| Show written paper RUSSIA ON THE PACIFIC copyrighted by frank Q G Oar carpenter penter 1895 letters which I 1 have j just received from the capital c a p i t al of corea state that the russian surveyors are exploring the harbor of bensan on the east coast of corea A this harbor is one of the finest on the pacific it is in about the i middle of the east coast of the corean peninsula half way between fusan and it is open throughout the winter and the russians want it to the trans siberian use as a terminus for railroad their present harbor is on the southeastern edge of siberia and it is frozen up for about five months of the year so that no ships can land and so that the pacific is practically shut off from siberia during the win fer I 1 visited both harbors last summer and it was from bensan that I 1 sailed to ladi in order to investigate the H condition of the trans siberian railroad if f the russians should seize north k eastern corea as is supposed to be their 1 intention from the fact of the above r bensan will be one of the most purvey h unimportant 1 nt ports of asia its harbor is sr large enough to float the navies of the fe world and already there is a great trade connected with it the gold mines in corea lie not far off and the country surrounding it though it is mountainous has bas many well cultivated valleys it has now a population of about a thousand anese and fifteen thousand comeans Co reans japanese I 1 it t ata has a missionary station and russian bennan C erman and danish exporting houses it has a little japanese hotel where I 1 go topped ped while I 1 waited for the steamer 7 and it has one japanese bank this kmak bank however nas has not much faith in foreign letters of credit it cost me three hundred thousand cash or about one hundred dollars to make my trip across the country and I 1 landed in gen fan with fifteen silver dollars in in my pocket I 1 had a letter of credit with me IT imd and I 1 tried to get some money on it at f the japanese bank they looked it c over and jabbered jabberer jabb ered in japanese but at r last gave it back to me and told we me they could give me nothing I 1 tried to set fet trusted by the japanese steamship agency for my passage they looked at thi the letter of credit and then looked at me and told me it was no go the faxe awe was just fourteen dollars to cladi and by persuading my hotel K keeper to wait until I 1 came back I 1 was elble ble to buy a ticket and have one dollar left for incidentals the ship was the tokyo marv maru one of the greatest of the japanese a p anese steamers which runs from koke japan to siberia regularly it was about two thousand tons I 1 judge and though the sailors were japanese the officers were english the accommodations were good and after a voyage of two days we found ourselves in the great harbor of THE HARBOR is the key to eastern siberia it is the great russian city of the east and is one of the most strongly fortified towns on the globe it is the chief russian naval station on the pacific and it is now the terminus of the siberian railway it fairly swarms with soldiers and officials the military governor of eastern siberia including millions of square miles lives here and it has an admiral who governs the shipping and who is independent of the governor it has scores of police and you cant throw a stone without hitting a general the town now contains about people in addition to a large garrison of soldiers it grows like a green bay tree tree and it is a slice of european russia spread out over the mountains of siberia the houses are of brick stone and wood and it has man many y fine buildings it has magnificent dry docks and its new floating docks admit of the largest vessels being laid up tip for repairs an immense ocean steamer was under repair during my stay and the harbor was filled with all kinds of shipping including two russian men of dfwar war and an american sailing vessel from san francisco this last had brought a cargo of wheat and flour to and the captain who was a bright young fellow from maine came on board to inquire his best route home by way of japan THE KEY TO SIBERIA there is no more picturesque bay on the pacific than that of it would float the navies of the world and you could put all the shipp shipping i n thai that comes into liverpool in a year wi within atin it and have hava room to spare it is known as the gulf of peter the great and it has a length of about fifty miles while its width at the entrance is more than one hundred miles this gulf is divided into two large bays by a hilly peninsula and the russians call the straits which separate this peninsula from the islands in front of it the eastern is on the peninsula which they call the golden horn and the city has quite as beautiful a location as constantinople stantin ople I 1 lived on the ship during the week that I 1 spent in as there are no good hotels we were anchored about two miles from the shore and were in a harbor surrounded by hills and spread out in the shape of a fau fan with built upon the handle on all sides ol of us were great fortifications and the hills were crowned with what looked like immense factories or machine shops they had many windows and an army of men was continually marching about them these are the barracks of the russian soldiers of whom