Pan Chao seemed to me well posted up in their progress.

Not only have they made the Transcaspian, but the Transsiberian, surveyed in 1888, is being made, and is already considerably advanced.

For the first route through Iscim, Omsk, Tomsk, Krasnojarsk, Nijni-Ufimsk, and Irkutsk, a second route has been substituted more to the south, passing by Orenburg, Akmolinsk, Minoussinsk, Abatoni and Vladivostock.

When these six thousand kilometres of rails are laid, Petersburg will be within six days of the Japan Sea.

And this Transsiberian, which will exceed in length the Transcontinental of the United States, will cost no more than seven hundred and fifty millions.
It will be easily imagined that this conversation on the Russian enterprise is not very pleasing to Sir Francis Trevellyan.