UC-NRLF .LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Received . . ^^^^^ ....188 Accessions Na.3 4t^£:r^>o co o cooioi o I-H us o ic oo oocicidocc jo 2 2 2 22 62 5 6 66 o 222 saqoui— ^la 232 1 ~ °. ® p. ^ °? p. o co ot co co co oi q0 iHoi 22 oo t- IN CO ooo OO (NCO jo •}99j oiqno g •H^ °^*. ^ <®,rl00./;7,*i.0 co ^ -5i at fr] In ^ eo"i>r co'i-TiM" co" i-rcc~co"«-f si'tN' -cocoq m JO SUOlSUaiUIQ 3 M ^ OJ - r-t iC ?O O ^OC^ICQI^OO OCiCJiO O-IO kO -^10 Tt*CO^ -<^H COiO^TfCOCO TjiCOCOCO CO1^ S 2 I ~ & a « I • - • •-* • s ^ S ^1 -^ i If^iir JiJ j!|!i" i' fe $t? wr Bag* • ^feOstl : :fe^ '•% l5*^ : : : 2^ : s igll^lllll^lfiJSs*! 8" "^ Srllllll^llgfillllil . : :j< « II METALLURGY. in JO t, o * It Sp 3 « Siifeo J rH t~- CO ] ) O O Cl < *%^*$ [: il^g 92 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. ' If the work of the three furnaces smelting magnetites is examined, it will be noticed that ISijni Tagilsk, No. 3, has the best, and Sucha-Gora the worst record, as the latter requires 706 feet of cubical capacity per ton of iron, compared to 248 to 385 for the former. This is apparently due to the fact that the ore is richer, which contributes also to a diminished consumption of fuel. Some furnaces, as those of Ljudinov and Mbhko, are run with wood and charcoal. It is interesting to compare the results of some Russian furnaces, as to cost of production and consumption of fuel, with furnaces elsewhere in Europe. The nearest approach to the Russian conditions are found at the Langs works, Sweden, where magnetites holding from 51 to 52 per cent, of iron are smelted with pine charcoal. The furnace in question is 49.25 feet high, has a 7.5 foot bosh, and has a cubical capacity of 3,110 feet. The blast is carried up to 410, and to 482 degrees F., and blowing with 2.36-inch pressure, turns out 1.6 tons of iron per day. It carries, for 71 cubic feet of charcoal, 0.671 tons of burden, the consumption of fuel being 75 parts, by weight, of the 100 parts of iron made. The cubical capacity of furnace per ton of iron per day is 1,921 cubic feet. The Nijni Tagilsk furnace, though larger than the Langs furnace, and working ores holding 60 per cent, of iron, takes 93 parts of coarcoal per 100 of iron, and 2,479 cubic feet of capacity per ton of iron per day of 24 hours. ' In a similar way, the furnaces smelting the good and rich brown hematites of the southern Ural district may be compared with those of Styria and Carinthia, which work the roasted specular ores of the Alpine ore deposits. The furnaces of the Austrian Alps are remarkable, as compared with those of Russia, for smaller dimensions, and for comparatively higher production, at a lower consumption of fuel. They are generally from 33 to 47 feet high, and have a capacity of 1,400 to 1,750 cubic feet. The Vordern- berg furnaces requires 64 to 78 cubic feet of capacity per ton of production, using 237 to 247 cubic feet of charcoal per ton of iron, or 80 parts, by weight, per 100 parts of METALLURGY. 93 iron. Aside from other circumstances, this may be due to the fact that the boshes are steep, the hearths more cap- acious, the tops smaller, and the fronts are closed. It should be remembered, too, that the Austrian furnaces smelt well roasted ores with good dry charcoal and hot blast. ' Besides improving the lines of their furnaces and using hotter blast, the iron-masters of Russia are urged by Prof. Jossa to reform their methods of manufacturing charcoal. At present, the usual yield with the different methods is as follows : With the Ural meiler, 50 to 64 per cent, for fir, and 40 to 52 for green wood (i. e., oak, birch, &c.) ; in the Suksunk meilers, 58 to 76 per cent, for fir, and 51 to 60 per cent, for green wood ; in Tyrolese meilers, 60 to 72 per cent. ; and in kilns, 60 to 72 per cent.* Even though the yield is greater in kilns, their use is not advocated, because of higher first cost and more expensive maintenance, as compared with meilers, and because as high a yield can be reached with the latter. In order to obtain the best results in meilers, the use of wood felled at the wrong time must be abandoned, and the unskilled labour must be re- placed by efficient men. In order to accomplish that end it would be well to found charcoal workmen's schools, as the Swedish Konteret has done. By using other fuel for mills and forges, and placing them in a position to obtain coal or peat, the charcoal supply for the furnaces might be increased. Peat, too, might be used as a blast furnace fuel, as is done at Vordernburg, Austria, where two parts of * These percentages evidently refer to the volume of charcoal obtained from a given volume of wood. Reducing them to the number of bushels of 2,748 cubic inches, obtained from a cord of 128 cubic feet, and making no allowance for intersticial space, we obtain the following results : — The Ural meiier yields 40 to 51 bushels per cord of fir, and 32 to 44 bushels per cord of green wood. The Suksunk meiler produces 49 to 65 bushels per cord of fir, and 41 to 48 bushels per cord of green wood. The Tyrolese meiler and the kilns give 48 to 61 bushels per cord. From these results we should presume that the calculation was made on the actual volume of wood, interstieial space being deducted. Assuming the space between sticks at 40 per cent, of the volume of a wood pile, the Ural meilers yield 19 to 30 bushels, the Suksunk meilers 25 to 39 bushels, and the Tyrolese meilers and kilns 29 to 37 bushels per cofd. 94 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. compressed peat and one part, by weight, of charcoal is charged, 2.8 parts of peat being considered equivalent to one part of charcoal. 'Prof. Jossa also gives some details of the manufacture of ferromanganese at one of the Nijni Tagilsk charcoal furnaces. The ores used at the Nijni Tagilsk furnace have the following composition : — LEBJAZEJ MANGANESE ORE. Mn304, ... 64.5 Fe304, 20.2 Si02,... ... .. ... ., ... 10.2 VisoKAJA-GoRA MAGNETITE. Fe304, ... .. ... ... ... 90.0 Mn304, ... .. ... ... ... 0.6 Si02, ... .. ... ... ... 5.0 A1203, ... .. ... ... ... 3.0 CaO C02, ... ... .. 0.9 P, ... .- .. 0.02 ' The charge consists of 40 parts of well-roasted iron ore, 90 parts of manganese ore, 5 parts of calcined lime, and some cinder from previous smelting. For every 126 pounds of charge, 6-3 cubic feet of charcoal are used, and with blast heated to 250° to 300° C., and 5.2 inches pressure, 60 charges are put through in 24 hours, the production being from 1 to 1.5 tons of metal, having a percentage of manganese ranging from 40 to 50 per cent. When the furnace is working well, the cinder is yellowish -green and fluid. As soon as the hearth is much worn out, the charge is changed, and a pig rich in silicon is aimed at. On a charge of 126 pounds of charcoal, the burden is 110 pounds of magnetite and 17.6 pounds of quartz sand, the pig made running from 3.7 to 9.5 per cent, of silicon. Recently, silicon ferromanganese has been made, containing 40 to 45 per cent, of manganese, 3 to 7 per cent of silicon, 6 to 8 per cent, of carbon, and 40 to 45 per cent, of iron. First iron rich in silicon is aimed at, and as soon as the furnace is in good working order the burden on 126 pounds of METALLURGY. 9o charcoal is 13.2 pounds of silicon pig, 90.4 pounds of manganese ore, 4.4 pounds of lime, 8.4 pounds of cinder, and up to 19.8 pounds of quartz sand. In 24 hours, 40 charges pass through the furnace, yielding 1.1 to 1.2 tons of metal. The cinder has the following composition : — I. II. Si02, 40.75 38.85 Al20s, ... ... ... ... 13.44 12.13 MnO ... ... ... ... 31.06 33.40 FeO, ... ... ... ... 1.21 1.22 CaO, ... ... ... 11.43 11.99 MgO, ... ... 1.56 1.86' There are three terms in frequent use in connection with manufacturing industries in Russia — fabrique, usine, and zavod. Zavod appears to be the designation given to large establishments for the founding and casting of metals, and the manufacture of large machinery. Fabrique is applied to what in English might be designated a manufactory, being applicable to manufactories of cloth, chemical preparations, candlemaking, coachbuilding, and other variations of carpentry and smith work. Usine seems to be applied to smelting works in connection with mines.' CHAPTER IV. FORESTS. IN a preceding chapter mention has been made of the extent and character of the forests of the Urals, and of the form of exploitation carried out in these being determined largely by the demand for timber and firewood required by the mining and metallurgical works of the district. Many of these manufactories, while in the hands of the Government, were subsidised by grants of lands, of serfs, and of forests or of forest rights. The administration of all such forests is kept apart from the administration of the Crown forests by the Minister of Imperial Domains ; and it, together with the administration of the forests in Poland, is placed under the supervision of the Minister of Finance. By an English engineer, who had been employed in connection with ironworks in the interior, to whom I applied for explicit information, I was informed that if in any Government it was desired to erect works for the smelting or manufacture of iron the proposal was sub- mitted to the Governor of the province, who, after an official inspection and report, granted permission for the erection of the works, and for the felling of trees to be used as fuel in accordance with prescribed conditions, including provision for Government inspection, and provi- sion for replenishing the forest, the felling of which was limited to something like a twenty-fifth part annually. He could not say whether the proportion related to the area, or to the cubic contents of the forest, but considered it more likely to be the former. The wood is required in smelting, and melting, and casting and manufacturing much of the metallic produce FORESTS. 97 of the mines, and as fuel for the production of steam as a motive power in the works and in the transport of products, In the various works which were established the most was made, or I should rather say an endeavour was made to make the most, of what motive power could be obtained from running water ; but it was found impossible even thus to meet all the requirements of the case. Steam had to be employed, and besides the consumption of wood to produce this motive power, which could only be thus applied at the expense of fuel, fuel was required to pro- duce heat, both for smelting ore and for working metal. When making enquiry in Russia some years ago in regard to the effects upon the forests of this phase of forest economy, and the working of the system, my atten- tion was directed by an English engineer, who was one of my correspondents, to the following statement on the subject which had appeared shortly before in The Journal of Science, Metals, and Manufactures : — ' Animated by the desire of developing every possible resource of the Empire which he saw might achieve such enormous power and dimensions, Peter the Great, in the year 1700, commissioDed two men — Botachoff and Demi- doff — to inspect and report upon the facilities which were offered in the country for the establishment of centres for the manufacture of iron. ' These men went their ways, and filled with the spirit of their master, devoted their faculties to the task, with results that, considering the disadvantages under which they laboured, were really marvellous. Perhaps the grandest monument of the energy and genius of these two men are to be found in the gigantic dams which they constructed to keep the water up. To this day these constructions strike the beholder with admiration and amazement at the indomitableness and perseverance which they displayed. These may fairly be considered the most wonderful dams that were ever built, H 98 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. ' Demidoff, availing himself of water-power wherever it was procurable, soon very considerably extended his operations, and before long, finding the Ural too circum- scribed for his energy, and having exhausted all the pro- ductive places thereabouts, he carried the works far into Siberia, ceasing only at a point some two thousand versts distant from Neviansk, where he first commenced his work. ' While Demidoff was thus closely employed in the north, Botachoff was not less assiduous in prosecuting his labours in the centre and south of Russia ; in fact, he had one advantage which his fellow- workman, Demidoff, did not possess — viz,, that of procuring labour with greater ease and cheapness. On the other hand, however, he had to contend with an evil to which the latter was a stranger, that is to say, the levying of black mail upon him and his works by the robber chiefs of the Mouron woods, in proxi- mity to which he had commenced his operations. Never- theless, he covered every available spot with ironworks, and it is said that the iron that he floated down the Oka, at Nijni-Novgorod, was often exchanged for its equivalent weight in copper money. In this last respect, that of disposing of his manufactures, Botachoff possessed an advantage denied to Demidoff, as the latter was only able to convey his iron down the Kama and Volga once a year, while the former continued his trafficking all the year round. To the works established by Botachoff Russia was first indebted for the manufacture of sheet iron, which is at the present day, as it always has been, quite the specialty of her productions. ' At the establishment of this industry, in certain districts in Russia a peculiar tenure of the works and lands, known as ' • possession right," was introduced ; and as it is some- what unique in character, and has not been without its effects on the development of the works, it may be well briefly to describe it here. It is only right, however, to state at the same time that the Government never fully realised the hurtful and obstructive nature of the principle ; FORESTS. 99 but we believe that a plan will shortly be put into action by which the properties shall become freehold, and thus the development of the industry will not be fettered, as we shall see immediately that it has previously been, by the " possession right," ' Under this tenure an exclusive right was granted to cut down wood within certain prescribed limits, and for this privilege a tax on all the iron made was imposed. The purpose of this tax, and the supervision of the works which arose out of it, were no doubt needful, and were not without their recommendation, for, as will be readily understood, some regulations were necessary to prevent the complete denudation of the land of the forests which covered it, and the Government inspection was intended to accomplish this. But such legislation naturally restricted all mining and smelting operations, for no new furnaces and no extension of the works could be introduced without obtaining permission from Government. There were several arbitrary regulations with reference to a variety of petty details, such as the procuring of the wood necessary for fuel, &c., and which, in removing from the proprietors the sense of ownership, and in taxing their productions, naturally disinclined them for extended operations, and thus kept the industry within confined limits, and in a languid condition.' Several of the arrangements referred to will subse- quently come under consideration. Meanwhile, the depressed condition of the mining industry here spoken of may demand attention, in connection with other evils which have tended to produce the state of things in this respect which is spoken of. CHAPTER V. DEPRESSED CONDITION OF MINING, SMELTING, AND MANUFACTURING ESTABLISHMENTS. FOR some three thousand years it has been a proverb — ' It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer ; but when he is gone his way he boasteth.' Constant complaints are heard that the smelting and manufacturing works in the Ural district have become unremunerative. On this point one of my correspondents, on whose state- ments I rely with implicit confidence, wrote to me :— ' After having travelled over a good part of the Ural, and been at nearly all the principal iron and copper mines and works, including those belonging to Steinbok, Demi- doff, Stroganoff, Sukazanct, Belizovskoi, Druzheinine, Gubina, and many others, besides the Government works at Nijni Isetsky, Miask, Zolotaust, Kushvinsky, Kuyash, Satkinsky, Berozoffsky, and others, I found all in one and the same tale ; nearly all of them are unremunera- tive, and, with few exceptions, all of them in debt and irredeemably mortgaged to the Government, and the Im- perial mines and zavods nearly all stopped or closing. You can buy any of them for an old song — by paying for 32 years 6 per cent, on the original outlay of capital, then the property becomes yours out and out for ever, and the only drawback, the only hindrance, is no fuel — the one great desideratum is want of timber ; no more forests to cut down, except at very great distances from the works. ' I have heard a great deal about the virgin forests in Russia, but though I have been in many Governments, chiefly in the forest zone, and from zavod to zavod on the Ural, both on the Asiatic and on the European side of the mountains, yet I never saw them or ever had the DEPRESSED CONDITION OF WORKS. 101 chance to pass through them. They say, " Oh ! they are farther back." Aye, there's the rub. It is because they are so far back that they are not come-at-able. It is just because all the available woods are cut down except those that are still young and not worth the felling within reasonably accessible distances from the works and centres of Hfe and business. And it is this rapid, reckless diminu- tion of their forests, and the increasing scarcity of charcoal fuel that now brings up the prime cost of their iron to almost a prohibitory figure in so far as competition with the foreign market in Nijni-Novgorod fair is concerned. A few years back, when iron was up at such exorbitant fancy prices, they did make money, in some cases cent, per cent. ; but when it is at its normal value they cannot sell their iron or copper at the fair at anything like a re- munerative price, and yet the sheet-iron from some of the principal works is said to be the best in the world, for one main reason, because it is made entirely by charcoal from beginning to end, and it is this that gives it such a rare softness and such a fine polish as it possesses. When they begin to make puddled iron from their anthracite coal they will have no chance at all unless they entirely prohibit the importation of iron, for which prohibition many of them have been crying for a long time. Bat surely that is not to be thought of; and even if it were granted nine-tenths of the owners of these mines have no funds wherewith to effect the requisite reconstruction of the furnaces : they are all so deeply involved, I may say inextricably involved, with the Government, by loans which they have obtained. Shall I describe how they manage this business ? ' The beginning of their working year is immediately after the great Nijni fair, held in the end of August. Then all their labouring hands are ready to re-commence work, having returned to the zavods from their month of hay harvesting on their own account. At each zavod there is then made out an estimate of the quantity of iron and copper to be made in the course of the ensuing year ; of 102 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. how much charcoal they will require ; how many square decatins of timber they intend to cut down on the estate for fuel, according to a given plan and specification — but the quantity hewn, and the locality operated upon, is there- after fixed, just as it happens afterwards to suit their convenience. 1 The Imperial Bank in Ekaterineburg makes to them an advance of working capital upon the basis of that project, in order that the zavods may be kept going to find bread and employment for all people living and depending entirely on these mining operations in the district. ' There is a mining engineer in the Government service appointed to look after the Imperial interests, to receive and store the iron as it is made, to see that the Govern- ment money is rightly disbursed, and to see to the whole business being properly conducted, well managed, and honestly worked out. The whole scheme seems feasible enough if fairly carried on, and one would think the Imperial Bank ought to receive the 6 per cent, per annum required for the cash so liberally confided to the owner until the amount is reimbursed by the sale of the iron at the next annual fair. But there is invariably a deficit, there being always large items of extraordinary and un- accountable expenses, so that instead of the finances of the zavod improving, a debt goes on accumulating year by year, until it happens, in accordance with the proverb, " The last straw breaks the camel's back." The Govern- ment will advance no more money, so all comes to a dead lock, and this, perhaps, not for the first time. And what is the cause of this deplorable state of things ? How have these debts been made, and why do they increase like a snowball with every turn, even under official control and duly authorised supervision? The answer is ready— the reason of all this is very obvious ! The one great parasite eating into the vitals of any and every Russian under- taking is speculation. Then to change the figure — the most powerful brake which operates here to prevent the success DEPEESSED CONDITION OF WORKS. 