GILBERTIAN RAILWAYS.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXII, Issue 12394, 19 February 1908, Page 4

GILBERTIAN RAILWAYS.

The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Daily Telegraph has written a diverting account of railway travelling in Russia. No doubt on the expresses Russians well understand the art of comfortable railway travelling, but travellers by slower trains ar? apt to experience all sorts of discomiorts, up to being- snowed up for days without food, warmth, or light at night. The management of the lines seems to be execrable, aud some of the customs that prevail "would be deemed grotesque in Abyssinia." The passenger who wants a ticket may have to stand for hours shivering in a queue before he can get it, while another escapes this discomfort oy bribiug the guard. Thpse who buy tickets are huddled together in dirty carriages; those who do not, travel long distances at much less cost and in much greater comfort. Tens of thousands travel by bribing the guards. Sometimes the bribers drive the paying passengers on to the platform, while the interlopers smoke and take things easily. Every now and then new brooms are sent to sweep away these 6candaJ|, but they might as well try to sweep the ocean from its bed. The public are not to be blamed; it is a choice between waiting hours for a ticket and then being treated like cattle, and travelling smoothly a distance equal to that between Christchurch and Dunedin, for twopence. Bad as passengers fare, goods fare worse. They are stolen wholesale. A hundred tons of meat for St. Petersburg are stolen every month. Here is a pretty picture of the railway offcials' dinner-hour at Irkutsk. When tea is ready there generally are no cups or glasses. One of the workmen goes up to a waggon load of something, knocks out the bottom or wrenches off the lid of a box, seizes an object, looks, and throws it back in disgust. It is not what he wants. He then tries another and another. Finally he comes upon what he was looking for, and nulls out a lot of tumblers from a packing-case. Another labourer approaches a barrel with herrings, breaks the bottom with a stone, plunges his horny hand into the contents, and draws out a number of fish. Then there is danger from bullets. Robbery under arms is so -frequent that the Russian takes little notice of them. "Mon Dieu," exclaimed a Belgian, on finding that he had to visit a remote district, "but that may mean an excursion to the great beyond." "Ay, that is so," said a Russian fellow passenger nonchalantly, "but, as the saying is, 'there are not seven deaths.'" Yet Russians cannot understand why their railways don't pay.