THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 20, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8188, 20 July 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 20, 1906.

Mr Herman Rosenthal has an illustrated article in the American Review of Reviews on the proposed AlaskanSiberian Railway. This idea is associated with the possibilities attending the development of the mineral wealth of Siberia. Early in the eighties suggestions for sue!) a line were mooted, but Ife was only in 1886, that active interest in the question waH aroused by the action of the United States Senate in requesting Mr Powell, director of the geological survey, to report on the sabjeot. Mr Powell proposed a railroad beginning at some point of the Northern Pacific in Montana, and leading through the headwaters of the Peace River to the headwaters of the Yukon, proceeding thence to a convenient point on

tbo shore of Behring Sea. Ihe length of the line was pat at 2,765 miles, and provision was made in the report for a conneotion with Sitka. The projeufc, however, dropped again till 1902, when it was revived by M. Loncq de Lobel, who is now in St. Petersburg endeavouring to put his plans on a business basis. M. de Lobel, who is an acknowledged authority on Alaska and the Klondyke, some time since made a survey of a railroad line through Alaska from Cirole Uity to Behring Strait, remaining in fcbe Polar regions for eighteen months. The hardest yrob lem is offered by the Bearing Strait, yet even this may be solved, since there are a number of islands in the strait. With the aid of these islands the straits may be spanned by a giant bridge. More recently, however, M. de Lobel seems to have modified his early plans, and would substitute a tunnel for the long bridge. Once across the strait the new road would have to pass through a great stretch of frozen desert until it reached the line of the Siberian road at Irkutsk. It is impossible to forsee what may be the outcome of M. de Lobel's efforts in St. Petersburg, says the writer. His plana have found favour in the eyes of many prominent Russians, some of whom see in them the means for the rapid growth of New Russia. .Other-', whose patriotism is oast in less noble mould, are inclined to see in their realisation dancer to the supremacy of the Slav race, and a threatening invasion of Amerioan competition, and perhaps also of Amerioan political ideas. But whatever the immediate outlook, it is quite certain that the Government of the United States and Amerioan capital will play an essential part in the planning and construction of this, the largest railroad in the world. It is not yet safe to prophesy how soon we may be able to travel in the same Pullman car from New York to Paris.