103 and development of every enterprise, trade, or business, is constant petty theiving — men purloining little by little at every chance, abstracting and defrauding in every possible way. And this is a delinquency common to all concerned, from the highest to the lowest, with all of them, always in proportion to the opportunities they have and the position they occupy. It is a saying, "There is honour among theives," and this may account for the phenomenon that Russian officials are very clannish in their way. They all stick to one another like glue ; they stand by, screen and help one another in every muddle and scrape. No doubt the law of self-preservation is the motive power, so that among them all transactions are made to look square and presentable by cooked books and garbled accounts, apparently technically right, though morally wrong. ' Allow me to illustrate this. I have known several estate stewards — " ucjust stewards," in vested with full power of attorney — having only 600 roubles a year salary, who, it has been said, have made their fortunes of one, two, and three hundred thousand roubles in a few years; and I have heard of officials set to watch over them receiving from these very men— mis-managing directors — 5000 and 6000 roubles a year as " palm oil," as it is called, to induce them to sit quietly at home, to sign all papers they are required to sign, to hold their tongues, and to ask no questions. Of course, you cannot prove that it is so, as these nefarious practices are done in such a secret, hole-and- corner sort of way, that there is no external evidence left liable to exposure ; but the " Jeremy Diddler " thimble- rigging is patent to all : as these very blind watchmen spend on their splendid establishments, and in high living, gambling, &c., more thousands annually than they get hundreds in the shape of Government pay. And if you say anything about it to anyone, or even to the parties most intimately concerned, it is only met »vith a grin and a shrug, and " Stcho daelat ! " (What is to be done!) They tell you that they are not the only ones, nor are they altogether in fault. They palliate their misconduct by 104 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. urging that they have to maintain the rank, position, and appearance of a gentleman on the income of an artisan. But, like the man that pled as an excuse for adulterating his goods, that " he must live," to whom the complainant replied, " I don't see any necessity for that in the least," so is it with them. ' Allow me to relate an anecdote bearing on this sweep- ing assertion of mine, and I believe it to be strictly true, as I had it as a fact from an English engineer formerly employed at these very works; in regard to which I have to supply you with details. Suffice it here to say : Here, on the Ural, is a very large estate, upwards of 400 square versts, said to be very rich, almost inexhaustibly so, in water, timber, iron, copper, gold, nickel, plumbago, and goodness knows what besides, having twenty different zavods on the estates. These works and mines are called " zavods," not towns or villages, but some of them contain 35,000 inhabitants. ' The proprietor of these estates died a few years ago, and left them in a very prosperous condition, without a kopec of debt, and under administration till his two sons should come of age ; but he unfortunately, too confidingly, made his wife chief executrix, and his steward joint executor. Well, this beautiful young widow, a Moscow merchant's daughter, very shortly thereafter married a fine, handsome man, a General, and, as is often the case, a poor, beggarly spendthrift, a gambler, a libertine, and a bankrupt. They spent for a time a gay life, chiefly in London and Paris, and their plenipotentiary on the Ural had got to supply them with 250,000 roubles a year. No matter how he does it, or what he does, or where the money comes from, so long as there is a constant and regular remittance they ask no questions, and never look at, much less look into, the reports and accounts that are sent. They esti- mated these at what they were worth. They had a pretty strong and settled idea that the one in full possession was very comfortably feathering his own nest all the while and all the same, without ever saying "By your leave." DEPRESSED CONDITION OF WORKS. 105 ' Now, while this is going on, as this managing steward has a full power of attorney, and has by hook or by crook to meet the constant harrying cry of " Give ! Give ! " and perhaps to stave off the evil day, and to escape temporary detection, as everything is going the wrong way, he pledges and mortgages till at last the old cow is dry, and will yield no more, having been drained to the tune of 4,000,000 roubles. ' Well, when this rich stream at length ceases to flow, he is at last compelled to make a clean breast of it, and let them know that it is of no use attempting to pump any more water out of a dry well. This soon brings the gay couple home again, leaving many tradesmen's bills un- settled abroad. Of course the stewardship alone is to blame ; and the steward has to bear all the approbium of mismanagement, rascality, and all the rest of it. But it turned out in this case that the man in charge was not alto- gether and alone in fault ; and he left their service, not only a poor man, but like the one in " Timon of Athens," he had ruined himself by his endeavours to stave off the impending blow from the heads of his late beloved master's sons. ' As the next steward did not succeed in finding the needful any better than did the last, nor even so well, this soon brought the General, the husband of the proprietrix, upon the spot, with plenary powers from his wife, and having also got himself appointed administrator by the Court for the protection of the widow and orphans. How he protected the widow and orphans you shall hear. There was no more iron to pawn, no more money to be borrowed, no more estates to mortgage, as these had been sequestrated by the Government long before ; but, in the language of the old play, this virtuous step-father says, " Money I want, and money I'll have. If you don't give me money, I'll sweep you all into the grave." I will give you a saying I have often heard ironically among the Russians, but there was a grim reality in this case — " Seal unbroken, lock secure, store-house empty, everything in the best condition. Glory 106 FOREST11Y IN EASTERN RUSSIA. be to God !" This exactly describes the state of things on this occasion, for when the time had come for the iron to be sent off to the Nijni fair, many magazines which should have been full of pledged iron, supposed to be safely reposing under lock and seal, were found to be empty. There was a hue and cry you^may be sure ; but the horse was flown, though the stable door had not been unlocked ; and to whom could they bring home the guilt? Nobody had either done it or seen it done. Oh, no ! All concerned protested their innocence, though it was quite palpable that the rascals had broken open the stores, removed the iron into other magazines, and repledged to the bank their own iron. ' Of course all the officials and leading men of the place were implicated ; and as the authorities must make some show and fuss, and give some one in charge, the Pre- kazchik was made the scapegoat and held responsible ; though there is no doubt he had been acting under orders and promises of protection, and that all parties concerned had connived at the action if they had not criminally par- ticipated in it, or in sharing the proceeds of it. It is a saying, " You must set a thief to catch a thief." That may be so. But you can't get a thief to set about catching himself ; so to this day there has been no clue to the perpetrators of this barefaced robbery, ' Let us pursue this story a little further, and then we shall see what sort of honour there is among thieves on the Ural. ' When there was a criminal investigation appointed, this said Prekazchik took the alarm and thought he would make his treasure sure by confiding his mysterious accumulations (said to be upwards of 100,000 roubles, though he never had more than 60 roubles per month of salary) to an old friend and accomplice, a very wealthy and respectable merchant, a dealer in iron, but it must be mentioned he sold a very great deal more iron than he was known to buy. After the steward had done this he again took the alarm, thinking this professed friend to DEPRESSED CONDITION OF WORKS. 107 whom he had entrusted his ill-gotten gains might prove a rotten stick, so he thought his money would be safer in the hands of an Englishman, a merchant residing in his own zavod, and to him he gave a written order to receive back from his doubtful friend 30,000 roubles as a first instalment. But the old fox was not to be caught napping ; and when that order or letter was presented this honour- able thief friend exclaimed, " What does the man mean ? Is he gone mad ! If he do not retract his words, and that in writing, I'll prosecute him for libel ; and I'll call upon him to show how he comes to be possessed of so much money. I never had a rouble of his ! What has he to show that I ever had ?" He (the Prekazchik) saw that he had jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire; and as he had no legal evidence which he could or durst produce, he had to submit and collapse, while his former friend spread out further his branches like a green bay tree. And notwithstanding that it is a generally understood thing how this man has acquired his great wealth, yet every one bows and wishes Ivan Trefeemovitch good morrow with all apparent deference. So much for the commercial morality of the Ural, and the brigand-like honour among Siberians. ' I have referred to this disreputable affair in perhaps, for you,^ too lengthened detail; but I have done so to show you the undercurrent influence which is always at work. The motive power that pervades and moves all classes is self-interest — self first and self last — no matter how secured, and often by subterfuges that will not bear the light of day. And then they bear themselves with a bold- ness and effrontery which is inexplicable. They make a joke and a laugh of it. They treat it altogether so ; and they have a string of characteristic proverbs which govern them in their sharp practices such as the following : " Simplicity is worse than duplicity ;" " A fool will lose his own money as well as yours ; but the cunning fellow that has brains enough to make money for himself has sense enough to 108 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. make, at the same time, some for his employer ; but it un- fortunately happens that Ids own profits are always in his thoughts firstly, while the interests of his employer are secondly and occasionally ;" " The silver key is the only picklock ihat will open every door in Russia," — yes, but it sometimes requires a very large one of gold ; u The creaking of a wheel may be stopped by well greasing ;" " You can't handle gold dust without some of it sticking to your fingers ;" " If you can't cheat you can't sell, at least you had better not ;" " It is not the wrong you do that condemns you, but the exposure ;" " See that you never have any other witness but yourself." These are not a tithe of what I have heard among them, merchants and chinovnicks alike, but they are enough to show how their barometer stands in matters of honesty. 1 1 have already made a passing reference to the timber business, and as wood is to the Ural what coal is to England, let us get back to the forests for a little. ' I was most intimately acquainted with the chief forester at these works, and as they are of the largest and the most important in the Ural mountains they may stand for a mirror for all the rest; and the reflection wont be a very distorted one in any case. ' He was a German, and I believe a conscientious, indus- trious man, more especially considering that he was a Russian German, and had been educated and brought up in the country. ' He laboured to bring the smelting operations of these furnaces into a system, and the felling of timber for char- coal into something like a proportional ratio to the growth of new wood. 1 He lived in these wilds for weeks and months to- gether, and it is no joke to do so amongst bears and wolves, mosquitoes, hornets, and all the rest of them. Let any one try it and he will find a sore trial put upon his coolness, courage, temper, and patience. ' He was the first to cut through these woodlands proper DEPRESSED CONDITION OF WORKS. 109 roads which divided and portioned them out in lots and squares for each zavod. By his calculation they would be 60 years in clearing off all the timber on the estate ; and by that time he reckoned that the young forests would be sufficiently grown to allow and pay for felling again, sup- posing the zavods not to exceed the manufacture of their usual quantity of iron (350,000 poods a year), including all kinds of sheet plate, flat, square, round, &c. 'This superintendent of woods and forests put up signboards and finger posts on the roads to each lot and square, allowing each zavod to cut down only according to number, rule, and plan. It was a great improvement upon the old happy-go-lucky style of working ; and if they and all the other zavods had always worked on that prin- ciple there would have been fuel amply sufficient for all time to come.' I may interrupt the statement of my friend to state that such was probably the best arrangement which could have been made at the time and in the circumstances. It was in accordance with the celebrated French Forest Ordinance of 1669 — the system of exploitation known in France as La Methode a Tire et Aire. But this, unhappily, has its defects as well as its advantages. These will in due time appear. Suffice it here to remark, that by the time referred to in the statements supplied to me the forests in the immediate vicinity of many, if not of all the zavods, had been entirely consumed. My correspondent goes on to say : — 'When the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet could go to the mountain. But these forests and zavods will be a long time before they approximately approach each other again, so we conclude that all profitable smelting operation is now out of the question, and that they are getting to the fag end of their manufac- ture of charcoal iron. Such difficulties are they labouring under that a blunt Lancashire friend of mine compared it to ploughing with dogs. 'Had Englishmen had possession of those splendid 110 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. mines and estates they would long ago have put down tramways intersecting all parts, by which would have been brought up the ore and the fuel, especially from the remote parts, at a much less cost. But it is too late now for the owners to do so, as few of them have got the spare cash necessary for even such a small improvement as this ; and the patience and help of Government has been all used up a long time since. And no wonder, when the debt amounts to 8,000,000 roubles, as in this one case it does. English capitalists wonld have bought up these very works a long time back if it had not been for the crippling, paralysing effect of authorised regula- tions. The red tape is drawn too tight to admit of any legitimate expansion, and a Briton must have elbow room.' The foregoing is a saddening picture of mining opera- tions in the Ural range. I have no reason to suppose it is exaggerated in any of its points. I accept it as credible and correct. It is in accordance with much which I have heard in regard to such matters. The salient points of importance to students of forest scenes are these : — There has been a reckless consumption of forests in supplying fuel for smelting ore. The ore is not exhausted, but the fuel which was of easy access has been consumed. The operations carried on have not proved continuously pro- fitable to the proprietors ; but this is attributable largely, if not mainly, to their living beyond their income and to others fattening on the products of the works. Could forests be restored the work might be prosecuted with vigour and possibly with profit. If not, if this is to be done other fuel must be found. My informant goes on to say : — ' The only zavods said to be in a healthy condition are those of Verkny Isetsky, BueluembaefT, and Kishteem, belonging to Steinbok, Stroganoff, and Drazheinine. When I was at Nijni Tagilsk, Demidoff's works, twelve years ago, even firewood and charcoal were then scarce and dear. DEPRESSED CONDITION OF WORKS. Ill They are expecting the new " mining railway " to bring up coal from Perm. But it remains to be seen whether it will benefit any but the works of DemidofT and Stroganoff, through which it runs, as it will never do to convey coal over those mountainous bad roads by carts and horses such as they have, 25 poods being a load. 1 That was not the railway which the merchants and inhabitants of the Ural and Siberia wanted. They want to join the two great arteries of European and Asiatic Russia, the Kama and the Tobol, expecting that this will expand the Siberian trade. But even that will never pay at present, as there are only some 300,000 passengers passing over the Ural mountains in the year, and about 8,000,000 poods of merchandise/ The failure of mining operations here to prove per- manently remunerative is largely attributable to the failure of the supply of wood required in smelting, in melting, and heating the metal, and in the production of motive power in the absence of such power attained from the fall of water. In regard to the motive power which is thus produced my correspondent writes : — ' Now you must know when I was in that remote dis- trict any new enterprise — the erection of any new mill, manufactory, or establishment of any kind requiring steam power was strictly prohibited by an old law, they say solely to prevent the exhaustion of the Government forests. ' Private landowners are also interdicted by authority from felling and selling timber of their estates. It can only be consumed in their own zavods for building, heat- ing, and smelting purposes. The people belonging to and living on the works have their own woods told off for their separate use by right, and under the care and management, of the Commune. ' As a proof of this, there was a large stearine and soap manufactory erected near Ekaterineburg, at the cost of I 112 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. am afraid to say how many million roubles — I think it was eight. It was brought to a standstill not many years ago, and all sold off for not more than a tenth of what it cost, and all because — no fuel, and none to be got for love or money by them ; bribery could not even help them here. ( There is in Russia red tapeism enough in any conscience ! But how does it work ? I was called to examine a boiler at a certain manufactory in Ekaterineburg, and there I saw lying a little turf and a great deal of firewood. I inquired, " What is turf doing here ; you are not burning turf?" "Actually, no ; ostensibly, yes. And that turf lies there as a proof, when needed, to satisfy official inquiry. But the paper roubles necessary to bandage the eyes and stop the mouths of dangerous creatures costs us 4000 roubles a year to make them willingly insensible to the fact that we are feeding our boiler with one vegetable product instead of another." " Then why not get turf- making machinery out from England and always burn turf?" "Because we could not and cannot get the per- mission. They (that is the authorities) would say, if we open a door for turf timber will escape through in un- known quantities." It was not doing so then ! It is because everything must be in black and white that those that are well posted up can' succeed so cleverly in making black look white, It is a saying, " That what can't speak can't lie." But in the interior, far from the executive, dumb-lying is most general, systematic, and convenient. The Russians have a maxim, (i If you live in a wood you must be content to dwell with wolves." Now the owner of this establishment thought he would end this un- pleasant state of things, as he was always in hot water, and as he never knew or could rely upon the future, or secure himself against a more extensive application of the screw, till all should be torn away and his work shut up. ' He went to St. Petersburg ; spent a great deal of time and money endeavouring to obtain from headquarters a concession or the permission to buy and use timber, na DEPRESSED CONDITION OF WORKS. legally paying all dues, &c. But all that he coul — he secured for all parties in that neigh bouroood the privilege to