan mountains and the Aleutian archipelago. It is in the Alaskan range that nature assumes the heroic, that the last battle of the mountains seems to have been fought. The din of it has as yet hardly passed away; the great peaks of the range stand there proudly triumphant but still angry ; grumbling, smoking, and spitting fire, they gaze upon their fallen foes of the archipelago, giants like themselves though now submerged, sunken in the sea, if not indeed hurled thence by their victorious rivals.

as THE COSMOPOLITAN RAILWAY

“These great towering volcanic peaks and the quaking islands are superb beyond description, filling the breast of the beholder with awe. And the ground about, though cold enough upon the surface, steams and sweats in sympathy, manifesting its internal warmth in geysers and hot springs, while from the depths of the sea sometimes belches forth fire, if certain navigators may be believed, and the sky blazes in northern lights.

“ All along this sweep of southern seaboard Europeans may dwell in comfort if so inclined. Even in midwinter the cold is seldom severe or of long duration. An average temperature is 42°, though extremes have been named for certain localities of from 19° to 58°, and again from 58° below zero in January to 95° in summer. Winter is stormy, the winds at Sitka at this season being usually easterly, those from the south bringing rain and snow. When the wind is from the northwest the sky is clear, and the cold nights are often lighted by the display of the aurora borealis. Winter breaks up in March, and during the clear, cold days of April the boats go out after furs. Yet, for a good portion of the year there is a universal and dismal dampness—fogs interminable and drizzling rain; clouds thick and heavy and low-lying, giving a water fall of six or eight feet in thickness.

“Much of the soil is fertile, though in places wet. Behind a low wooded seaboard often rise abruptly icy steeps, with here and there between the glacier cafions broad patches of sphagnum one or two feet thick, and well saturated with water. The perpetual snow-line of the Makushin volcano is three thousand feet above the sea, and vegetation ceases at an altitude of two thousand five hundred feet. Grain does not ripen, but grasses thrive almost everywhere on the lowlands. Berries are plentiful, particularly cranberries, though the sunlight is scarcely strong enough to flavor them well. Immense spruce forests tower over Prince William sound and about Sitka. Kadiak is a good grazing country, capable of sustainmg 1arge droves of cattle. On the Aleutian island trees do not grow, but the grasses are luxuriant. In a word, here in the far north we find a vegetation rightly belonging to a much lower latitude.

“The warm Japan current which comes up along the coast of Asia, bathing the islands of the Aleutian archipelago as it crosses the Pacific, and washing the shores of America far to the southward, transforms the whole region from what would otherwise be inhospitable into a habitation fit for man. Arising off the inner and outer shores of lower California, this stream first crosses the Pacific as the great northern equatorial current; passing south of the Hawaiian islands and on to the coast of Asia, deflecting northward as it goes, and after its grand and life-compelling sweep, slowly returns to its starting-point. It is this that clothes temperate isles in tropical vegetation, makes the silk-worm flourish far north of its rightful home, and sends joy to the heart of the hyperborean, even to him upon the strait of Bering, and almost to the Arctic sea. It is this that thickly covers the steep mountain-sides to the height of a thousand feet and more with great growths of spruce, alder, willow, hemlock, and yellow cedar. It is the striking of this warm current of air and water against the cold shores of the north that causes nature to steam up in thick fogs and dripping moisture, and compels the surcharged clouds to drop their torrents. ....

‘Go back into the interior if you can get there, or round by the Alaskan shore north of the islands, along Bering sea and strait, which separate Asia and America, and indent the eastern border with great bays into which flow rivers, one of them, the Yukon, having its sources far back in British Columbia; ascend this stream, or traverse the country between it and the Arctic ocean, and you will find quite a different order of things. Clearer skies are there, and dryer, colder airs, and ice eternal. Along the

Arctic shore runs a line of hills in marked contrast to the mountains of the southern seaboard. Between these ranges flow the Yukon with its tributaries, the Kuskokvim, Selawik, and other streams.”

Asia has more and higher mountain ranges than America, higher and broader plateaus, and a larger area of desert. Some idea of the configuration may be gained. from the names geographers give to the four nearly parallel belts into which the continent may be divided, as arctic, desert, peninsular, and insular Asia.

It is common, particularly in England, to apply the name Siberia to all the Russian possessions in Asia, except the provinces of Transcaucasia and Armenia. Thus defined, Siberia extends from the Arctic ocean and the seas of Kamchatka, Okhotsk, and Japan, arms of the Pacific, to the Ural mountains and river, and the Caspian sea. Russian Asia, including centrial Asia, but not the Caucasus, has an area of 6,000,000 square miles, with a population of 4,500,000, or less than one person to the square mile. The greatest length of Siberia from northeast to southwest is 5,600 miles, and its greatest breadth, north and south, 2,170 miles.

