No waters are too remote for the modern steamer. Its smoke
trails across every sea and far up every navigable stream. Ten
mail steamers regularly run on the Siberian Yenisei, while the
Obi, flowing from the snows of the Little Altai Mountains,
bears 302 steam vessels on various parts of its 2,000-mile
journey to the Obi Gulf on the Arctic Ocean. Stanley could
now go from Glasgow to Stanley Falls in forty-three days.
Already there are forty-six steamers on the Upper Congo.
From Cape Town, a railway 2,000 miles long runs via Bulawayo
to Beira on the Portuguese coast, while branch lines reach
several formerly inaccessible mining and agricultural regions.
June 22, 1904, almost the whole population of Cape Town
cheered the departure of the first through train for Victoria
Falls, where the British Association for the Advancement of
Science has been invited to meet in 1905. Uganda is reached
by rail. Five hundred and eighty miles of track unite Mombasa
and Victoria Nyanza. Sleeping and dining cars safely
run the 575 miles from Cairo to Khartoum where only five
years ago Lord Kitchener fought the savage hordes of the
Mahdi. The Englishman's dream of a railroad from Cairo to
the Cape is more than half realized, for 2,800 miles are already
completed. In 1903, Japan had 4,237 miles of well managed
railways which in 1902 carried 111,211,208 passengers
14,409,752 tons of freight. India is gridironed by 25,373
miles of steel rails which in 1901 carried 195,000,000 passengers.
A railroad parallels the Burmese Irrawaddy to Bhamo and
Mandalay. In Siam you can ride by rail from Bangkok northward
to Korat and westward to Petchaburee. The Trans-
Siberian Railway now connects St. Petersburg and Peking. In
Korea, the line from Chemulpho to Seoul connects with lines