consume 300 cubic fathom of wood a year ; and that only as an auxilliary to those works already established possessing water power. But on no account must any new works requiring steam power be erected. And this concession he only received through the kind intercession of the Empress. He was what we may call church warden of her private chapel. ' Allow me a passing reference to this man not intimately bearing on this subject matter, I think I could write a book about him, and I think you will acknowledge by-and- by he was worth a better tribute than I can pay him. What I am about to relate I had from his own lips. His grandfather was originally a serf in Rostoff. He bought his own freedom, he then made himself a mer- chant, and left his family 9,000,000 roubles. That's something for a mujik to do, no matter how he has done it ! I have his venerable dag uerro type taken when he was 90 years of age. He (the grandson) told me that their house at one time employed 50,000 hands all round ; that they had passed through their books 135,000,000 I think it was ; that they used to sell 450,000 poods of tallow a year — I am afraid to say how many million sheep they knocked on the head annually ; that they had given away 350,000 roubles for the building of churches, schools, and charitable institutions ; that they had lost 850,000 roubles on bad debts, and yet they never brought a case into court ; that they had been robbed incalculably by stewards, agents, and employes, and never had prosecuted one. When they had several millions in the bank his nephew had gambled it all away. And at last his gay wife deserted him in his adver- sity j and yet he forgave her and pensioned her off. With tears streaming down his cheeks he said to me in my own house, " If I am a Christian I must imitate my Divine Lord and Master, who expiring on the Cross exclaimed, Father forgive them, they know not what they do." Let his God and our God judge that man what sort of a I 114 FOKESTRY IN EASTERN EUSSIA. Christian he was, not we ! And now for the conclusion of the life of this truly good man. ' In 1872, as I was returning home I met him in the Post Hotel at Perm, when he said to me, " The saddest calamity of all has happened to me now. I am going to bury my dear and only brother, and we have yet to quarrel. Yes ; for 50 years it has always been Yes, Yes, with us ; and now I have received a telegram that he is dying." ' But it was otherwise determined. The reported death of his brother had so preyed upon his mind that he only arrived in Rostoff to die. He was taken and the other left — left to struggle on — left to carry his brother's remains to the family bury ing-place, while that brother winged his flight to the better land, where there are no unfaithful partners, and where no thieves break through and steal/ Everything comprised in this little sketch is in keeping with much which I have heard in regard to Russian mer- chants— Russian roguery — Russian piety — and in regard to the wealth and extensive manufacturing and commercial operations of many who, belonging to the communal class of the population of the villages, have given themselves to mercantile pursuits. Without trenching on stores of anecdotes which from time to time I have heard forty or forty-five years ago, but in regard to which I am unable now to state who was my informant, or to vouch for my recollecting the precise terms in which they were told, I shall have occasion to bring forward many like narratives to these in making use in this chapter, or in some subsequent chapter, of material which my friend and correspondent has placed at my service. In circumstances such as have been detailed, wrong- doing in any way and every way abounding, the alleged depression of many smelting and manufacturing establish- ments in the district need not excite great surprise, and even when it was attributable directly to the failure of an abundant supply of fuel from the forests ; this it may be possible to trace to like abuses. CHAPTER VI. FOREST EXPLOITATION. FROM different allusions which have been made in preced- ing statements to the exploitation of the forests, the produce of which is so necessary to the smelting of ores and the manipulation of metals, it may be gathered that this exploitation is conducted not by what is known in France as Jardinoge, as in Northern Russia, details of which have been given in Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy, pp. 137-138, in the French Forest Ordinance of 1669, with Historical £ ketch of Previous Treat- ment of Forests in France* pp. 35-39, and in Forest Lands and Forestry of Northern Russia, pp. 89-100 ; nor by what is known in France as Furetqge, as in some extensive forests in the Government of Ufa, details of which have been given in a preceding chapter of this volume [ante pp. 31-40], and in Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy ; but by what is known in France as La Methode a Tire et Aire, details of which are given in the afore-cited Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy, pp. 138-153, and the French Forest Ordinance of 1669, pp. 40-44. I employ the French terminology because, as I have intimated above [ante p. 38], I do not happen to know any English terms applicable to the operations referred to of which I could make use while desirous of distinguishing things which differ. * French Forest Ordinance of 1669, with Historical Sketch of Previous Treatment of Forests in France. — The early history of forests in France is given, with details of devastations of these going on in the first half of the seventeenth century ; with a translation of the Ordinance of 1669, which is the basis of modern forest economy ; and notices of forest exploitation in Jardinage, in La Methode il Tire et Aire, and in La, Methode des Coinpartinwnts, 116 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. In the exploitation of a forest according to La Methode a Tire et Aire, when it was practised in France and in Germany previous to the introduction cf forest exploita- tion, in accordance with the advanced forest science of the day, beside which it has become antiquated, the number of years which the trees would require to grow to reach the age at which they should be felled, whether coppice wood or timber were desired, was divided into some one or other of the factors of this number ; and the forest was divided into a corresponding number of portions, one of which was felled in the course of one of the lesser periods, in the expectation that each in turn would be again covered with trees of the desired age by the time the cycle of fellings was completed. The initiation of this method of exploitation did not originate in France or in Germany in the promulgation of what is known as the famous Ordinance of 1669. This Ordinance assumes it as being already known and prac- tised. But to this Ordinance we are indebted for its introduction into many lands. In the Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy I have stated : — It is more easy to make intelligible the treatment so designated than it is to render in English the designation given to it. The following may be taken as supplying a rough and rude illustration of it in its application to a* coppice wood. If the coppice be one which may profitably be cut down every twenty years, by dividing it into twenty equal or equivalent portions, and cutting one, but only one of these, each year, there may be obtained a constant supply of wood, the division cut in the first year being ready again for the axe in the twenty- first year of the operation, and again in the forty-first year, while the other divisions followed in their order. This mode of exploitation has been extensively adopted in the management of coppice woods in Russia, though Jardinage is generally followed in the felling of timber. I have found that there on many estates held by private FOREST EXPLOITATION. 117 proprietors, there is carried out recklessly, and without system, a succession of clearings in successive years — one portion being cleared this year, another portion next year, a third portion in the year following. And on other estates, in connection with mining and smelting operations, a some- what similar exploitation is carried out more systema- tically. A similar mode of procedure has been adopted in several of the Crown forests. By Professor Sokanoff, who at the time held the Chair of Forest Economy in the Forest Corps at Lanskoi, near St. Petersburg, I was told, when there in 1873, that it was not uncommon, and it might be considered the general usage, to fell the forest in long strips of 50 fathoms, or 350 feet, in breadth, alternating with strips of the same width on which the trees were left standing to sow the cleared ground. Where wood is scarce they clear these strips completely j where it is abundant they leave young trees nnfelled to grow, or be destroyed in the removal of the others, as may happen ; and when a new growth of trees has been fairely established on the cleared strip, the strip of standing trees is cleared if there be a probability of its being re-sown or otherwise restocked with trees. A similiar account was given to me of the cutting of fuel for a smelting furnace in the Government of Oren- burg. Thirty years was deemed sufficient for the repro- duction and growth of the firewood, and the whole was divided into thirty equivalent portions, each of which was allotted for one year's exploitation in the expectation that in thirty years it would be reproduced. Strips were the forms in which the several portions were laid out, and these, so far as was practicable, were made to converge towards the forge ; and in felling each a strip was left unfelled for the production of seed for the natural re-sow- ing of the portion cleared. My informant stated that the strip left was either one-sixth or one-twelfth of the breadth of the strip cleared — he could not recollect which. I think it probably it was left at the side, and that those 118 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. of two contiguous ridges were contiguous, whereby they might be conjointly one-sixth of the breadth of one cleared strip, but one-twelfth of two if the felling did not follow each other in due succession. Advantages likely to follow such a method of managing forests suggest themselves at once, and, as described, it seems to be one which must be of easy application any- where. But the practical forester who has given atten- tion to my statement may have remarked that I have used the expression equal or equivalent portions. Good will result from the adoption of division into equal portions — much good, but with a large admixture of evil. Equal portions are not necessarily equivalent portions, and such is the variation in the productiveness of different portions of a forest, from variation in soil, in exposure, and in adaptation to the growth of the kind of tree which happens to be upon it, that it is very improbable that many portions equal in extent will be equal in produc- tiveness, if any at all happen to be so ; and therefore the division of a forest into equal portions will not yield advantages equal to what would be obtained by the divi- sion of the forest into what I have called equivalent portions. With the attempt to do this commences the difficulties of the undertaking. Equivalent partitions cannot be obtained by divisions founded on equality of superficial areas, neither can they be obtained by divisions founded on the number of trees growing in each, or even on the cubic contents of these. The soil, the exposure, the kind of tree growing in different localities, the adap- tation of the soil and of the exposure to the growth of the kind of tree, or of trees, growing in each, the age or ages of these trees, the rate of their annual increase at different ages, the age or ages at which they respectively attain their maximum growth, and at which they attain their maximum of value, — these, and twenty other points, must be determined to furnish the data necessary to determine equivalent partitions; and such partitions are necessary FOJREST EXPLOlTAflOtf. 119 111 urder to ensure the full benefits of this method of forest management being secured. If by a tentative process, based on superficial extent, as it necessarily must be, modified in accordance with the number of trees, and with the cubic contents of these, it be sought to arrive at a division of a forest into equivalent partitions, it will be found that constant modifications of the division first made are seen to be necessary. By proceeding to the work of partition with an extensive knowledge of the natural history of the trees on the ground, of the process of tree growth, and of much per- taining to meteorology, and geognosy relating thereto, the work will be found to be more easy ; but with all the forest science which has as yet been secured, the work must be to some extent tentative still ; and this is accepted as a fact by the most advanced foresters of the day. And while this has been accepted as a fact, it has also been found that divide the forest or coppice wood as you mayj y°u do not secure a sustained production through successive cycles of the revolution or rotation of exploita- tions, The second crop is not always, or indeed often, equal to the primitive or original, nor the third to the second. It is possible ofttimes to trace in embryotic struc- tures the rudiments of the organs of the fully developed organism ; but how different are the appearances presented by the two ! How like, and yet how unlike, are the chrysalis and the butterfly! Similar is the similitude and the difference between the old system a tire et aire, and the system of forest economy now carried out in Germany and in France, and in most countries on the Continent of Europe — the most advanced forest economy of the day. There is in this system of management a three-fold object sought, production soutenue> regeneration naturelle, and amelioration progressive / not one or other, but all of these combined, and so combined not only that each shall 120 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. be secured without detriment to the others, but that all shall be secured as the result of what may be done with a special view to the accomplishment of any, — what is done in view of all promoting each, what is done in view of each promoting all : a combination of ends gained in the accomplishment of one, such as is ofttimes seen in nature, for example in the honeycomb, where economising of space, of material, and labour, are so combined that apparently it may with equal propriety be described in the same phrase, with either of these three ends treated as if the one end in view. What is sought is a sustained production throughout a period of indefinite, infinite, or perpetual duration — every year, every four years, every ten years, according as the case determined may be — giving an equal produce either in quantity or in value, according as the case determined shall be — equal to the maximum capability of the forest — without diminution, periodical or permanent — and without detriment to the forest — not only so, but without diminution of the forest — trees as felled being replaced by natural reproduction from self-sown seed, while the reproduction of the forest and the felling of every tree that is felled tends alike to the improvement of the forest — so that it shall ever be rising in value as its products are withdrawn. This is what is meant by sustained production, natural regeneration, and progressive amelioration of forests. It may be said, incredulously — If forest science, properly applied, can do all this, it can work wonders : it takes away one's breath to read it ! Well, such is the end of forest economy as carried out in France, and it is there being accomplished ; nor in France alone, but in various sections of the German Empire ; and it is that apparent perfection of forest management to which students of forest science throughout the Continent of Europe are seeking to bring the management of forests in the lands with which they are severally connected. This method of exploitation has been to some extent FOREST EXPLOITATION. 121 introduced into Russia, where it is known as the scientific method of exploitation ; in Germany it is known as Die Fachwerke Method; in France, as La Methode des Com- partiments. But it has not been introduced to such an extent in this part of Russia as to call for a detail of its suc- cessive operations. Such details are given in Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy [pp. 165-186], and more briefly in the French Forest Ordinance of 1669 [pp. 45-47]. In this place mention is made of it to indicate the position in the development of the method adopted of forest economy. This method of exploitation has been adopted more or less extensively, and more or less per- fectly, in the Governments of Tula, Orel, Kaluga, and others in which mining operations or manufactories are extensively carried on ; and these operations it has been sought to regulate by legislative enactments. The area of forests of which concessions have been made, is understood to be 5,394,000 decatins, or 5,995,028 hectares. • Atkinson, in his work entitled Oriental and Western Siberia, writing of the estate of the Demidoffs, says : — 'On this vast estate of the Demidoffs, containing 8,095,700 acres, nearly equalling Yorkshire, nature has been most bountiful. Iron and copper ore appear to be inexhaustible. Platinum and gold are in the upper valleys, and malachite is found there also in enormous quantities, with porphyry and jasper of great beauty, and various coloured marbles. Their forests extend over more than 10,000 square versts, and are thickly covered with timber. These woods are under the supervision of intelli- gent officers, whose duty it is to cut them down in proper succession. It requires a space of eighty years to repro- duce timber suitable for the use of the zavods/ And again : — ' The view of the lake looking up towards Bielaya Gora, with its islands and hilly shores, is very pretty ; formerly it was thickly wooded on the north side, but the timber 122 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. was cut down a few years ago for the use of the zavod. In fifty or sixty years this will again be a dense forest, and that too without planting.' It may be so ; but there has not been satisfactory reproduction of felled forests everywhere ; and this has been the case notwithstanding the substitution of exploita- tion according to the method detailed for indiscriminate fellings. CHAPTER VII. ABUSES IN CONNECTION WITH THE EXPLOITATION OF FORESTS. THE so-called famous Forest Ordinance of 1669, which has become identified with the exploitation of forests in accord- ance with what is known as La Methode a Tire et Aire, that adopted in this district, was expected to put an end at once and for ever to all malversation, peculation, and waste in the exploitation of forests to which it was applic- able; and regulations equally explicit and equally stringent were issued here for the protection of forests in the district against waste and destruction. But in the one case, as in the other, the end desired was not secured. It is not unfrequently the case that both in Church and State, arrangements which seem well adapted to secure what is desired, fail in practice to prevent the evils they were designed to meet. In different countries may be seen in the administration of the forests abuses which may remind one of the apostle's saying : ' The law is good, and the commandment holy, just, and good ; but the command- ment which was ordained unto life has been found to be unto death. Illustrations may be supplied from the history of forestry in Spain, in France, in England, and at the Cape of Good Hope, if not in others also of the British Colonies. And the manipulation of laws designed for the conservation, maintenance, and economic exploitation of the forests in this region to secure a sustained supply of firewood for the smelting and manufacture of the metallic products of the mines has also been in many instances most disastrous. I have formed a high opinion of forest officials in Russia ; and I have no reason to suspect that many, if not all, of the 124 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. present forest officials are not in moral character, as well as in professional skill and professional knowledge, such as the high-minded and thoroughly educated gentlemen of the service with whom I have been brought into personal communication and correspondence. But once it was otherwise, and it may be long before either the physical or the moral effects of long-continued abuse of forests and long-continued abuse of official powers are altogether eradicated. Mining proprietors of forests can do with their forest products as they chose, so long as these had not in some way or another come under the surveillance of the Govern- ment. It is of State forests only that I write, and I write of what has occurred in times past, though times not very remote from the present. It