Leaving the Arctic plain in the north, we have the Siberian plain, which still belongs to arctic Asia, on a line with the great plain of Europe. The great Siberian plain stretches southward as far as the Elburz and Altai mountains. Here are the vast grassy steppes where dwell the nomadic Tartars, with sheep and horses for food. Forests of perpetual green, filled with fur-bearing and other animals, the cleared portions inhabited by Europeans, line this region on the north, while beyond are the tundras, or mossy swamps, whose nomad tribes subsist mainly on fish and reindeer. ;

Desert Asia lies well to the south, and extends in a broad belt of high plateaus from near the Pacific ocean to the Red and Mediterranean seas. Here lies

Thibet, high in air, the highest plateau in the world. Along this belt the climate for the most part tends toward extremes, hot in summer, cold in winter, and in many places extremely dry, though east of the Indus there is a sufficiency of moisture. The deserts along this line are interspersed with vast areas of low and fertile lands, rich agricultural valleys and mountain slopes, which, like the valley of the Euphrates, was once the seat of great empires.

The great interior, from east to west, is inhabited by Mongolians, the Caucasians confining themselves to the country south of the Himalaya and Caucasus mountains.

Three rivers drain four fifths of Siberia, the Lena, the Yenisei, and the Obi, all flowing into the Arctic ocean. There are many lakes and salt marshes. The moorlands, swamps, and mossy flats bordering the northern ocean are in Siberia, as in the Arctic shore of Alaska, under ice and snow for half the year; the liberating rays of summer penetrate the surface of the earth but a few inches. For miles seaward the ocean remains frozen for more than half the year, ice: bergs and floes covering the sea during the remainder. Proceeding southward from this almost barren shore, zones of ever-improving vegetation are crossed, first bushes and scrubby trees, then forests of fir, birch, and larch, interspersed with pasture lands. South of latitude 64° in western Siberia, and of 61° in the eastern part, the more hardy cereals appear—rye, oats, and barley—the soil increasing in fertility until thick woods of cedar clothe the mountain-sides, while the valleys, particularly along the rivers, yield good returns under cultivation.

The great plain of western Siberia slopes toward the Arctic ocean, with an average elevation along its southern line of 2,000 feet, except the southwest corner, whose waters are drained into the Aral and Caspian seas. In the provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk is much fertile land; it is well known that the steppes of Ishim and Baraba have long been one of the chief eranaries of northern Europe. The valley of the Yenisei, north of the Sayansk mountains, is warm and productive. We may say generally that the western portion of Siberia is more fit for cultivation than the eastern portion, the latter being more hilly, yet affording good pasture.

If we examine the mountain ranges of central Asia we find the Altai chain on the southern border of Siberia, thence dropping southward into Mongolia, and spreading eastward as well, but offering no obstruction to northern overland travel, while the Ural range ramifies southward from the Arctic across the line from Bering sea and toward St Petersburg. Along the peninsula of Kamchatka, and on the island of Saghalien are high mountains, interspersed with volcanoes, the highest having an elevation of 15,000 feet. There is nothing formidable in the Stanovol hills which skirt the sea of Okhotsk, northward from ~ Amooria; while the Russian exploring expedition of 1863 proved mythical the Yablonnoi mountains, laid down in the early charts, and which careless geographers still lay down along Amooria, between the basin of Indigirka and Okhotsk sea. No such range exists, what were supposed to be mountains being merely undulating plains.

The Ural mountains of Russia are far less formidable than the Rocky mountains of America, being a broad range of no great elevation.

Siberia sends westward her products by river and land carriage, usually by way of Tobolsk, and over the Ural mountains. The Russians have steamboats on the Amoor; the Lena is navigable for a long distance. There is a considerable commerce between Archangel and the rivers Yeuisei and Obi. Trade is carried on toa great extent by barter, and at fairs regularly held at certain places. The chief cities of Siberia are Irkutsk, founded in 1661, Tomsk in 1604, Tjumen, and Tobolsk.

TLE PHYSICAL ASPECT 11

That Siberia, as well as Alaska, is a rich mineral country there is no doubt. In all the mountainous regions of the west and south are vast deposits of gold, silver, copper, and lead; while on the eastern slopes of the Ural mountains are diamonds and other precious stones, iron, and platinum; in the country north of the Amoor river emeralds and topaz, zinc, arsenic, antimony, and plumbago; and elsewhere, jasper, malachite, and salt.

The silver mines of the Nerchinsk district in eastern Siberia, near Mongolia and the Amoor, have been worked by the Russian government since the year 1700. There are also rich gold placers as well as iron in this vicinity. Intelligent Russians criticise the management of the government, whose agents are both incompetent and corrupt. Little, indeed, could be expected from convict labor, shiftless superintendents, rascally agents, primitive methods, poor tools, and imperfect appliances.

As the great American deserts have been ever lessening since the advent of railways, so will the deserts of Asia become less and less, until their wastes shall blossom as the rose. Opinion cannot be more unfavorable now in regard to the desert lands of the old world, than prevailed here a short time ago as to our own. Large portions of the Rocky mountains, and thence to the Pacific ocean, were regarded as arid regions, lands burnt up and good for nothing. How is it now? Scarcely a spot has been found where water will not produce vegetation.

