Chita and the Continental Divide

Trans Baikal Distance From Vladivostok 1702 miles

The first day of May (1919) we arrived in Chita. Here is the main headquarters of General Semenov. This city has a population of 3500 people, all Russians, that is the greater part, there being a few Mongolians. This place is the coldest city in Siberia. The ground around here was very sandy and very little green grass we could see. The streets were all sand and it made it very hard to walk. At all the places we stopped we were always uptown even before the train stopped and at every large place we stopped for at the smallest an hour and some times three hours. It all depended on how the train crew felt. Sometimes we had to get after them as they did not seem to care how long they took and believe me, I did not care anymore as when we got to our new camp it meant work.

After leaving Chita about a hundred miles we came to the Continental Divide of Asia. Here there also was a tunnel and on both ends they had a tableau on which was written, "All water on this side flows toward the Pacific and the other to the Atlantic Ocean". This of, of course, was written in Russian.