has been the case, if it be not so still, that underlying the question of remuneration of officials in the service of Government is the idea that it is an honour to a man to serve his country, and that such service is best recompensed by honour; and personal rank supplemented with orders of knighthood, with appropriate decorations, are the rewards dispensed with liberal hand by the Govern- ment in almost all departments of the service, but often without adequate pecuniary pay to cover necessary personal and family expenditure. In answer to enquires, one of my correspondents in this district wrote to me : — ' I was well acquainted with the Glavnoi Laemicki, or Commissioner of Woods and Forests in the district in which are situated the mining works of the Ural. He told me his range extended over thousands of versts in the Govern- ments of Nijni Novgorod, Kazan, Viatka, Perm, Tobolsk, Orenburg, and Ufa, and he received the large salary of 800 roubles ! — less than £100 a year. He had under- foresters in each district and at Government works, all paid upon a like scale ! and these again had woodmen to look after the felling and delivery of the timber, and there was beside a cordon of guards all around at all ABUSES CONNECTED WIE^PLOITATION. : 125 points, and on every road.' Such was the staff, but what of the discharge of their duties? These men entered the service not for the honour of the service, but as a means of livelihood ; and the custom at one time was for officials to pay themselves as much as they could by practices which every right minded person must condemn, but to which no dishonour attached there and then. I was told in the time of Nicholas that, except- ing himself, there was not a man in the Empire who was not open to a bribe. The statement was, 1 believe, too sweeping ; but it indicated the general belief and the general practice. It was customary at that time for Government officials to wear, between two button holes on the breast of the coat, a coloured ribbon with Roman numerals in gold representing the length of time they had been in the service. And I was told of one of our country- men, whom I knew, being wont to point to his ribbon with a knowing wink, and saying : ' Look, 14 years with- out ever having been detected ! ' It is told of Nicholas that at a meeting of council during the Crimean war— I presume a council of war — as one proof of malversation after another connected with the manipulation of military returns, and the purchase of pro- visions and munitions, breaking out in passion before the generals, the nobles, and the princes at the board, and taking his son and successor by the hand, he said : ' Alex- ander, there is not a man in the Empire in whom I can trust but you.' I adduce this as an indication of a moral tone which was widely prevalent, and I consider that I do no wrong to those who were then in the forest service in alleging that it is not improbable that so it was with them. If so, opportunities were not alacking for their doing as did others. I was informed that at the time the information was given to me, by general, if not universal usage, each zavod was entitled to 300 cubic fathoms of wood a year from Government forests for the production of steam in aid of 126 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. water motive power, and a regular permit for the cutting of this was yearly given, but much more was used, and sometimes by appropriate manipulation more than three times that quantity might be obtained on the same permit. If the permit were sent to the forest inspector, unaccompanied by a private communication, it might be courteously received, attested, and returned with direc- tions as to the localities in the forests whence the supply was to be obtained ; but it might be found that these were situated some 60 or 80 versts (40 or well nigh 60 miles) from the works ; in which case the expense of transport would be more by far than the current price of wood delivered at the zavod. But I was informed on credible authority that if, as provision against such an occurrence, there were handed to the inspector, along with the permit, a sum of money enclosed in an envelope, much more satisfactory arrangements might be made. And if the amount enclosed amounted to 200 roubles, or £20, arrangements might be made for the wood being cut in forests within a tenth of that distance ; but then all the officials who were under the inspector must also be silenced by hush money, as otherwise some fatal objection might be raised. The forest guard might be satisfied with 20 or 30 kopecs — about 6d — but his superiors must receive much more, according to their rank; and then though 1000 cubic feet might be felled and delivered, in the official records everything would be found in order — 300 cubic feet granted, 300 cubic feet felled, 300 cubic feet delivered — the exact amount and nothing more. But sometimes it happened that ere the delivery was made the staff of the officials was changed, and then all that had been done went for nothing ; and the whole pro- cess of administering hush money had to be gone through again. If this were not done with every man amongst them, they would be found every man of them, or some one of them at least, the very paragon of just, upright, incorruptible officials ! But even such a case as this might be met. An instance ABUSES CONNECTED WITH EXPLOITATION. 127 was reported to me, of which the following is the outline : Wood was being felled by a contractor for the work, acting on a permit which had been properly attested, and was otherwise in order. But a great deal more had been felled than was covered by the permit, and an official went to him saying, c Ivan, Ivanowitch (John, the son of John) what is this ? Look here ! There's something wrong j the permit is for 300 cubic feet : you have felled trees enough to measure 1000. You had no right to do so ; all this must be confiscated.' And confiscated it was ; and the Government mark was put upon it; after which, to dispose of it, would make whoever did so liable to banishment to Siberia. But the official by whom this was done went to the proprietor of the zavod, on whose permit it was being felled, and said to him, ' I find the contractor has far exceeded the quantity mentioned in the permit, and of the excess 700 fathoms have been confiscated. According to the law this must be sold by public auction, but I will sell it to you for the amount of Government dues which must be paid upon it, the amount of which is 100 roubles.' On these terms the wood was purchased ; the owner of the zavod got 700 fathoms of wood for 100 roubles (£10), but the contractor got nothing for the work he had done ; and it is supposed that in such a case the Government would never see a kopec of the payment made. Things were thus made pleasant to all, excepting to the contractor, who had to grin and bear the loss, hoping that things would go better with him next time. A case was reported to me of a contractor for felling wood who, either by way of making up a loss sustained in some such way, or more likely in the ordinary execution of his work, having delivered the quantity of wood speci- fied in the permit — or it may be some larger quantity which this was made to cover — and having received payment for this according to agreement, he altered the date of the permit, and proceeded to fell more wood, with this as his sanction, the following year. All went on without 128 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. interruption till the work was completed, and he was about to deliver the wood felled, when one of the officials, through whose hands the paper had to pass, coming to him with the usual question, ' Ivan, Ivanowitch, what is this ? ' said to him, ' This is an old permit which has already passed through our office ; the date has been altered by some one ; I am sorry for you, but all this wood must be confis- cated.' Both parties knew well who was in fault ; the man had to submit, shrugged his shoulders it may be, and expressed his thanks that the official had not pressed the matter further, and brought against him a criminal charge. But he sent an account of the whole matter to his brother, who was resident in the Government town. He waited upon the Governor and informed him that his brother had become involved in a very unpleasant business, but one which could be satisfactorily explained, notwith- standing that appearances were much against him ; and he gave his explanation of the matter, upon hearing which the Governor said, ( All right ! It is an unfortunate occur- rence ; but we can get it rectified.' The brother thanked him, and left. In the evening he called again on the Governor at the Residence. After having had a cup of tea, they sat down to play a game at cards ; and before they rose he managed to lose a large sum to the Governor — the amount reported to me was 8000 roubles — and he went away a happy man. Next day, on calling at the chancellory or office, he found everything had been arranged ! It had been discovered that it was altogether a mistake — the supposed alteration of the date of the permit ; and the wood which had been felled was restored to the contractor. So much for the case having been brought before a Governor who, in a long tenure of office, was never known to have accepted a bribe ! The name of the Government was supplied to me. I was told of other Governors who had a like reputation, and who, had a bribe been offered to them, would have ABUSES CONNECTED WITH EXPLOITATION. 129 been indignant and resented the insult given to them, as would any gentleman whatever his nation. But with such I was told, and I speak only of what was reported to me of proceedings in the district, and commanded my belief as substantially true, that in such a case the business must be conducted with greater delicacy ; and my informant, apparently having some case — and more than that one case — in his eye, said, so far as I can reproduce his state- ment : ' In any' difficulty, a diamond ornament, or if the matter will warrant the greater expense, a whole set of diamond ornaments may be presented to the wife of the Governor ; and in subsequent conversation, it may be days afterwards, she must be made acquainted with the irregu- larity which has occurred and been discovered. The Scots have a proverb to the effect ' that a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse;' and the Romans had a saying, quoted sometimes in our day, in the abbreviated form, verbum sap. On that day or the next, or otherwise on some befitting opportunity, she guilelessly inquires of her liege lord, addressing him with the ttsual designation expressive of endearment : ' Doosliinka, what is that story about So- and-So?' 'It is so-and-so/ is the reply; which is followed by the rejoinder, ' I am sorry for that — he is such a nice man — a good man he is. Can you not help him in his difficulties ? 1 wish you could. If you can will you do so ? Do so for my sake. Perhaps he was wrong ; but he is a nice man ; perhaps it was all a mistake.' ' No, no ; nothing can be done.' ' Oh ! Dooshinka, try if you can help him. I know him to be an honest man.' ' Very well, Goloobchick, I shall look into the case to-morrow, and if I find that he is not to blame I shall see what can be clone in the matter.' ' I thank you, Dooshinka; it is so like you.' And the result in all probability is that it is discovered the charge against the donor of the diamonds was founded altogether on a mistake— and a mistake which can easily be rectified ! The picture is a sad one, but it is only in accordance with what is notorious in Russia, and universally believed ; K 130 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. in accordance with what has come under my own observa- tion ; in accordance with what has come within the experience of my personal friends, both fifty years ago and in later times; in accordance with stories innumerable, current in conversation and reproduced in tales ; and assuming that they may be only founded on fact, and not literally true, the student of forest science with the know- ledge of like malversations which have occurred in France and England, and of the waste and destruction of forests which have thence resulted, will not be surprised if he be told that in such circumstances there has been great devas- tation of forests. He will probably coolly remark — I could have foretold what the issue would be ! Like malversation I found presenting other phases. Re- strictions put upon the consumption of wood as fuel employed in the production of steam-power were thus evaded. There were similar restrictions put upon the extravagant consumption of fuel in domestic life ; and residents there have like stories to tell of ways in which these are evaded. One of my correspondents, in the correctness of whose statements I have confidence, wrote to me : ' The quantity of firewood to be allowed for heating and cooking seems to have been left to the discretion of the Chief Commis- sioner of the Imperial Forests ; and you have to address and present to him a petition for authorative permission to cut down the quantity allowed to you — he having a list of those persons who have had this privilege granted to them. Moreover, you have to state in your petition how many houses, rooms, and fire-grates you have requiring fuel : he is already provided with a list, not only of yours, but of every dwelling in his district; and there is a certain quantity told off as at your disposal. I forget what it is, but amply sufficient — in fact, there are few that take all they might, and this gives them a margin to work upon, as I shall by-and-by explain. All this seems fair, and above board ; and so it would be if it were fairly ABUSES CONNECTED WITH EXPLOITATION. 131 carried out ; but there come in mutual operations of the legally right and morally wrong principle which is so pre- valent in Russia, which I have referred to before. When your petition is presented, if it be unaccompanied by some- thing to make it presentable, it will be a long time before it is answered, and you may long dance attendance before there is time to attend to you. There is such an awful press of business — so many to be attended to before your turn comes ! The proper authorities are not at home, gone to other districts, cannot tell when will be best ; and when it does come your quittance is numbered for the most distant estate in the boundary of your town, perhaps 40 or 60 versts off, instead of 8 or 12, and what are you to do ? What can you do ? The thing is legally right, and that brings up the price of your firewood a rouble, or 1*50 roubles a sajen or more, if you can get it cut at all. But to whom can you complain ? And what have you to complain of? But take personally — you canndt send — a good round douceur in proportion to the quantity required, say about a fourth of what it would otherwise cost you, and you will bring back the order with you for the Under Forest Com- missioner to allow you to commence operations at once on the estate under his care — but it does not say where, so you have not done yet. There is more oil to be made use of; it is a long time before the machinery moves, and when it does, the wood is not of the kind and in the place you want, and only the money leverage will remove that obstacle. But you have not done yet. There are all the under strappers, whose eyes have got to be bandaged, and whose mouths have got to be stopped with paper roubles. And you have not done yet ; you have now to give the order into the hands of a wood-cutter, and you make another agreement with him for delivery on your grounds of the quantity specified at so much per sajen, hard money down ; but it is an understood thing by all parties that the operation will not be strictly looked after, that is, when all parties are satisfied, so you get double or triple the quantity of wood you have paid dues for. That is, if your 132 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. wood-cutter does not turn out a bigger rascal than all the rest, and fail to carry out your verbal agreement, or goes and sells your wood to some one else ; and you are always at his mercy, as he always has his money beforehand, otherwise he won't undertake the work. ' Perhaps you will say, Why be drawn into this corrupt and disreputable way of doing business ? There is no other way of obtaining timber, aod you must either do in Rome as the Romans do in these matters, or shut up shop and clear out altogether. There is indeed another way, worse still, which many follow, and have to do so, who have no right to timber. There are a gang of men called forest robbers, or wood stealers ; they will supply you with a limited quantity at their own risk till they get it on your premises in the night time ; but as it is without the Govern- ment stamp, which all timber ought to have before it is allowed to pass the sentinels who should be on the watch night and day on every road leading out of the forests, you have got to account to the authorities as to how it came into your possession without permission, if it be discovered there ; when nothing releases you from criminal prosecution except paying black mail again. ' You must know that each town, and village, and zavod there on the Ural, has forests for the sole use of the peasantry, for the building of their houses, the heating of their dwellings, &c., and these forests are under the care of the town authorities and the village communes, and the head of each family is apportioned off a lot as it is decided upon at their meetings. I can relate you another anecdote illustrative of this. There is a party who had his papers all in order, and had the right to his yearly quantum of timber and firewood. There came a wood- cutter to him, who said he had timbers to dispose of that were legally his, cut down from their own woods to build himself a house with ; but that he could not go on with this. Well, the bargain is struck, and the timber is delivered ; but it turns out to be fresh cut, and without the necessary brand ! ABUSES CONNECTED WITH EXPLOITATION. 133 ' The next day there appeared at the mill a police official, and a town councillor. The manager happened to be outside, and demanded to know their business. They said, "You have stolen timbers on your premises, cut down from the town forest just at hand. We have seen the place, and we are come to confiscate them, and make out a criminal protocol against you." " Very well, gentlemen/' says the Englishman, " show me your warrant and authority for searching my pre- mises before you proceed any further." They had reckoned without their host, and had nothing to show but the uni- form of one of them, while the other had a book of laws in his hand. The Englishman says, " I don't know you ; I can't receive you without the legal authorised document." They went away in a great rage, vowing dreadful things. The Englishman saw he was likely to get into a mess, and that there was no time to be lost, so he went immedia- tely to the under Government fo raster, and told him all the case, " Oh," says he, " make yourself easy." A man was sent off by post-horses, 30 versts for his stamp. And when the gentlemen returned next morning with redoubled force, and all the necessary legal forms, every timber and block on the premises had got the Government brand, his papers were all in order, Government was paid, and there were timbers yet to receive. They retired crest-fallen, but laughed heartily at the ruse ; they saw through the whole affair, but it was legally right, so they gave the Englishman the credit of being a shrewd fellow, beating them at their own game; and he, instead of prosecuting for damages for a false charge, wined and dined them, and they left him in peace ever afterwards. He had every reason to believe that the very rascal that brought him the timber went and informed upon him. 'Well, now, I think you will see from what I have written that it is no wonder the forests are rapidly dis- appearing in all parts of Russia, especially when we con- sider the careless humble-jumble "self first" system of theirs, and besides this, the want of a proper scientific 134 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. principle honestly carried out. I believe matters are somewhat better than they were, but it is too late locking the stable door when the horse is gone. And I am of opinion from what I have seen wherever I have been, that since the introduction of steam-power the consumption of firewood is very much more rapid than the growth, for they are now cutting down young timbers, where there are any to cut, in a shameful manner which it is heart- rending to see/ In a preceding chapter I have given details of the de- pressed condition of many smelting and manufacturing establishments in the district. No one need be surprised to learn that in such circum- stances, as have been mentioned, the supply of wood is failing, that prices are rising, and that works are being closed. And what I have reported is only in keeping with everything I have heard in Russia, in regard to doings of government officials in every department of the service. I have obtained much information in regard to great rises in the price of firewood in different parts of Russia, and in regard to the difference of expense in using coal and fire- wood in manufactories in St. Petersburg. When in the country in 1882 I applied for, and had posted for me shortly after my return to Scotland, a report on the difference of expense of using coal and firewood in the metallurgical works in the Ural, a matter fast becoming one of pressing importance. It never reached me. I reported the case to the post-office in Edinburgh. All proper inquiries were made, but in vain. I wrote to my correspondent informing him of my want of success. The following was his reply : ' I don't expect you will ever get it. I don't believe that it ever left Shuvalova. Countess F. and I took it to the office. We went in and had it weighed, then purchased the necessary stamps and attached them. Unhappily I did not register it, but put it at once into the box. But in Russia you cannot be assured of even registered letters and parcels reaching their ABUSES CONNECTED WITH EXPLOITATION. 