The century-march of the Cossacks across Siberia began in 1578. A boundless expanse opened to the Russians on their east, inviting the down-trodden Slav to more freedom of action, and opportunities for conquest and occupation. The flesh of wild beasts afforded food, and their skins became the basis of traffic. “Vast as is the area of Siberia,” says Bancroft in his History of Alaska, “its several parts are remarkably similar. Plants, animals, and men, climate, conditions, and customs, are more alike than on the other side of the strait of Bering. The country and its contents are upon a dead level. A network of navigation is formed by the upper branches of rivers flowing into the frozen sea though the tundras, or ice-morass, of the north, so that the same kind of boats and sledges carry the traveller across the whole country. The fierce and cunning Cossacks of Russia were in marked contrast to the disunited semi-nomads of Siberia, busy as they were taming the reindeer, hunting with dogs, or fighting with the bow and arrow and lance; and if they could conquer the Tartars of the Obi, there was no reason why they could not march on to the Pacific.”

In the first invasion of Siberia by the people of the west, advance was made in small scattered bodies, no heavy force being required for subjugating the natives. And as I am by no means sure that the route of the - Cosmopolitan Railway will be far from their track, we may as well follow further this century-mmarch across ‘Siberia. It will not be time lost, as introductory to our subject, briefly to notice what travellers have seen and said of this region.

When furs were the circulating medium of Russia, her people were induced to scatter themselves throughout the wilderness in search of them, even as now civilized peoples ransack the globe for gold. The foreign trade of Russia was for two and a half centuries controlled by the Hanseatic league, until in 1553, in a search for a northeast passage to China, an English vessel found its way into the White sea, and the Russian company of English merchants was formed. Cossack pirates, infesting the Caspian and lower Volga and preying upon commerce, being driven thence by the English merchants, betook themselves under enterprising leaders to the strange countries eastward, and thus began the advance of the Slav race toward the Pacific.

While the Cossacks were engaged in their century-march across Siberia, maritime powers under various pretences surveyed the seas. An English expedition undertook the northeast passage in 1580, the Russians meanwhile maintaining a coasting trade. Hollanders next attempted the northeast passage, Willem Barentz discovering and naming Ys Hoek, or Ice Cape. A second expedition sailed from Amsterdam on the same mission in 1595.

Yermak Timofeief led the pioneer band of Cossacks, starting from the shores of the Black and Caspian seas In 1578, and capturing at the river Ob a little Tartar sovereignty, a fragment of the great monarchy of Genghis Khan. The first ostrog, or fort, of the eastward-bound Cossacks and Russians was built on the Tobol, and became later Tobolsk, the headquarters of organized government, and starting-point for future expeditions. ‘Thence their conquering march,” says Bancroft, “was straight through the middle of Siberia, the line being equidistant from the mountains of the south and the morasses of the north, and it later became the principal line of traffic. On this line, cutting through the various river regions, the chief colonies of the country were founded. Eastward from Tobolsk, in the territory of the river Ob, the city of Tomsk; eastward from this on the Yenisei, the city of Yenisei; then Irkutsk and Yakutsk in the Lena district; and finally, on the shore of the Pacific, Okhotsk, which stands upon about the same parallel as the starting-point. These cities grew up successively one out of the other, and for every new river province, the last served as a point @appui for the various enterprises, military or commercial. At every important river a halt was made, during which they settled themselves more firmly, and organized their new territory. They built boats, explored up the rivers and down them, even to the frozen ocean, where they founded settlements. The Cossacks themselves were a light troop; but they were preceded by a still lighter, a flying advance guard, called the promysihlemiki, a kind of Russian cowrewrs des bois. They were freebooters, who hunted on their own account and at their own risk. No one could control them. They flitted everywhere in the woods and morasses, companions of wild beasts. They made the several first discoveries in Siberia, and brought homie the earliest information of hitherto unknown parts.” Thus, like the trappers and fur-traders who first found a path across America for the overland railway, these wild Russian nomads, little knowing the significance of their doings, marked out the line across Siberia for the future great world-uniting Cosmopolitan Railway.

The Cossacks reached the Lena river in the spring of 1628. There they built a boat, and rowed up and down the river to the confusion of the natives, who pacified them by tributes of sable-skins. The chieftain Beketof descended the Lena in 1632 to the Yakut nation, and built an ostrog, which became Yakutsk, the capital of eastern Siberia, and point of departure for expeditions to the Arctic and the Pacific.

From the Lena the northeastern horn of Asia extends five or six hundred leagues, narrowing along the way, while the intersecting streams become smaller and smaller until the Anadir is reached. The river Yana was discovered by a party of Cossacks who made the journey from the mouth of the Lena by water, others, from Yakutsk, mounted on horses finding its sources. Finally the mountains on the eastern border of Siberia were crossed in 1639, and an ostrog built where now is Okhotsk, on the shore of the Okhotsk sea, an important initial point for observation and enterprise. Another route to the Pacific was found by some Russians who ascended the Lena to Lake Baikal, and thence by way of the Amoor through China. An expedition of 132 men, under Vassili Posharkof, set out from Yakutsk in 1643, following the Amoor to its mouth, and thence along the coast to the Okhotsk sea, and back by the direct route to the point of departure.