s from all parts of Tartary
and China meet to exchange the products of those countries with those
of the merchants of Russia. During the present year (1862) it is
expected that the line of railway connection will be completed from
St. Petersburg to the Prussian frontier, and connect with the
railroads of Prussia, so that within twelve months it will be
practicable to travel by rail all the way from Marseilles or Bordeaux
to Nijni Novgorod.

The Moscow and St. Petersburg Railway is something over four hundred
miles in length, and consists of a double track, broad, well graded,
and substantially constructed. The whole business of running the line,
keeping the cars and track in repair, working the machine-shops, etc.,
embracing all the practical details of the operative department, is
let out by contract to an American company, while the government
supervises the financial department, and reserves to itself the
municipal control.[A] It is a remarkable fact, characteristic of the
Russians, that while they possess uncommon capacity to acquire all the
details of engineering, and are by no means lacking in mechanical
skill, they are utterly deficient in management and administrative
capacity. Wasteful, improvident, and short-sighted, they can never do
any thing without the aid of more sagacious and economical heads to
keep them within the bounds of reason. Thus, at one time, when they
undertook to run this line on their own account, although they started
with an extraordinary surplus of material, they soon ran the cars off
their wheels, forgetting to keep up a supply of new ones as they went
along; ran the engines out of working order; kept nothing in repair;
provided against no contingency; and were finally likely to break down
entirely, when they determined that it would be better to give this
branch of the business out by contract. One great fault with them is,
they labor under an idea that nothing can be done without an
extraordinary number of officers, soldiers, policemen, and employes of
every description--upon the principle, I suppose, that if two heads
are better than one, the ignorance or inefficiency of a small number
of employes can be remedied by having a very great number of the same
kind. In other words, they seem to think that if five hundred men can
not be industrious, skillful, and economical, five thousand trained in
exactly the same schools, and with precisely the same propensities,
must be ten times better