135 destination. I believe officials destroy letters for the sake of the stamps, and destroy others to prevent discovery. Some time since I sent from the Ural 50 roubles (£5), and re- gistered or insured the letter. This never reached its destination. I sent a registered letter of inquiry, but received no reply. I then sent the quittance or certificate. This got lost ! and there was an end of the matter. ' Not long ago I sent a parcel to Yaroslav of the same value 50 roubles (£5), and I sent the quittance by post ; but it never reached its destination. As the parcel was sent by carrier and not by post, I recovered this after a great deal of botheration — making affirmation and signing docu- ments, &c. I have lost scores of letters and papers that I know of. What may it be with others of -"which I know nothing ! I take in the Manchester Guardian. I lose upon an average one paper a week. I sent for 50 printed copies of a letter from me which had been printed in the Crewe Guardian. They cost me 10s 6d, but I never received them. I sent for two gross of steel pens of a particular kind. I received three dozen. The letter had been opened and resealed by officials. Nice. Isn't it? But I must stop or I might fill a book with my unplea- sant experience in Russia. It is of no use trying to recover anything, in Russia ; if you have not documentary evidence, verbal testimony is not taken, if not confirmed. Every man is treated as a liar until the contrary is proved. Try if you can get any redress. Nobody here thinks of doing so.' I did try ; and I formally reported to the post-office my suspicion, founded on lengthened experience, that the letter had never left Russia, and that I desired enquiry to be made there. The answer bore that every thing prac- ticable had been done in this country ; but that in Russia no enquires were made 'by the officials after lost letters unless they had been registered. This is in accordance with every thing connected with the Government of Russia. The contents of the letter had nothing to do with the detention of it, though some suspicion of what 136 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. the contents of so bulky a letter may have been, may have led to its being opened; and the case is adduced to show that there was nothing out of keeping with the practice of the country in the malversations and abuses in the forest service which I have cited. It may be supposed that there is now some security against wrongs in trial by jury, which has been introduced into Russia ; but on my saying this to a practical man, long conversant with the management of works in the district, and with doings such as I have reported, his reply was : — ' It may seem so to you ; and the rule of Court regulating procedure may seem to be all that could be desired to secure justice being done ; but the judge can be bribed as efficiently as this could be done in the days of Nicholas ; and if you can secure the judge,- you can secure your case. And I'll tell you how it is done.' Naming then a success- ful practitioner in Jury Courts, he said: — 'Here is an impor- tant case ; and he will have nothing to do with any others. His terms are that his client shall pay all expenses incurred in preparing papers required in the prosecution of the case, and pay him say 20,000 roubles if he gain the case, but only 5000 roubles if he happen to fail to do so. This being securely arranged, one half of the 20,000 roubles is by the practitioner given to the judge. He then enters the court, assured that the case is prejudged in his favour ; and he finds that such a charge is given to the jury that it is morally impossible that they can give a veidict other than that for which he has paid. As with the Jury Court, so with the village Court. One of my informants in regard to forest operations on the Urals, referring to what had been the experience of another in regard to punishments which were sometimes inflicted, said to me : — ' I have no doubt of the correctness of what is stated, in so far as it relates to what was witnessed and heard by your friend at that time ; but it is not in accord- ance with my experience. The rod employed is composed of birch twigs, bound firmly together in a bundle some- times three inches thick. The knout has been abolished ; ABUSES CONNECTED WITH EXPLOITATION. 137 and so has punishment with the lash, which consisted of three thongs ; but punishment with birch rods is still legal, and the village magistrates have authority to order punishment with them to the extent of 25 strokes/ He added : — ' In connection with my work in the forest I frequently had occasion formally to lodge complaints with the authorities against men in my employment get- ting drunk, or otherwise leaving or neglecting their work, and such was the punishment awarded for such offences ; but it was of no avail, and I was pestered with my work- men. One day a centurion, placed over a hundred men, quietly said to me, " I do not know how you do it ; you send in your complaint ; and they only laugh at you for your complaints. The usage here is td send with your com- plaint a three rouble note. Do this the next time, and you will see the difference."' He did so, when to his horror four soldiers were sent for ; the accused was laid on his belly, with a small pillow for his head ; one soldier took his seat upon his neck, another on his feet, his back was bared, and the other two soldiers, one on each side, inflicted the stripes according to the sentence, every one of them drawing blood. The raw wound was then rubbed with salt, and the man was left to do as he choose until he might be again fit for work. My informant was horrified ; but never again had he occasion to make complaint of his men. It is as likely as not that it was at the instance of those who benefited by the douceur that my informant was told of the national usage in regard to a gift. So much for bribery in courts of justice, which is referred to in passing as an indication of the universality of the practice. Returning to bribery practised in the field, I may state that the grant of wood to proprietors of extensive works is made to enable them to supplement water-power by steam, or to make use of this exclusively. No steam- engine may be u«ed in Russia until it is certified by a 138 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. Government engineer that it has been examined by him arid found satisfactory. The law applies to railway loco- motives, steamboats, and stationary engines alike. An engineer employed in the construction of such engines gave to me details of one case which occurred in connection with an engine which he erected, and told me it was illus- trative of what is of frequent, if not of constant occur- rence. The engine was erected ; he sent a specification of its power, &c., to the inspector, and along with this the usual gratuity ; the gratuity was a large one, and in due course there came a certificate that the engine had been examined, and everything found to be in accordance with the specifica- tions. But it was requisite that the certificate of approval should bear the certification of three officials connected with the police, that they had been present when the inspection was made. The two papers, the specification and the certificate of the inspector, were next sent to the police office, and along with them a comparatively trifling gratuity. And these were in due course returned duly attested, signed, and sealed, though neither inspector nor police officials had ever seen the engine in question, or gone to see it. And had the boiler, within a week or less, exploded, destroying life and property to any extent, that certificate would have protected the constructing engineer from all penal consequences.* * Some one on reading this may feel prompted to say, ' Thank God we have no such rascality in Britain.' If it be so, give God the thanks — but is it so? Since my return from Russia I have read the following in a Scottish newspaper : — ' The article above recalls something that happened ten years ago in an old-fashioned town in Fife, where I was visiting. Having called on my friend, I found him engaged, so I said I would just take a walk to the bay, and see what was doing at the building yard. On passing it I observed a large steamer on the stocks, and all but ready for the painter. As she looked a fine craft, I walked up the plank, or gangway, and got on deck. It happened to be the dinner hour, and there were only one or two 'prentice boys walking about. I first stepped to the stern, examining all very carefully, then passed the 'prentice, while walking forward to the bow. On passing I called his attention to the sides of two rivet-holes, where there were two cracks fully two inches in length. Young as the boy was, he knew what he was after, and in answering me, he said, such holes or cracks could not be helped, on account of the iron plates being so bad, and they were caused in punching them, as it was far too expensive to bore them. I asked, " Is the bottom of the ship built of the same material ?" to which he said, "Yes, and some not so good; but" when it is puttied and painted it is never seen ! " However, I said nothing. After I had left him I saw him running on shore, but I just thought he was hurrying off to his dinner. However, in ten minutes I saw the shipbuilder himself coming ABUSES CONNECTED WITH EXPLOITATION. 139 The following is another illustration of the corrupt prac- tices prevalent extensively, which, though not apparently pertaining to forestry, is indirectly connected with the forest lands of the district : There are in the Ural mountains mines of valuable marble. Of this much is hewn on the spot, not only into blocks for transport but into articles of ornament and luxury in Government works. These pro- ducts are despatched to the capital, under charge of a subaltern commissioned officer, known for the time .as the captain of the caravan. An officer of high rank, the father of the bride of the son of my informant, gave to my informant the following account of his early experience and initiation into the mysteries of jobbery. (He was favoured with an appointment to the office of captain of the caravan while he was still but a youthful officer. He attended to the charge with commendable care, but in despite of this some little injuries were sustained by the works of art under his charge. These he got repaired at a very moderate charge indeed, and he went with elated spirits to lodge his accounts with the head of the department in the capital. Neverhadthe transport been managed so efficiently hurriedly from his office, and behind him his son ; so I just left the vessel to meet him, as I knew them both. In his hurry he passed me, and remarked, " There is a gentle- man on board whom I wish to see ; please excuse me at present ;" so he passed on. On coming up to his son, I remarked, " Your father is in a hurry ; is there anything wrong, as he scarcely stopped to speak?" He answered, "Oh, yes ! he expects to find a gentleman on board, an inspector we were expecting next week. But he has rather taken us by surprise." I said, " How could he do that?" He answered, "There. are certain things to be done before he sees the ship, and he may find fault at this time." In my mind I thought it was rather strange, so I began to ask him where he got the iron he built the ship with. He told me the name. I said, " Was that the best place to get good iron ?" He answered, " No. But, you see, when we are tied to a price we cannot afford to put in so good iron." I said to him, " Is that inferior iron capable of being punched without the iron cracking ?" He said, " No. All, or most every plate, is more or less cracked." I said, " If you bored the plates would they not be better ?" He said, " Yes ; but it's too expensive." Just then his father returned, and remarked what an alarm he had got, as the boy had run to the office and said a man was examining the ship, and finding fault with the iron and cracked bolt holes. This ship, I learned some months after, had left and never was heard of again after sailing — supposed to have foundered ; and how could it be otherwise ? The vessel straining would put but the putty, and then the water would come in and sink her. After that I learned three other vessels, built by the same man, never reached their first voyage, and in one was his own son and nephew. I also learned no inspector ever saw the ships till puttied and painted. This is how many valuable lives are lost, and the insurance companies punished. One of the ships, 300 tons, was supposed to capsize— having iron masts far too heavy for her to carry without canvas.' If such things be done in Scotland need we wonder at anything I have reported should have been done in Russia, one is reminded of the mote and the beam. 140 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. and economically; but this called forth, beyond the mention of the fact, no commendation from the officer to whom the accounts were delivered, who simply courteously desired him to call next day. He did so, and was then desired to see the head of the department in his room. He went, anticipating a full meed of praise, but he was confounded with a surly question, ' Are these your accounts, sir ; and how have you dared to spend, or to say you have spent, Imperial funds without due authority ?' All explanations were in vain, calling forth fresh outbursts of passion. He was kept for weeks making bootless calls at the office, increasing what was to him a very inconvenient expense living in the capital. But there was no appearance of any progress being made in getting his accounts passed; and until these were passed he could not leave. At length one of the officials pitying him, taking him aside asked, ' What is the amount in dispute ?' ' One hundred and twenty roubles (£12) for repairs for injuries sustained by the goods in transit/ ( This is apparently the first time you have come in charge of the caravan ?' ' It is/ was the reply. 1 Then you must ask permission to give in a corrected statement of your outlay ; and I will aid you in the pre- paration of this/ The application was made ; and the permission was granted. ' Now/ said his informant, ' You must state the whole outlay on the journey, and this very differently. You must increase the charge under every head a hundredfold, and add under each charge as a separate item " incidental expenses" to a corresponding account/ It is the old story of the unjust steward. ' How much owest thou ? — an hundred measures of oil/ 'Take thy bill and sit down quickly, and write fifty/ . . ' And how much owest thou ?* And he said, ' an hundred measures of wheat/ And he said unto him, ' Take thy bill and write fourscore / But here, the case being different, the process is re- versed ; and by this means 5000 roubles were added to the account. ' Now/ said the adviser, ' that will do/ The ABUSES CONNECTED WITH EXPLOITATION. 141 young officer presented the corrected account. He was told to come again the next day. Again he was told you must see the chief of the department. He went to his room with fear and trembling ; he was received as if the accounts were being presented for the first time. He was complimented on the zeal and care with which he had discharged the duty entrusted to him, and on the very reasonable amount of the expenses which had been incurred. But whether all this was said in irony or otherwise he knew not. He was told to call next day at the office. He did so, fearing he had fallen into a trap, but was at once informed that his accounts were passed, and presented with authority to draw the amount. He drew it accordingly ; but following instructions received from his adviser, he waited upon the head of the depart- ment to take leave, and handed to him a closed envelope containing the surcharge of 5000 roubles. This was received in apparent ignorance of its contents, but he was asked to call once more before he set off on his return journey. He did so, and received from the head of the department, with the parting Gluckliche Seise, a closed envelope. Upon afterwards opening this he found that it contained 500 roubles, his share of the spoil. ' Such/ said the officer of rank, ' was my initiation into the mysteries of the service.' The reader would err who should conclude that the Ural mining district must be, in comparison with other parts of Russia, a sink of iniquity, and all connected with the operations carried on there greater sinners than all the sinners in the land. It is not so. I had almost said it is the same everywhere. I only hesitated because I could not prove so sweeping an assertion. I may say, however, that according to all accounts the facts reported are, taking in accordance with the customs of the country, only their special form from the conditions and usages of the locality. In so far as Government officials in the forest service have conformed to these they have only done 142 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. as governors, judges, military authorities, and officials in all departments of the service may have done. In all these positions there are men of high moral worth, and there are, personally known to me, forest officials of high position in the service, and others in sub- ordinate positions in the forest service of Russia, who are men of noble mind and high principle, who would condemn such proceedings as indignantly as may any one of my readers, and who, I doubt not, would say, ' If such things be, by all means let it be known ; truth, like light, makes all things manifest ; it is by an improved scientific con- servation, exploitation, and extension of our forests that we hope to preserve for our country an ample supply of timber and of firewood for years to come, and if in all our endeavours we are handicapped thus, the sooner we and others know it the better.' Not only are there such known to me, but I have never happened to make the acquaintance or meet with one of a different spirit. I do not the less, however, believe that things are, or have been, as they have been represented to me in the mining districts of the Ural mountains. And I hold it to be desirable that the student of forest science in other lands should know not a little of the multiform evils against which the practical forest adminis- trator has ofttimes to contend. All that has been stated I can cap with statements of like nefarious proceedings in France, previous to the enactment of the famous Forest Or- dinance of 1669,andwith like proceedings in England within the last half century ; while the case of engineers certify- ing the efficiency of steam-engines they had never seen, is, I consider, equalled by what I have shown is reported to have occurred in Scotland within the last ten years. But what I have more especially in view is to report the conditions under which the now antiquated method of exploitation known as La, Methode cb Tire et Aire is being ABUSES CONNECTED WITH EXPLOITATION. 