The Palatka Daily News

Failure of the Mery Railway.

The great railroad that was to form the main line of the Russian invasion of India is reported to be a gigantic failure, both in a military and financial point of view. This railroad that is to connect the Caspian with the Mery and thence proceeding through Bokhara to the confines of Afghanistan has thus far been constructed under military supervision, and it is said enormous sums have been engulfed in the granting of fraudulent contracts both for material and construction. These facts are studiously ignored by the Russian press, but according to a letter written by Gen. Tchernieff to The Novoe Vremya the new road of communication between Russia and her distant Asiatic possessions is a total failure. The railroad, it now appears, is built over a desert of shifting sand, the desert having in fact a movable and moving surface with which no engineering can contend. On the first section of the road the sand has been consolidated by watering it with a solution of clay, but this is impossible near Merv, where there is neither clay nor water to be found.

The only way of preserving the line would be to cover it with sheds like the snow sheds on the American Pacific railway, but this is impossible in a country where there is neither wood, stone, lime nor water. As a military line to assist in a Russian attack on India it would be useless, or it would take three years to convey over it a complete force of 200,000 men with their impedimenta, and as it runs along the frontier of Persia it would have to be guarded by so many men that the line itself would be well occupied in supplying water to the invading forces.

The British are also finding almost insurmountable difficulties in endeavoring to connect Cabul with the Indian system of railroads, the projected line in many places being cut in the sheer incline of the precipices forming the passes, while the roadbeds in the valleys are liable to resistless inundations in the spring months. Taken altogether, the attack and defense of British India on the land side form the most costly military problems of the century. -- San Francisco Chronicle.