RUSSIAN AND OTHER RAILWAYS.
A RATHER curious story, told by an eye-witness, is given in one of the last numbers of the Russian Gazette of St. Petersburg.
Some weeks ago, at two o'clock one fine afternoon, the daily tram on the Great Nicholas Railway started from St. Petersburg for Moscow. The train had not advanced many miles across the boundless plain before it was overtaken by a snow-storm, which soon enveloped waggons, locomotive, passengers, and all, in a dense sheet of snow and ice. For some time, the steam-horse fought its way bravely against the fury of the elements ; but the tempest increasing, and the snow encumbering the rails to a height of more than two feet, the train was at last brought to a stand. It was now two o'clock in the morning—twelve hours after the travellers had left the Russian metropolis; and the spot was some fifty miles distant from the nearest station. As soon as the train had come to a stop, the conductor, lantern in hand, and polite, as all Russian conductors are, went the round of the car- riages, informing the travellers of their only too obvious arrest, with the additional information, that he had not the least idea how long they would have to remain in the snow. Fancy the situation of the passengers, many ladies and children among them, thus imprisoned in the midst of the steppe, without fire, food, or drink ! Drearily passed the long night, and drearier still looked the prospect when the sun at last arose above the horizon, with nothing to be seen but a bleak snow-field for miles and miles around. At length however, some eyes sharper than the others, or more accustomed to the aspect of the steppe, discovered faint streaks of smoke rising in the distance. This seemed to indicate human habitations, and two of the hardiest of the travellers made their way towards the smoke, trampling through snow above the knees. Their effort was rewarded by the discovery of some huts, but their hearts sank within them on perceiving that there was little but' dire misery within and without. The inhabitants of the wretched hovels had no meat to sell, no bread, nor even a glass of pure water. Their whole stock of victuals consisted of a coarse kind of dough made of rye, dried beans, and " klukva," or brandy made from potatoes. After some persuasion, they agreed to make up their dough in cakes for their weight in silver ; and this done, the two adventurers hurried back to the train, triumphantly carrying off their booty. In bro- therly fashion were the cakes and klukva divided among the famished travellers, women and children being duly cared for first ; and then inquiries were made as to prospects of progress. Alas ! the train was sticking in the snow as fast as ever, and no help was visible in any direction. So the day passed ; and the sun was sinking a second time behind the horizon, before the long-ex- pected snow-sweeping machine, which had been telegraphed for more than twelve hours ago, made its appearance. After several hours hard work, the rails were sufficiently cleared for the train to proceed ; and the locomotive creeping slowly onward over the icy surface, the starved travellers, most of them seriously ill, and some completely exhausted, finally reached Moscow late on the following day. So far the story, as told by a Mr. A. Evalde, one of the sufferers, in the columns of the St. Petersburg Gazette ; and now for the moral of the tale—if, indeed, if have net two morals. When the first proposal of the great St. Petersburg and Moscow railway waslaid before the Emperor Nicholas, he is said to have traced the line in the most simple manner : laying a ruler on the outspread map of Russia, he drew a line from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and with- out further remark handed it to the architect. The professional man made his profound salaam, withdrew from the august pre- sence, and began building the Great St. Nicholas Railway. Up grew the line, through swamps, and plains, and rivers, straight as an arrow ; and there it lies now, as mathematically direct as any Dutchman's heart could wish,—Peel's idea of direct lines realized in abstract perfection. Far off to right and left, towns, villages, and hamlets, are visible in the distance ; but the rail heeds them not, bent only on pursuing its undeviating course from the new to the old metropolis of the Czars. To connect these two towns the line was built, and these two cities, indeed, it does connect in the shortest possible manner geographical,— though not, as we have seen, in time. That the rails could pos- sibly have• any other business than mere mechanical junction of the terminal cities does not seem to have entered into the thoughts of the august founder. He was well aware, no doubt, that his country was productive of vast quantities of corn, timber, hides, tallow, hemp, and other objects of first necessity ; well aware, probably, that these objects were of little value in most parts of the realm for mere want of the means of transport, and that their worth would be trebled and quadrupled, if they were taken to a distance. Nevertheless, he does not seem to have had the least notion that the iron rails could accomplish this purpose. And in this view, Czar Nicholas very likely was encouraged by all that he had heard and seen of railways in the rest of Europe. We do not ascribe to him a wicked design to withhold benefits from his country ; but one man's head cannot hold all the know- ledge of the day. Nicholas had probably taken up the " direct " faith; he did not appreciate the necessity of the short local traffic to support a lib; he had not had free opportunity of observing that the creation of transit not only enhances the value of produce, but creates towns, and stimulates productive industry. If sta- tions are needed for local purposes, if they are wanted for all but that "through" traffic which can seldom support any line, they are, as all well know who have watched the growth of rail- ways, the nuclei of new towns. In all probability, most readers will think the little adventure in the snow on the Great Nicholas Railway as amusing as the idea of building the line by the rule ; yet we may remember that we in Western Europe have had our prejudiees. Most people consider the twin lines of iron now stretched through the length and breadth of civilized countries, not as what they really are, an improvement over the ordinary smooth macadam or granite, but as something quite new and abnormal in the way of transit, and nearly out of connexion with all other means of conveyance. Scarcely any of our present railways are following in the track of the great highways of old, or running along the natural bounda- ries marked by stream and hill-side; but almost all of them bear too clearly the impress of having been begotten, if not in the audience chamber of an autocrat, at least in the study of some particularly mechanical projector intent on the abstract ideas of the project, as such. Our lines of rail, heedless of hill, valley, and river, heed- less almost of men and human habitations, are alternately lifted high in the air, or sunk deep into the bowels of the earth ; now holding communion with the birds, and now with the geological strata of palwozoict ages. Scarcely any carry us to the place where most travellers wish to go to,—into the interior of large towns and the centre of busy populations. They nominally pro- fess to lead us there, to "London," or " Edinburgh," or "Man- chester," but in reality they do no such thing,—they only throw us off at the threshold of the place, leaving us to find our way as we may by means of the old-fashioned wheels, or as often hap- pens, on our own legs. We take a ticket "from Brighton to London," and the locomotive with astonishing rapidity and ease brings us to the foot of the old Thames Bridge—in Southwark. We wish to go a little further, say towards Oxford, and alas ! there is no railway to look to. To get from the place where the Brighton line ends to the spot where the Oxford line begins, takes more time, and a vast deal more "bother," than it does to pro- ceed all the rest of the road, either from Brighton to London, or from London to Oxford. Clearly there is snow between the Brighton and the Oxford terminuses ; nearly as much, though somewhat blacker, than that which encumbers the Great Nicholas railway. We really ought not to laugh at the misfortunes of Mr. A. Evade and his companions on the Petersburgh-Moscow line. Only our cousins across the Atlantic have a right to smile at such things ; only they as yet understand the use of the iron road. The story of the snow storm, however, has a third moral. Russia has for some few years been raising a capital of 44,000,000/. sterling, in large instalments, to make a rail way from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Some felt alarm at the new step in Russian aggrandizement; our own sympathies, we confessed, lay with the shareholders. Imagine such a line depending on the through ' traffic—built without stations, or with some half-dozen for the whole sweep. This story adds a sympathetic thought for the tra- vellers, even though they be only soldiers and employes. No, the country that wants to have railways and all that they can effect, must do something besides build the line.
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