143 carried out here, that students of forest science in judging this may distinguish things which differ, and while accepting proof of its inherent defects, not over-estimate these by confounding with them abuses for which it is not responsible. CHAPTER VIII. CONDITIONS OCCASIONING A DIMINISHED SUPPLY OF WOOD. IN view of what has been stated in the immediately pre- ceding chapters, little surprise need be felt that through a lack of sufficient wood for fuel, consequent on an im- poverishment of the forests, the industrial operations peculiar to the district should be in a state of depression. The method of forest exploitation followed — that known as La Methode & Tire et Aire — like that ofJardinage, practised in the northern Governments of Olonetz, Archangel, and Vologda, is in itself radically defective as a means of securing from forests a sustained supply of produce. When in France and in Germany it was carried out in strict accordance with the principle upon which it was based, even then it failed to secure a sustained supply of wood. Here it is not carried out under its normal condi- tions ; and there have been malversations and abuses which have expedited the destruction or impoverishment of the forests. In the Forest Code are given, properly codified in a distinct chapter, the regulations, which have been issued, and are supposed to be still in force, to prevent waste ; but, as has been seen, there are devices by which any regula- tions may have been evaded. The prescriptions of the Forest Code, relative to forests supplying fuel for smelting and manufacturing operations in the Ural district, are codified under Nos. 1236-1287 of the V staff Laesnoi. Successive chapters in this book embody the general laws in relation to such forests ; those relating to Govern- CAUSES OF DIMINISHED SUPPLY OF WOOD. 145 ment forests attached to Government mines, and to private industrial undertakings in the Ural mountains ; to Govern- ment forests assigned to the mining works of Altai and Nerchinsk ; to forests enrolled as belonging to Government distilleries in the Government of Viatka; to forests pro- viding supplies to the Government small arms manufac- tory at Tula; to Government forests enrolled as belonging to salt works, Imperial and private. The codified forest laws relative to Government forests attached to Government mines and private industrial undertakings in the Ural districts, embody in successive sections those relating to descriptions of forests attached to such works; to the measurement of such ; to the allot- ment of forests to such works ; to the mode of surveying the actual contents of such forests and other allotments assigned to such works • to the felling of timber in these ; to the allotment of timber or firewood to the inhabitants of forests which have been assigned to the Government mines ; and the preservation of forests from fire. In the appendix are laid down numerous instructions in regard to the management of these, embracing, amongst others, instructions relative to the surveying and charting, and the conservation and management, embracing both general directions and special ; to the natural renovation of the woods by felling in accordance with the principles of forest science ; to the order and mode of exploitation ; the extent of sections ; the period of revolution, fixed at 100 years; to artificial plantations by sowing — by planting on hills ; and by planting on level ground ; to the management of nurseries — with special regulations applicable to various subjects, and requiring information to be supplied in regular reports with requisite charts, &c., and within a limited time after the execution of all such proceedings. In the Ural mountains I was informed that there are 69,800,000 decatins of forest land, of which 44,914,000 are woods, or 58 per cent, of the whole. I give the informa- tion as I received it, but I do so with a feeling that there must be some misapprehension, but what it is I know not. L 146 FOKESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. I have spoken of the method of exploitation followed as being inherently defective as a means of securing a sus- tained supply of produce from a forest. In a preceding chapter I have referred to modifications of it which have been adopted with advantage under other designations in other parts of Russia and elsewhere. And the necessity for this speaks of some defect of it in its normal condition. But here the method has not, through malversation and abuses, had fair play ; it has not been carried out in its entirety, and in accordance with the principles upon which it was based. It may seem to be a truism to say that if more be taken from a forest in any specified time — a year, a decade, or a century — than is produced in it by growth or vegetation in the same period, the forest will be impoverished, and will ultimately perish, though if no more be taken from it than is produced it may continue to flourish and bring forth abundantly. Thus, apparently, is it here. I say appar- ently, because, while I have learned enough to justify me in concluding that it is so, I have not learned so much as to warrant me, fearless of contradiction, to allege that such is actually the case. It is the case that the actual condition of the forests, compared with what is reported to have been their con- dition previous to the introduction and development of the local industry, is itself evidence that more has been taken from the forests than the equivalent of what has been produced within the time during which this has been done. But more is required. I have already attributed this in part to abuses and malversations. It would be difficult, without additional information, to demonstrate that these are the causes of which this is the effect, but with such abuses and malversations going on as those which I have narrated, and of which I have been credibly informed, it seems to be natural and not unjust to conclude that they are one cause of the disappearance of forests within so short a period. But while they may be one cause of CAUSES OF DIMINISHED SUPPLY OF WOOD. 147 this, it does not follow that they are the only cause or occasion of this. The question with which we have now to do is one relative to the merits and demerits ^ of this method of exploiting forests, seen in the light of the facts which I have stated. Officials in the forest service of Russia are dealing man- fully with existing evils. With a view to the instruction of aliens, my countrymen and others, I have stated my opinion that a method of exploitation inherently defective has here become still more manifestly defective through conditions under which it has been practised. It is, more- over, my opinion that the appropriate remedy in any similar case would be that which is being adopted — an endeavour to supersede this by an improved exploitation in accordance with the principles regulating the improve- ment which has been carried out successfully elsewhere. The Ordinance of 1669, published in France, which is associated with this method of exploitation, is still spoken of as the famous Forest Ordinance of 1669. The principle upon which it was based was extensively adopted, not only in France, but also elsewhere. Less than 150 years, however, sufficed to show that it was not in its original form a panacea for the evils in connection with forest exploitation which were everywhere in Central Europe being deprecated. It was found that the repro- duced crop did not equal in cubic contents the crop which had been cleared away. And early in the present century there was devised, primarily and chiefly by Hartig and Cotta, a modification of the method which seems to meet every desideratum, and which, so far as I know, excepting in this Government and the regions around, it has super- seded that method of exploitation from which some 200 years ago so much was expected. It is known in different countries as Die Fachwerke Method, or La Methode des Compartiments, or the Scientific method of exploitation. In this the forest, or a number of forests associated to- gether, are divided into sections corresponding to the 148 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. number of decades in the age at which the trees are to be felled ; these sections are subdivided into lots, and the required supply of wood is obtained from the clearing of specified lots, and the first, second, or third of succes- sive thinnings to which other specified lots are subjected — with the result that there is secured simultaneously an improved condition of the forest — a sustained production of firewood or timber — and a natural reproduction of the forest from self-sown seed. The success which has accompanied the exploitation of some forests here, in accordance with the now antiquated and superseded method known as ti tire et aire, I consider to be attributable to one or more — probably in part to each — of the following conditions under which it has been practised : — 1. An efficient and sufficent protection of the forests against waste and theft ; 2. Most of the reproduced wood being the produce of fresh growth from old stumps, and only a small portion of it the produce of the growth of seedlings ; and 3. The annual demand not being in excess of the annual production of wood. While I thus classify the conditions under which I con- sider that the results have been obtained, I know that the classification is open to the objections — first, that what has been stated last covers what goes before, and a great deal besides ; and secondly, that it is virtually a truism or restatement of the case in altered phraseology. But it is nevertheless the case that elsewhere waste and theft have helped to prevent like success being obtained ; that a cycle appropriate to trees which send out shoots from stumps may be sufficient to secure reproduction, while a similar cycle would be insufficient to secure full reproduction of the same or other kinds of trees from seed. And it is probable that in many cases in which this method of exploitation failed it might have proved efficient if a more lengthened period had been allowed for reproduction. CAUSES OF DIMINISHED SUPPLY OE WOOD. 149 Oases have come under my notice in which the revolu- tion or cycle had been determined thus : a year's supply of fuel would clear a certain area of forest ; the entire forest contains a hundred times that area ; it is divided into ten sections, and a decade is assigned to the exploita- tion of each section. The only factors here are the require- ment and the area, without regard to the annual or centen- nial production of wood, which should have been treated as the most important factor of the three. In consequence of this all may go well for a hundred years ; but it will be otherwise in the hundred years which follow these ; and again in the hundred years which follow them. It would have been more reasonable to have ascertained what was the measurement of the annual or ceuteuial pro- duction of wood, and to have divided the area in accord- ance with this produce instead of in accordance with the demand. Nor is it any objection to this that in that case the work for which the fuel is required must be limited accordingly. The limitation must come sooner or later, and it is bad economy to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. A like principle is applicable to forests yielding timber; but it is in connection with forests yielding fuel that the subject comes under consideration here. And in connection with this it falls to be mentioned that the determination of the measurement of wood produced in a year, a decade, or a century, is more complicated than may at first be supposed. The relative increase in cubic measurement varies in a tree at different ages. It does so to such an extent that in trees which grow vigorously to the age of 150 years more wood may be obtained in the course of 300 years from three fellings, a hundred years apart, than from two fellings 150 years apart. And in coppice, possibly more wood may be obtained in 300 years by felling once in forty years than by felling only once in sixty years. The age at which trees should be felled with a view to procure from them the maximum of produce, whether of timber or of 150 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. firewood, is a point to which the scientific forester finds it necessary in many cases to give special attention ; and this is not the same for all kinds of trees, nor for all forests of the same kind of trees, varying as these do in soil and latitude and exposure. In the case of two woods or forests in the Govern- ment of Ufa we have it stated :— ' 5. After a lapse of forty years the cleared forest is again fit for felling. In the cleared sections the forest grows thicker than it was before ' 10. The young growth grows more than double as compared with the old wood that is cut/ Much more explicit information than this would be re- quired to enable a scientific forester to give a scientific deliverance on several questions, all of them of essential importance to a satisfactory determination of the best treatment to which such forests should be subjected in accordance with the most advanced forest science of the day; but apparently in the opinion of those who are engaged in the management of these forests, when they are felled in a cycle of forty years more wood is produced by young woods on ground which had been cleared, than was produced there by the virgin forest. The fact may be apparently inconsistent with the gradual diminution of woods and forests in France and in other countries on the Continent of Europe during a century and a-half, and more, that this mode of exploita- tion was followed there ; and with the diminution of woods, and continuous rise in the price of wood required as fuel in the metallurgical works in the Ural and other districts in which this mode of exploitation has been followed. Apparently inconsistent it may be ; but it is not necessarily incompatible with these other facts. It remains to be seen whether the increased productive- ness will be sustained in a second and a third crop ; I antici- pate that it will not. But be this as it may — a cycle of the same duration — forty years — will not necessarily be equally adapted to other kinds of trees, or to the same CAUSES OF DIMINISHED SUPPLY OF WOOD. 151 kinds of trees grown under different conditions. Any cycle determined solely by the produce required for metallurgical operations may prove too brief for the trees to yield the quantity of timber required ; and had the cycle in this case been one of twenty-five years, instead of one of forty years, the result might have been different. CHAPTER IX. PARTING GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN THE DISTRICT. REMOTE as once Siberia seemed, and was with the time required to journey thither viewed as the measurement, it is no longer to the traveller by steam aland that is afar off. ' We quitted Kazan/ writes Dr Lansdell, ' on Monday morning in one of Lubinoff's steamers, and, after proceed- ing two or three hours down the Volga, left that river to finish its career of 2,200 miles, whilst we turned into one of its affluents, the Kama, which is no mean river in itself, having a course of 1,400 miles. The junction of the two streams presents a fine expanse of water, but the banks are too flat to be pretty. Steamboat travelling in Russia is not expensive, the first-class fare from Nijni Novgorod to Perm, a four days' journey, being only 36s. ' Those who have hitherto written of journeys to Siberia have told of a dismal drive from Perm to Ekaterineburg; but this misfortune did not fall to our lot, since in the autumn of 1878 a railway was opened over the mountains, and the journey is now accomplished in about four-and- twenty hours. The distance is 312 miles, and between the two termini are about 30 stations.* * Of the three divisions, the Northern or barren Ural, as the Russians call it, begin- ning at the source of the Pechora, is the most elevated and the least known. The Southern Ural begins about midway between Perm and Orenburg, and descends to the banks of the Ural river. It is a pastoral country, and about 100 miles in width. The range is here less than 3000 feet in height. The Central Ural may be considered as a wide undulation, beginning on the west on the banks of the Kama. Perm, situated on the right bank of the river, is 378 feet above the sea level, and on the post road to Ekaterineburg the highest point is 1,638 feet, which, if my reckoning is correct, is 40 feet less than the highest station on the railway. I set my aneroid at Perm, and fou:)d that at the fourth station, Seleenka, a distance of 172 miles, we had mounted 470 feet ; the next 22 miles brought us down again to 120 feet, after which for 60 miles we con- tinued to ascend to Bisir, which registered 1,300 feet above Perm, and was the highest station on the road. Level ground succeeded for about 30 miles to the border station, after which in 50 miles we descended 750 feet to Sha'tanka, 10 miles beyond which we had remounted 200 feet ; and on this level we kept to Iset, the last station but one. The road then descended about 150 feet to Ekaterineburg, which is said to be 858 feet above the sea level. GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN THE DISTRICT. 153 ' From the prominence given in maps of Europe to the Ural chain, one is apt from childhood to expect something grand. The entire length of the range, including its con- tinuation in Novaia Zemlia, is about 1,700 miles. Its highest peak, however, does not attain to more than 6000 feet, and many parts of the range are not more than 2000 feet above the sea level. No part of it is permanently covered with snow. Travellers by the old route describe, in passing it, a never-failing object of interest on the frontier in the shape of a stone, on one side of which is written " Europe " and on the other " Asia," across which, of course, an English boy could stride, and announce that he had stood in two quarters of the globe at once. Travellers by the new route miss this opportunity ; but they have its equivalent in three border stations, one of which is called " Europa" the next '< Ural" and the third " Asia" through which those who have journeyed can say what no other travellers can, that they have passed by rail from one quarter of the globe into another.' I have, in a preceding chapter, brought forward accounts of the floral beauty and forest character of the country. No less interesting accounts have been given of the social intercourse and luxurious living to be enjoyed in Ekater- ineburg. Some of the accounts of this given by visitors have savoured more of animal than intellectual enjoyment; but even this is not in keeping with the views generally enter- tained in regard to life in Siberia. My deceased friend, Mr Wilkinson, gives yet another peep into life here. There is a monastery in Ekaterineburg which is of some fame in that region, and deservedly so. My friend, writing to me of a visit which he made to it, told: — ' We have heard a great deal of the dead weight of innumer- able drones and non-producers hanging like a millstone on the neck of Russia, a vast army, consisting of monks and nuns, and chinovnicks great and small, &c., &c. There are said to be eight or nine millions residing in monasteries alone j and yet besides these, apparently you meet with 154 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. begging nuns and lazy monks all over Russia ; still I think the figure must be overstated. However, if all the mon- astic establishments were like the one in Ekaterineburg, they are not only deserving of toleration but of all praise and encouragement, for it is nothing more nor less than a, reformatory, industrial, and educational home. I had not been long in Ekaterineburg before I was told I ought to pay my devoir to the lady abbess at the nunnery. The following Easter I embraced the opportunity, sent in my card, and was soon ushered into a large, light, well furnished suite of rooms ; but quite monastic in their style. There was a freezing depression about it. The doors, walls, blinds, table-cloths, furniture covers, all white as snow, but no curtains, and few carpets. There was a freezing depression about it, but I was not long left to pursue my reveries alone, I soon heard that there was life and joyousness even in a nunnery, as a young bouyant nun came skipping and humming through the rooms, but when she caught a glance of me she immediately threw herself ioto the regulation slow, demure carriage ; bent herself into a right angle as she bowed, and passed on for the head-dress and veil of the lady superior, that had been inadvertently left on the table. By-and-by I soon heard the measured stately tread as of a procession. I rose as the old lady was led in between two senior sisters, secretary and treasurer of the establishment. ' They all bowed very low, I did the same, when the mother stepped forward, offered me her hand, and we kept bowing so long, with such low revential inflections, that I was afraid our heads would come into collision. 'I then had the honour to Ohreepto se Vatsia, inter- changing salutations with the venerable lady, kissing three times orthodox fashion. She then politely invited me to be seated, thanked me for the unexpected pleasure of my visit. Tea and lemon was served, then wines and zakusky* Capital institution that of Russia, handing the cup that cheers but not inebriates, at every hour of the day. They will not let you go out as you come in j and what can be GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN THE DISTRICT. 