there are in this city alone two thousand of these belong to marines and the other are of land forces I 1 saw other barracks and soldiers in my trip over the trans siberian railroad and there are now I 1 am told about soldiers in eastern siberia or more than we have in our nr army RUSSIA ON THE PACIFIC As soon as the ship came to anchor I 1 took a boat and was rowed to the shore we went through all kinds ot of shipping there were great russian steamers from froin odessa on the black sea which were filled with immigrants and stores there were ships from japan in the passenger and carrying trade and there were hundreds of chinese junks which had sails like bats wings and which had brought vegetables and fruits from chefko and shanghai for sale there were corean boats with straight sails and wooden anchors and there were dozens of chinese sampans sam pans which were sculled through the water by swarthy tartars Tar tars it was in one of these that I 1 rowed to the shore at the landing I 1 seemed to have gotten into a mixture of china and russia there were dros men who wore biats like inverted spittoons spit and who had long blue gowns for all the world like the coachman I 1 saw in in st petersburg three years ago their horses were russian stallions and their cabs were driven like mad through the streets there were China mew by y the hun hundred dred who had cometo come to siberia to work for the summer and there were dozens of comeans Co reans with packs on their backs ready to take my baggage up to the city I 1 hired a druschky drosch ky and took a ride through the streets the roads were as muddy as those of the blade black swamp and our two horses went on the gallop we first drove through the main street of the city this is about two miles long and the town runs around the hills on the edge of the harbor the houses are of two stories with wide porches in front of them and there are some substantial business blocks the biggest houses of the place outside of the barracks are those ot of the ahe governor general the police station and the new railroad depot A CALL UPON THE POLICE my first call was of course upon the police you can do nothing in siberia without a passport and I 1 knew I 1 would be in danger of arrest until I 1 had had an interview with the chief of the police I 1 had letters of introduction to mr J bryner a wealthy swiss who had married a russian lady and who has one of the biggest houses in siberia he has large interests in timber and mines and he is one of the most influential fluent ial men in the country it is with him that I 1 went to call upon the high military officer who governs all police matters ot of this port the police station is a big two story red brick building which looks for all the world like a country court house and which is surrounded b by soldiers and policemen we took 09 off our coats and our rubbers and combed our hair with our fingers before we went in to call upon the officials we went through room after room filled with pompous soldiers until we came into the presence of a short stocky man with a head like a cannon ball and with eyes as sharp as a shoemakers awl this was col F petroff the chief of police without whose as distance si stance you can do nothing in eastern siberia every permit has to pass through him and my passport by the russian minister in corea was laid before him while mr bryner introduced me as a respectable american citizen and his friend nothing was said about my teeing being fi a newspaper correspondent and the chief was told that I 1 wanted to 0 over the trans siberian railroad fi e received me very politely and after some time which I 1 supposed was spent in looking up my record I 1 was told that my credentials were good and that I 1 would have a permit issued to me to pass over the road THE SIBERIAN metropolis the chief of police told me that I 1 could not start on my railroad journey before the next day and I 1 spent the meantime traveling about the city of it is one of the queerest places I 1 have ever visited the hills are as steep as those of kansas city and the houses are built at all sorts of angles upon them back of the town I 1 found three asiatic settlements one was a japanese quarter with buildings gs jut juat like you find in japan another was made up ot of chinese houses and a third was a collection of dugouts and huts which were occupied by the comeans Co reans the town proper looks more like officers quarters than a commercial settlement it has one pretty russian church which was built I 1 think when the present emperor made his trip through siberia several years ago and dug the first of earth that was thrown up for the first trans siberian railroad I 1 found one large german business house known as kunst albers aalbers where I 1 was able to get my letter of credit cashed and was thus supplied with with plenty of money tor for the rest of my trip this firm does business allover all over siberia it has ships which go a thousand miles northward to the mouth ot the amoor river and which sail a long way up that mighty stream it does a banking business and all kinds of exporting and importing and it is a type of the big business hobes houses of siberia of which there are perhaps a score I 1 met all sorts of people who had had all kinds of adventures my friend bryner