Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Awakening of the East The trans-siberian Railway has been greatly hindered by the Chinese rising in Manchuria. For practical purposes it can hardly be said to exist beyond Irkutsk, for although the line is completed as far as Stretensk, there is yet a lack of rolling-stock, and the dreary voyage by steamers of different draughts down the Shilka and Amur rivers to Khabarofsk, where the line to Vladivostok is met, deprives the railway route as yet of all its advantages over the sea-route from Europe. The last passengers who came from Vladivostok to Moscow before the interruption of traffic spent thirty-eight days on the journey, and it will have been noticed that by far the larger part of the reinforcing Russian troops, horses, and materziel were despatched to the Far East from Odessa, no small portion in British transports. The Manchurian section of the great railway has from the first, even in times of peace, presented great difficulties of climate, lack of supplies, and hostility of the native population, but now a considerable part of the work executed has been destroyed, the Russian forces have not yet succeeded in clearing the country of the Chinese troops and irregulars, a large garrison will have to be maintained to protect the works in hand, and a long delay over the original estimated dates of completion is inevitable. All this, however. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.