155 nicer than that delicious beverage to help the genial flow of conversation. We chatted and sipped our tea, she asking a great many questions about our English customs, church holidays, &c. ; begged that I would repeat the visit now that we were no longer strangers ; professed a great admiration for the English; believes them to be a religious, philan- thropic, and missionary people; knows all about our various societies and voluntary contributions, &c., &c. I then took my leave, thinking I had seen the last of the abbess of Ekaterineburg till next Easter; but most wonderful to say before the holidays are over up comes driving to my door a carriage and four, with out riders, when Mother Matrony is announced. Of course " at home." I was quite a lion after, as she never returns the visit of any but the Bishop, though all the nobility and gentry of the town consider themselves bound to pay court at the palace of the lady abbess. She has the highest rank of any bishop or general in Ekaterineburg, and is always visited by any of the Imperial family passing through Ekaterineburg. I shortly accepted the invitation to go and see the monastery ; when she personally conducted me through the whole establishment. I was much struck with the order, cleanliness, and industry that pervaded the whole place. She conducts a very large and profitable business in wax candles, from the tall and highly em- bellished church mould to the tiniest taper. I thought — this is a business I could dispense with ; then I thought these poor girls had better be making church candies than doing nothing, or worse ; and I thought if I can't worship with a candle what right have I to quarrel with those that can't worship without. I thought much better have too much ritual than none at all. A. shrewd, clover old lady that ! She pointed with great pride to the church paintings and decorations, all done by her own daughters, and when she asked me what I thought about them I was rather in a fix. "Well," I said, " they are not from the pencil of Rosa Bonheur nor Angilicia Kaufman, but they are very fair, considering who have done them — a 156 FOBESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. little too highly coloured perhaps." She borrowed from me the Life of Christ and other books. The idea of nuns copying subjects from Raphael ! The grounds, cemetery, and large cabbage and flower gardens, are all kept in nice prim order by the nuns ; so they had something else to do besides pray. I stopped to service ; but I would rather hear the chanting of the monks at Nevsky monastery than that of the nuns of Ekaterineburg. They do try the contralto, but there are too many squeaking trebles amongst them to make good harmony. There was nothing I disliked about the whole house excepting the obsequious, servile manner in which the principals in each department had to come and kiss her hand on presenting themselves ; but she is highly spoken of as being remarkably kind, patient, and forbearing; and I have no doubt she had plenty of exer- cise for those Christian virtues in such a large community. All had a healthy, happy look about them. The bread, fish, and vegetables were all sweet and good, without stint or measure. Everything they wear is home-made, and excellent bootmakers they are, besides making fancy work of every kind for sale. She is open to receive any orphan, homeless wanderer, or repentant madeleine. She has upwards of 700 souls in her establishment, and she is rapidly extending the institution, in her own way doing a very good work. Never shall I forget the polite and cour- teous kindness of the lady abbess of Ekaterineburg.' In Russia we meet with an institution in full vigour, which is gradually disappearing, if it has not entirely dis- appeared, from our own country. I refer to that of fairs. The great fair of Nijni Novgorod is still one of the wonders of the world. Amongst others still famous is that of Irbit in the Ural, on the northernmost route by which Siberia is entered from Russia. It is held annually during the whole month of February, commencing on the first day of the month, and being closed by the 1st of March. Of this my friend and correspondent, Mr Wilkinson, wrote to me : — GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN THE DISTRICT. 157 1 1 had heard a good deal about Irbit and of the Asiatics, and the number of interesting things to be found there ; but " Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." Evidently I had expected too much, for I was much disappointed, if not disgusted. You do find there a few Chinamen, Persians, Armenians, Bokharians, &c., but they are few in number, are lost in the mass, and when en- countered, they look as much out of their element as fish out of water. The chief business is done by Tartar and Siberian merchants. The greatest trade done there is in tea brought overland from Kiachta. Of packages of tea there are row after row, and pile upon pile — I am afraid now to say how many hundred thousand poods ; I think it was three — pure China tea, for which you must pay double the price in retail, and find it not so good, because mixed with the Canton and Indian teas. I have heard of tea sold there at 300 roubles a pound, but I have never seen or tasted tea of a higher price than 50 roubles. You find there also cotton, wool, madder, &c., from Bokhara and the steppes, but not in such quantities as you might expect. There is a good trade done in furs, in skins, and in fish. Heaps upon heaps of these delicious Siberian fish, seven and eight feet long, and five poods in weight ; and shoubes at all prices from 50 to 5000 roubles. But the principal articles are prints and fancy goods, iron and cutlery, taken there to meet the traders in the steppes, in Siberia, and the Ural. Haberdashery and drapery alone were said to be sold to the amount of 8,000,000 roubles. 1 How do you think they carry on this trade ? The buyer must first pay off last year's bills, and settle old accounts if he can ; then he gets a fresh stock of goods on twelve, twenty-four, and sometimes thirty-six months' bills, as the Russian manufacturers must sell all off on such terms as they can. It won't do either to bring the goods back or to let them remain there till the following year. The Government and other banks are there also doing business on the same footing — viz., lading and teaming, cashing and discounting, receiving with one hand, 158 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. paying back with the other. Of course, there are failures and liquidations every year, as there are sure to be on such a rotten foundation as that — all on credit — and all trading on Government money, which consists also of bills of credit. The wholesale merchants and manufacturers from Moscow and the surrounding district put on 15 and 20 per cent, per annum for this long credit. The retailer makes systematically a compound with his creditors about every five or six years, after getting all in order for this, And this seems to be an established and understood thing among them. ' During the fair there are said to be in Irbit at one time from 200,000 to 300,000 people— that is why lodgings are so dear, from 50 to 250 roubles a month. At other times there are only about 7000 inhabitants. There are no hotels, but there are several restaurants — the Exchange gostinistya, or restaurant, has a good menu, but there is an abominable feature about all of them, the least said about which the better. In fact, all yarmokies which I have seen, except Troitsk — and Nijni more than any of them, are just a den of infamy, and a sink of iniquity, without any effort at concealment. The roads to Irbit, after you leave the Siberian track at Wamaskloff, are something execrable— over vast drifts of snow on the open plains, which are worn into deep hollows, one after another in close succession, by the great amount of sledges passing over them night and day without intermission for two months before the fair ; so that, as you are dragged over these, trenches, I call them, you go jolting and rocking up and down, from side to side, like being in a chopping sea, and experience the same unpleasant sensation, only in a worse and aggravated form ; and this from year to year, with- out any attempt being made by anybody towards ameliora- ting the intolerable misery that everybody is growling about. After the fair is over, if you return, you do find a man or two here and there pattering and shuffling about on the road, but as they say themselves, " One man on a plain is not a battle." ' Mention has been made of the fair at Troitsk, Troitsk GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN THE DISTRICT. 159 fair is the very reverse of this every way in June and July. In the first place, you go bowling merrily along over good, hard, dry roads, on a sandy soil, at the rate of sixteen or eighteen versts an hour. I have often done a stage of twenty - five versts in seventy-five minutes, and without the usual accom- paniments of jerks and jolts which you would think were going to dislocate every bone in your body. It is one of the most delightful journeys I ever made, through a very pretty and interesting country of iron and copper mines, marble works and gold washings, corn fields and pasture lands, interpersed here and there with woods of almost every kind, except the pine family. ' The Menobou Dbops, which means Court of Exchange, covers a vast area on the steppe, but it does not do any- thing like the amount of business it once did. Railways will knock all these yarmokies on the head in the long run, I suppose. It was very interesting to watch their long trains of camels bringing in the cotton, &c., from Yashkend, Khokand, Keia, Samarcand, Bokhara, &c., besides hundreds of yokes of oxen bringing in the wool, salt, &c., in clumsy, creaking, Asiatic carts from the Ker- ghis steppes. You wonder where are all the merchants, and where is all the business done, but as you pass round you find a group of five or six in a ring, on every spot, all cross-legged. Perhaps one is turning goods slowly and carefully over, layer after layer, as if they wanted to spin the job out as long as they could, barely raising their eyes or deigning to look till you are gone past. Then there is a whispered buzz of enquiry to know if you are bringing any fish to their net. ' Troitsk is on the border of that vast sea of sand called a steppe. It is a quiet unassuming town, because of the pre- dominence of those peaceful sober Mahommedans. There are five mechets there — all little shabby tumble-down wooden buildings — babagans I call them, only ,those on the plain here are a great deal handsomer. The Tartars are all either very mean or very poor — a bit of both, I 160 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. think. I have seen several grand Mahommedan edifices which they have begun to build, and were not able to finish. They don't worship and honour either their Allah or their Prophet much with their pockets. But of all the bare and wretched poverty I have ever seen, as you pass through the Tartar and Kalmuck villages, it beats all. And yet there are plenty of rich merchants among them ; but they have all quite a propensity for petty pedling in preference to hard work. The first time I heard their muezzins calling out from those tall and slender minarets the summons to prayer, I enquired of a Tartar gentle- man I was with, what it all amounted to, and he replied with great gravity, " Allah is great and good. Allah is one, and Mahomet is his Prophet. Haste all ye faithful to his temple, and worship before him ! " And they well and willingly obey the call ; for while that trumpet voice resounds far and wide you will see them hurrying from all parts, some even running from fear of being too late I wonder how many of us run for fear of being too late for the first offering of praise and prayer? They have a reverend patriarchial look about them in their long flow- ing green kholats, ponderous snow-white turbans, and soft green embroidered boots. As soon as they are all assembled, and that human bell ceases to ring, you immediately see another remarkable scene. All the streets are again astir, but this time it is with the veiled wives and daughters of the devotees, paying their flying gossipping visits, while 'their husbands and fathers are at prayer, on rude conveyances very like what you see lomovoi isvoscTiiks have here, only lighter, with a board, a carpet, and a cushion thrown on the top. The veils are only shawls or large handkerchiefs worn over the top of their fur caps. The old and not very nice make no attempt at concealment, but the young and would-be beauty, fat, fair, and fifteen, after taking a good peep at you through the opening of her guady shawl, generally finds some excuse for throwing it open as she is passing you, while she pretends to rectify some part of her attire, affecting not to see you : she does not GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN THE DISTRICT. 161 display her Tartaric charms, but she invites notice. They are not very elegant, those Tartar ladies, with their legs dangling over one side of their black four-wheeled bier. As the Irishman said when he was in a sedan without a bottom — "If it were not for the honour of riding, I should prefer walking." ' One day I was glad to have an invitation to tea with a Mahommedan gentleman from Bokara ; for you may depend upon it that amongst these Asiatics you find more true gentility, genuine courtesy, politeness, and refinement of manners, than you do among all the tailor-made snobs and swells in London and Paris put together. The house was rather stuffy and stifling in its looks, as there were so many eider down pillows about. The lady of the house and her daughter, after a shaking of hands, went and stood near the door, just inside the drawing-room, dressed in rich silk velvets, lined and trimmed with the sable fur, the best of beaver caps, and long lace veils down to their heels. They then bowed and retired, but shortly reappeared in another costume of another colour, but equally extravagant in costliness ; and this was done I don't know how many times, till all their best finery was shown off, I suppose. But their hospitality was overwhelming, even sickening — what with fruits, jams, confectionery, nuts, and what not, served up in honey. All you have to do, if you would please your host, is to eat and drink, and drink and eat incessantly ; but no wines, nothing but delicious tea and coffee. I had the impertinence to ask the gentleman how many wives he had, or might have ? " Might have four ; had only one. Many of us have only one now— better one than more." " Indeed, why ? " " Well, when you have one wife her fingers are hooked, and she sticks to your money, but when you have above one they have all got straight, open hands ; it is nobody's interest to hold fast. They won't save for one another ; they all try to cost you as much as they can. So all your money slips right through, and there is none left for the children." I am afraid this Mahommedan was M 162 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. not the only man whose conjugal affection was governed by selfishness. ' I went one evening to see their worship. I was told I might stand in the porch where they leave their outer shoes, but on no account must I dare to defile their inner court of prayer. I thought of that passage in the history of Moses — " Draw not nigh hither ; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for where thou standest is holy ground." Very slow and solemn were those prayers, commencing at the door, all on their knees in straight, uniform rows ; then at a signal from the mollah, they all rise, bow, and advance a few steps farther, then fall down prostrate to the floor, and so on up to the altar, such as it is. It reminded me of the passage, " O come let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker." And I asked myself whether we Nonconformists have not too little devotion and worship in our services, and whether our lazy, slovenly way of sitting and lolling in our pews during prayers offered to the Deity be not an insult to the Divine Majesty of our Lord and Master. We dare not serve our employers so, much less our Queen. It was a very quiet service — still enough to suit even the Quakers. No singing ; a few passages from the Alcoran, droned by the mollah ; then all hurried back to their homes and their business. And this is done five times a day. Once a week is enough, and too much, for some of us. ' On the outskirts of the town, on the bank of the river, is a fine long boulevard, commanding an extensive view of the plain, the yarmonka, and the motley crew of caravans and Asiatics there. There is a good orchestra playing in the pavilion every evening. The aristocracy, the Cossack officers, and the Russian officials, are all there with their families promenading about. But those stolid, imperturb- able Mahommedans sit there cross-legged on the grass plots among the trees the whole evening talking stock, as if they grew there, I should like to have known their GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN THE DISTRICT. 1G3 thoughts. About nine o'clock they shamble off to their own quarter of the town ; which after that is as still as death — not a kabac or a drunken man to be seen. No Sir Wilfrid Lawson's Permissive Bill required here ; but that is because they are not Christians, I suppose. ' I never saw handsomer, more athletic looking men than those Bokharians and Central Asians — perfect Adonises every one of them, proud and noble in mein and bearing, especially when mounted. They say they can do anything on a horse, but nothing off. Well, you won't catch them at hard work certainly. And it is no exaggera- tion to say that their piercing black eyes sparkle like diamonds; but the Baskirs, the Kalmuks, and the Ker- ghis, are poor, miserable, repulsive-looking beings — the very quintessence of Mongolian ugliness. ( I saw another, to me, very exciting scene. As I learned I should be some time in Troitsk, I went to the police office to send home a copy of my passport ; but I found it was not a police office at all, as Troitsk is under a military commander of the Orenburg Kossae province. While waiting there a great commotion occurred in the street — people running, drums beating, soldiers marching — and while I was looking through the window all vanished out of the hall, and I was left alone. I, too, made a speedy exit, as I thought there must be a fire. I enquired from my isvoscliik, (driver) what it all meant. He said, "Follow on, and then you will see." I did so, and soon came up to the crowd, who were swarming round a tumbrel waggon. On an elevated platform was a young woman, sitting with her back to the horses, and her face to the merry, laugh- ing, eager throng. Her screams were drowned by the rataplan of the drums, as well they might be, for she was weeping and writhing most piteously ; but she was securely strapped back, arms, and feet. When we arrived at the echafote all was hushed as she was taken down and chained to a pillar in the centre, the military authorities 164 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. standing all round. After the executioner had made all ready, he rolled up his red shirt-sleeves (his face redder than his shirt), threw a white towel over his shoulder, drained off a tumbler of liquid fire, and took the murderous looking whip in his hand. The chief officer then read her sentence, which I could not hear, she looking calm and pale as a corpse. A priest then advanced and confessed her, waving the cross several times over her head. As soon as Jack Ketch prepared to strike the first blow, he was stopped by the military commander, who read out a commutation of her sentence to transportation to Siberia. I felt thankful that both she and I were spared the tor- ture, but there was a hum of dissatisfaction running through the mob as the poor swooning creature was taken down and tumbled into the cart and straw. They had been cheated out of the fun. She had been condemned for child murder, they said. I then drove back to finish my business, but nobody turned up, and I immediately heard the drums beating again, and I saw two convicts being borne off this time ; but I had had enough, and thought I must wait here. I had not waited long before the executioner was brought in bound. It appeared that he had no sooner begun to flog one of these poor culprits, who was condemned to receive eighty lashes, because he had escaped from Siberia — not the first time either — when he was discovered picking something up from the stage, which turned out to be a letter containing three roubles, begging of him to use the instrument of torture as ten- derly as possible : consequently the execution was stopped. Such a flagrant act of dishonesty as that must be visited with condign punishment ! As the man was led off in irons to be sent back to the Governor of Orenburg, I thought how these men strain at a gnat when they can swallow a camel. ' I have often been asked about the climate up there. Well, I myself asked that question of a German when I first went to Ekaterineburg. He answered, " I will tell you GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN THE DISTRICT. 