for instance had come out to japan as a boy from switzerland he nad bad been in business in different parts pares of china he had traveled all over corea and siberia and he spoke fluently chinese japanese russian english italian french and german he was only forty years old id but he had made a fortune in trade and mines he told me of the wonderful rana resources of siberia and said th that at the world knew nothing about th them M he H referred to one gold mine of which he knew two hendred shares of which sold not long ago for two thousand dollars and which were now worth fifteen hundred dollars per share me fie has wonderful stories to tell about the coal iron and timber resources of the country and I 1 will give some of his otate statements ments lurther further on with him I 1 went to the marine club of kladivo stock and met many of the officials I 1 found that the town has a hospital a gymnasium good schools and a college we it has fairly good society and the people who live in it seem to be well satisfied with their condition SIBERIA in connection with mr bryner I 1 made soine inquiries into the resources resource bof eastern siberia and the possibilities of the great trans siberian railroad few people have an idea of the enormous extent of the possessions of the russians is asia they number all told than six million square miles or about twice the area of the whole united states siberia alone is twenty five times as big as germany it contains forty eight hundred thousand square miles or nearly one and one half times the area of the united states it has a population less than one to the square mile and is one of the richest countries in mineral wealth on the globe eastern siberia alone is almost as big as the united states and its resources are practically unexplored all along the line of the trans siberian road there are rich gold mines some of which produce nuggets weighing a quarter of a pound and the grains of gold there average as large as they do anywhere in the world mr bryner told me that the government of russia insisted that all gold found in siberia should be sold to it and he told me that many men were making fortunes out of the gold mines the mining is done in a curious way the soil ot of all siberia is frozen for more than half the pear and the gold bear ing rock is often in a perpetually frozen state A hole is dug and a fire is built on top of it and when the soil is melted it is cracked out or shaken out in iron barrels which are made for the purpose these iron barrels have sieves within them they are made of boiler plate and they are from ten to seventeen feet long they are so arranged that they can be whirled about by machinery and steam and they are laid upon an inclined plane and a sluice ot of water run through them the water is introduced into the barrel by means of hose and the inside fitting of the barrel is ia such that the sand is ground up and the small particles of gold are saved by means of mercury there are vast gold mines along the amoor river nver and in some regions of eastern siberia quartz mining is extensively done mr bryner says that the completion ot of the railroad will lead to the exploration of a large part of unknown siberia and that the countryman country may yet produce enough gold to raise silver to its old standing 9 the fhe mines are not confined to the east but they seem to exist throughout the whole country they are found in the ural mountains and in the northern part ot of the country the gold has been frozen for ages and it is said to be in the same condition as it was in the glacial period today there are something alike like forty thousand miners at work in in siberia and the industry increases every year COAL COPPER AND LEAD every one knows that western siberia has great copper mines and the iron mines of the ural mountains produce some of toe in the world I 1 am told that there are iron deposits of vast extent throughout eastern siberia and there is a great deal lying along the line ot of the new railroad I 1 rode through veins of coal in my trip over the line the grades being cut right through the coal fields these are not lar far from and there may yet be great manufactories manu factories in siberia the island of Sag halien is said to be with coal and there are vast coal mines near on the line of the railroad there are in fact coal mines all over siberia and the silver and lead deposits are very large there are ninety different mines of silver in one region alone and there are lead mines in the ea eastern tern part of the country Ther therefore eare four hundred different copper mines in another region and it is almost impossible to estimate the mine ral wealth of siberia the western part of the country has been pro producing ducin silver for many years and the almi altai mountains are one of the richest mining regions of the world SIBERIAN immigrants siberia is is a very rich country agrical agri cul aurally tu rally and russia is colonizing it as fast as she can it has millions of acres as fat as the red river valley and it will eventually be one of the great wheat raising countries of the world there were a hundred thousand russian russia immigrants in 1892 and the czar has Y now a special line of steamers whose i business it is to carry russians irom from the i black |
