Read "The Great Siberian Railway" by Francis E. Clark online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The completion of a new way around this old world is a matter of no little interest and moment. Such a new way has just been opened, and it was my fortune to be one of the first five passengers who took this journey.
On the 28th of December, 1899, the last rail was laid on the trans-Baikal section of the Siberian Railway, which for the present will stop at Stretinsk, and there connect with the steamers on the Shilka, a branch of the Amour River, for Khabaroffsk, where again railway communication is resumed for a further journey of five hundred miles to Vladivostock, on the Sea of Japan. Thus across all of Russia's vast domain in Europe and Asia it is possible to go by steam, a distance of considerably more than six thousand miles, as the route is now traversed by river and by rail. My own route was in the other direction, from east to west -- from Vladivostock to St. Petersburg.