This artery of
steel is probably the most expensive railway of its kind, from the
constructional standpoint. In some districts seven thousand pounds per
mile was the cost, and it is probable that six thousand pounds sterling
per mile would not be a bad estimate of the total amount appropriated
for the construction of the line from a loan of 200,000,000 francs asked
for in 1898 by the Colonial Council in connection with the program for a
network of railways in and about French Indo-China.
To Lao-kay there are no less than one hundred and seventy-five bridges.
The completion of this line realizes in part the ambition of a
celebrated Frenchman, who--once a printer, 'tis said, in Paris--dropped
into the political flower-bed, and blossomed forth in due course as
Governor-General of Indo-China. When Paul Doumer, for it was he, went
east in 1897, he felt it his mission to put France, politically and
commercially, on as good a footing as any of her rivals, notably Great
Britain. It did not take him long to see that the best missionaries in
his cause would be the railways. At the time of writing (June, 1910) I
cannot but think that profit on this railway will be a long time coming,
and there are some in the capital who doubt whether the commercial
possibilities of Yuen-nan justified this huge expenditure on railway
construction.
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