Warsaw to Cracow (about
170 miles); Warsaw to St Petersburg (680 miles); Moscow to St
Petersburg (400 miles); from a point on the Volga to another point on
the Don (105 miles); and from Kief to Odessa, in Southern Russia. The
great tie which will bind Russia to the rest of Europe, will be the
Warsaw and St Petersburg Railway--a vast work, which nothing but
imperial means will accomplish. Whether all these lines will be opened
by 1862, it is impossible to predict; Russia has to feel its way
towards civilisation. During the progress of the Moscow and St
Petersburg Railway, a curious enterprise was determined on. According
to the _New York Tribune_, Major Whistler, who had the charge of the
construction of the railway, proposed to the emperor that the
rolling-stock should be made in Russia, instead of imported, Messrs
Harrison, Winans, and Eastwick, engineers of the United States,
accepted a contract to effect this. They were to have the use of some
machine-works at Alexandroffsky; the labour of 500 serfs belonging to
those works at low wages; and the privilege of importing coal, iron,
steel, and other necessary articles, duty free. In this way a large
supply of locomotives and carriages was manufactured, to the
satisfaction of the emperor, and the profit of the contractors. The
managers and foremen were all English or American; but the workmen and
labourers, from 2000 to 3000 in number, were nearly all serfs, who
_bought their time_ from their masters for an agreed period, being
induced by the wages offered for their services: they were found to be
excellent imitative workmen, perfectly docile and obedient.

Our attention now turns south-westward: we cross Poland and Germany,
and come to the Alps. To traverse this mountain barrier will be among
the great works of the future, so far as the iron pathway is
concerned. In the early part of 1851, the Administration of Public
Works in Switzerland drew up a sketch of a complete system of railways
for that country. The system includes a line to connect Bale with the
Rhenish railways; another to traverse the Valley of the Aar, so as to
connect Lakes Zurich, Constance, and Geneva; a junction of this
last-named line with Lucerne, in order to connect it with the Pass of
St Gothard; a line from Lake Constance to the Grisons; a branch
connecting Berne with the Aar-Valley line; and some small isolated
lines in the principal trading valleys. The whole net-work of these
railways is about