The rural population has increased even as that of the cities. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, all Siberia contained but two hundred and thirty thousand souls; at the end of the eighteenth, one million five hundred thousand; at the end of the nineteenth, five million. Now, with the railroad-induced immigration, it approaches the seven million mark. The Steppe Government alone has risen in fifty years from five hundred thousand to one million five hundred thousand, and the Tomsk from seven hundred thousand to two million five hundred thousand.

More in importance than its present utility is the fact that the railway holds the key to Siberia’s future. The arable territory of the belt is equal to that of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas combined. This land is generally well-watered, in a climate suitable to grain-raising, and it is, as has been shown, in its whole extent, adjacent to river and rail transportation.

While such farming districts of the United States have some fifty inhabitants to the square mile, the most densely populated gobernia, Tomsk, has but six, and the Yeneseik but six tenths of one.

An immense further area will yield to clearing and to irrigation, as has been demonstrated in the great results secured from five hundred versts of canals in the Barbara Steppe. Coal and iron are available in many places, and timber in the greatest abundance grows in the northern district.

From a summary of these elements one may glean an idea of the Colossus sleeping beneath these snows. At a normal rate of increase, fifty million souls should populate Siberia at the close of the twentieth century. The agency of their coming and existing will be primarily the line of rails across the continent. Despite the eight hundred million roubles expended, with only far-off hopes of profit, the faulty road-bed, the light rails, the steep grades, and crawling trains, the glory of Russia is still “The Great Siberian Railway.”