. All the Russias; travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, & Central Asia. principal stations are thus sixteen, but the total num-ber of stations is ninety-six—seventy-seven to the junction ofChernayevo, five to Tashkent on the northern branch, and four-teen to Andijan on the eastern branch. The total length of therailway, including both branches, is 2053 versts—1355 miles—and the average speed, from Krasnovodsk, the starting-point onthe Caspian, to Tashkent, the northern terminus, including allstoppages, is seventeen and one-half miles an hour. But
. All the Russias; travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, & Central Asia. principal stations are thus sixteen, but the total num-ber of stations is ninety-six—seventy-seven to the junction ofChernayevo, five to Tashkent on the northern branch, and four-teen to Andijan on the eastern branch. The total length of therailway, including both branches, is 2053 versts—1355 miles—and the average speed, from Krasnovodsk, the starting-point onthe Caspian, to Tashkent, the northern terminus, including allstoppages, is seventeen and one-half miles an hour. But ex- 250 ALL THE RUSSIAS eluding the eight scheduled stops, amounting to two hours minutes, and allowing three minutes at each of theother stations, the actual average speed while running works outat over twenty miles an hour—a highly creditable performanceand much superior to that of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Merely as a railway the Trans-Caspian is in no way extraor-dinary. Except for the absence of labour, timber, and water,which necessitated a rolling camp following upon the heels of. BKEAD-SELLERS AT A STATION the working party, and the passage of the sand desert, it pre-sented no difficulties, and the only engineering exploit is thebridge over the Oxus. But, as I said at the beginning, the as-tounding fact is that it is here at all. It was begun on June 30,1885 ; Merv was reached in July 1886 ; the Amu-Darya inJune 1887 ; the bridge, 4600 yards long, was opened for trafficin January 1888; Samarkand reached in May 1888 ; and Tash-kent soon afterward. Thus twenty years ago it was not thoughtof as it exists to-day ; the notion of it was even strenuously repu-diated by Russian statesmen when England grew nervous about
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