165 what my father always said in reply to that question ; he said there are eight months winter uninterrupedly, that was a settled thing, then two months spring, and two months autumn, all the rest are summer." That is a little exaggerated. I found it almost invariably two months only without frost, more or less. You can't set out your annuals before the 15th of June. I have had them all frozen up on the 25th of June ; and once during my resi- dence there there was a heavy fall of snow on the 5th of July, and two men found frozen in a brick shed not far from my house — having lain down drunken no doubt overnight. The cold temperature ranges about from 15° to 25° Reaumour, and sometimes 35° and 41°, but not often nor long, though I have seen mercury beaten on the anvil like lead. In the summer, when the wind is south- east, it is nearly stifling. In the spring I have seen the mosquitoes in clouds hanging over the woods. The only protection to the skin is turpentine or smoke, so you have to decide which you can best endure — stink or stings.' CHAPTER X. LABOURING POPULATION. IT may have been observed that in the mention made of concessions given to the enterprising men by whom the mining and metallurgical operations of the district were developed, there are included, besides forests and water power, lands and serfs. This was in accordance with what before the emancipation of the serfs was customary in Russia. Workmen were as necessary to the accom- plishment of the enterprise as were ores and metals, and firewood and motive power. And the serfs being bound to the estates, workmen were provided by con- cessions of estates with a number of serfs upon them. In such circumstances the serfs might be of more value to the enterprising engineer than was the land. But they could not be purchased as might be slaves elsewhere. An Englishman resident in Russia, whom I knew well, had a manufactory of white lead, which was deadly in its effects upon the workmen, and he frequently required to replace those whom he employed in the works. It was said of him that to do this he arranged with some landed proprietor to purchase a small strip of his property — if possible one comparatively densely peopled. Having done so, the serfs were his to employ them as he chose. Having drafted them off to his works, he had no further use for the land, and he made the original holder welcome to resume the use, if not also formal possession, of this. Let it not be forgotten that he was an Englishman ! There are sometimes seen gleams of light in the darkest sky, and gleams of humour in the saddest scenes. I was told, if I recollect aright, by his son, that on one LABOURING POPULATION. lG7 occasion he was able to trace a robbery of his hen roost to one of his serfs ; and he had the man brought before him and charged with the crime. When asked by his owner, who was not in private life a very cruel man, ' Ivan, Ivano- vitch, did you kill that hen ? ' To the surprise of all, and the discomfiture of the sternness of his interrogator, the man replied, with a look and tone which implied that he expected ready approval of what he had done, ' Yes, Baron/ ' You have done very wrong Ivan, Ivanovitch/ aaid his owner with all gravity, ' You have stolen it and eaten it ; it was very wrong to do so.' ' No, Baron/ was the rejoinder, in a tone of surprise and offended innocence, which made it impossible to tell whether the man was a rogue or a fool, ' It is still your property ; it was yours, and I am yours you know ; so it is still yours.' Well, the man who was doomed to deadly work, though he did not know it, might be allowed to have his joke ! By such concessions as have been referred to, a supply of workmen was provided when the mining and metallur- gical works of the district were originated. And as these works are not necessarily very deadly, their children and descendants also supplied workmen for the works. Now it is otherwise. The estates remain the property of the barons ; but not so the serfs. Even then a serf might obtain permission from his baron to leave the estate for years, and work elsewhere, on payment of what was called obrok, an annual payment varying in amount with the probable earnings of the serf, and ranging from one pound to three hundred, the serf being liable to have his leave of absence recalled at any time. And of this national usage serfs from other estates may have availed themselves, and found employment in the mines and works. Now, though serfdom has been abolished, the native labouring population of the district having been employed in these works for successive generations, they probably constitute the great bulk of the men employed. But 168 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. there, as in other parts of the Empire, men from a distance may come and get employment for a week, a month, a year, free to come, free to go, excepting in so far as they may bind themselves by contract ; and ready enough to avail themselves of this freedom, they acquire with- out difficulty some knowledge of, and expertness in, the little required of each to do — for the Russian peasant is in many cases an imitative being — and with this know- ledge and experience they may expect to get somewhat higher wages from another employer. I have great admiration for the emancipators of the serfs, and full sympathy with the emancipated. But from what I know I think it not improbable that that measure, one of justice to the serf, may have had not a little to do with the present depression of the works here. Of the peasantry in Siberia, Barry says : ' The peasants of Siberia are found to be more civilised and better edu- cated than those of the other parts of Russia ;' and he adds, ' this is doubtless due to the influence of the political exiles who, from time to time, have been sent from the centres of civilisation to live among them, and many of whom, having no business to occupy them, spend their time in the charitable occupation of teaching the children of the peasantry in their neighbourhoods. ' The peasantry of Siberia are cleaner and better dressed — altogether a finer class of men — than the peasants of other parts. They seem to talk and express their opinions with more freedom from restraint, and also to be better informed of what is passing in the world than their countrymen further south. Altogether, they seem to have been more liberally educated and trained, and the traveller cannot fail to be struck with the improvement he must notice in the general condition and appearance of the people as he advances further north towards the Siberian deserts. 1 The rise of the scale of civilisation in Siberia is indi- cated, amongst other ways, by the improved condition of LABOURING POPULATION. 169 the females of the population. In Central Russia the women are treated, as all uncivilised people treat women, with neglect and tyranny. She is left to do the hard work, and slave at field labour, while her lord and master alternates the amusement of drinking and sleeping. . . . Now, in Siberia, this evidence of barbarism is not so prominent. There the woman takes her proper place, looking after her household and her children, whilst the man attends to his proper duties also.' ' But what of the exiles?' I hear some one say. ' What of the exiles of Siberia, of whose sufferings we, in the days of our youth, and our fathers before us, and our fathers' fathers, have read with deep interest and sympathy and tears — what of them?' To see them we must go further afield. Siberia is a wide word. When a traveller from Europe reaches the summit of the Urals ' there stretches far before him/ says Dr Lansdell, c a region known as Russia in Asia, the dimensions of which are very hard for the mind to realise. It measures 4000 miles from east to west, about 2000 from north to south, and covers nearly five and three-quarter millions of square miles. It is larger by two millions of square miles than the whole of Europe ; about twice as big as Australia, and nearly one hundred times as large as England.' All this is Siberia ; and the mines to which the exiles are sent lie further to the east, and the more remote of them thousands of miles away towards the rising sun. But we are on the border land of Siberia, and in a position from which something may be learned of them. Herbert Barry, formerly director of the Chapeloffsky estates and iron works in the Government of Vladimir, Tamboff, and Nijni Novgorod, and author of a work en- titled Russian Metallurgical Works, already cited, and another work entitled Russia in 1870, writes in regard in exiles in Siberia : — 'There are two distinct classes of detenus— criminal prisoners and political exiles — and these again are sub- 170 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. divided into several divisions. First, as to the criminal prisoners. The worst culprits only are sent to work in the mines — mostly in the silver mines of the Nerchinsk district. As these are always the worst sort of criminals, guilty of murder or other similar crimes, and as the work in the mines is not particularly hard nor injurious to health, and as, moreover, all the people working in the mines now live above ground, they may be considered a good deal better off than they deserve to be. ... ' We hang our murderers ; the French guillotine theirs ; the Russians, more wisely and humanely, in my opinion, use theirs for certain kinds of labour, and take the greatest care of their health. * Another class of criminals are those sent to various kinds of forced labour above ground ; and the remainder are only exiled to certain spots where they are obliged to live under the surveillance of the police : formed into little colonies among themselves. I have never heard any reason why the Russians should be said to treat their criminals worse than other nations. ' As to political offenders, they are subject to no further punishment than is involved in their compulsory residence within a certain distance of some given centre. So long as they do not go beyond their alioted circle they are in all other respects perfectly free. Many among them have entered the employment of Government entirely of their own accord. Many of them also are now in a better posi- tion in Siberia than they would be in their own country, and have no wish to return home. Some, on the other hand, are in indifferent circumstances. One miner told me lately that in his works he was employing two men who had been colonels in the army at 80 kopecs a day for each [at that time from two shillings to two shillings and eightpence — say half-a-crown sterling], I do not believe that there is one instance of a political exile, properly so- called, working in the mines, or doing any other kind of forced work for Government account. ' It has been too common a custom to mix up some of LABOURING POPULATION. 171 the criminals with political prisoners, in speaking of these. So you may hear that a certain prisoner is a " political," and on going carefully into his case you will find that although the man may have been mixed up with politics in some way or another, yet he was sent to Siberia for some crime quite distinct from his political tendencies. ' I am not/ says he, 'giving my own opinion only, which, like that of other travellers, is very liable to error ; but I am speaking the opinions of men educated and living on the spot, honest in their opinions, and well able to judge ; and I think it only honest, as I have had unusual oppor- tunities of collecting information on the subject, to record what I have heard and seen. c It is not my business to justify the act of banishing men from their homes, often for a mere expression of opinion. Their lot is doubtless unhappy enough, in the mere fact of their exile from all that is near or dear to them. It does not need to be painted in blacker colours than the truth will justify, nor exaggerated by false state- ments of cruelties and sufferings which do not exist/ ' Of late years,' says he again, ' a great improvement has been made in the means of transporting prisoners of all kinds to their destinations. Formerly they walked on foot the whole distance, and months were consumed on the journey, and many fell victims to the fatigue. Now steamers carry them to Perm, and from Perm they are sent on to their destination by carriages. So carefully are they looked after now that in winter they do not travel on the roads. . . . ' Five years is the shortest term of punishment. The worst kind of criminals have their head shaved, some on one side only, and some all over.' A different account of the treatment to which noble exiles, banished to Siberia in the beginning of the reign of Nicholas, and their noble wives were subjected, is given by Atkinson in his volume entitled, Travels in the Regions of the Upper and Lower Amoor ; and statements similar to 172 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. those made by him were made to me when resident in St. Petersburg, at the time I have stated, when, as I have also stated, I had the gratification of meeting with one of those noble women who had voluntarily shared the exile of her husband and her sons, and only returned after their death. My opinion is that both accounts are substantially correct j that of Barry and of others accordant therewith, not less than that which Atkinson has given ; and I find no diffi- culty in recording them as statements of facts. The statements of Barry are in accordance with general impressions which I received while resident in St. Peters- burg from 1833 to 1840, in the reign of Nicholas. At that time I heard the common gossip of the day ; and from this I received my impressions. Beyond this occasionally infor- mation reached me incidentally and unsought through different channels; but my opportunities of forming an independent opinion of any value were few. The treat- ment to which exiles, whom I knew after their return to Russia, had been subjected in Siberia, was never a sub- ject of conversation between us; and what I did learn of this was from others more intimately acquainted with them or their connections. I had something to do with supplying the exiles with New Testaments, but this never brought me into personal contact with exiles ; and only into indirect communication with exiles setting out on their weary journey. Though the Russian Bible Society was virtually suppressed, the Scriptures were allowed to be sold as before. In the year 1828 two benevolent ladies in Eng- land suggested the propriety of supplying the Holy Scrip- tures to such of the exiles banished to Siberia as might be able to read. They offered to contribute annually towards the expense of the supply, and wrote to St. Petersburg to Mr John Yenning, who was a member of the committee appointed to superintend the discipline of prisons, re- questing him to undertake the distribution of the books LABOURING POPULATION. 173 amongst those for whom they were intended. Mr Venning acceded at once to their request ; and when he found it necessary to return to England, Dr Haas, of Moscow, kindly undertook the work. And it was then found that Moscow was a much better place than St. Petersburg for carrying out the benevolent suggestion. In a few years after this a sufficient number of New Testaments were placed at the disposal of Dr Haas to enable him to give a copy to every criminal passing through Moscow, the number of which must have been very great, as to that city prisoners were sent from twenty-two of the Govern- ments of Russia, that they may be conveyed thence to the various penal settlements in the interior. Dr Haas was afterwards permitted to extend the boon to a numerous class of persons attached to the convoys, to facilitate the distribution of the daily allowance of Government for the support of the criminals while pursuing their journey. These were chiefly discharged soldiers. They were neither exiles nor prisoners, and they often envied the poor exiles the copy of the Scriptures granted to these, but not to them. And it soon appeared that if they could be pro- cured, many copies? might be satisfactorily disposed of amongst these outcasts of society, and through them con- veyed to various and distant parts of the Empire. Dr Haas was a Eoman Catholic, but he took a deep interest in the circulation of the sacred volume. He was at the head of the prison discipline committee of Moscow, and his situation supplied him with many opportunities of ameliorating the spiritual condition of the wretched men going into exile. He had frequent interviews with them, while they were in confinement, and they had all to pass in review before him, as they set out on their long and toilsome journey. He availed himself of that oppor- tunity to present them with a copy of the New Testa- ment, seeing, himself, that it was entered in their little inventory of stores, that the officer in charge might be made responsible for its being delivered to them again on 174 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. their reaching their destination. He then addressed to each of them a few words of exhortation and counsel.* All of the copies thus distributed by Dr Haas during seven years which I spent in St. Petersburg, passed through my hands as the unpaid agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society. But this gave me no opportunity for learning, by personal observation, the treatment to which the exiles in exile were subjected. Dr Lansdell, however, has latterly travelled through the country from the Urals to the Amoor, personally distri- buting the Scriptures, and giving his attention specially to the condition of the exiles; and in his work, entitled Through Siberia, he has published his impressions and the observations on/which they were founded. In a lengthened notice of this work, which appeared in the Scotsman when it was published, it is stated : — ' The origin and the objects of the journey were some- what unusual. Mr Lansdell, who is in " holy orders," has travelled in almost every part of Europe, visiting prisons and hospitals, and distributing copies of the Bible and other religious books. A lady friend in Finland reminded him that Siberia was a fine field for this kind of mission work. " Parson Lansdell," she wrote, " do you go to Siberia ; " and, like a true knight-errant, with the aid of funds supplied by a " generous friend," he at once set his face for Tobolsk, His friends all assured him that there was no chance of the Siberian authorities allowing him * Nor was it the poor and the prisoner alone whose good he endeavoured to promote. His desire seemed to be ' as he had opportunity, to do good unto all men.' The late Emperor Alexander II., when heir-apparent, visited the public institutions of Moscow the prisons amongst the rest. On that occasion Dr Haas had the honour of con- ducting his Highness through the different cells ; and on leaving the dungeons in which great criminals were confined, he, in a solemn manner, said to him, 'May it please your Highness, there are four things which I urge every one leaving these cells to think of before it be too late : — Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell.' Having accom- panied the Grand Duke through the rest of the establishment, he led him into a small apartment in which he kept the New Testaments designed for distribution, and pre- senting to him a copy in Russ, one of those designed for the exiles, he said, ' In every other institution visited by your Highness you must have been presented with bread and salt ; allow me to present to you the Bread of Life.' The volume was graciously received, and handed by the Grand Duke to an aide-de-camp in attendance, with direc- tions to take charge of it till they got home. A copy of the New Testament in French was, at the same time, presented to the page in waiting. LABOURING POPULATION. 175 within their prison walls. In the event of his getting a glimpse of the interior of these convict establishments, he had steeled his mind to support the sight of the excruciating sufferings supposed to accompany Siberian exile. He was agreeably surprised to find that in neither respect were his expectations fulfilled. The prison authorities were most courteous and complacent in encouraging his evangelistic labours ; and all that need be said of these is, that Mr Lansdell succeeded in accomplishing the object of his ambition, which was " to put at least a copy of the New Testament, or of the Gospels, in every room of every prison, and every ward of every hospital, throughout Siberia." At the same time, the widest facilities were given him of informing himself regarding the arrangement of the Siberian prisons. These institutions are far from being perfect; it is hardly in the nature of things that they should be. But no such "horrors" as certain English politicians and journals are accustomed to expatiate upon were to be seen. On the contrary, the great and characteristic fault of the Siberian prisons is the laxity of the discipline. Most of the "Russian bar- barities " that are connected, in the popular mind, with the Siberian penal colonies refer to a day now long past, and, as Mr Lansdell says, are not more just, as a picture of the present condition of things in Russian prisons, than it would be a description of the pillory and ear-cropping as among the judicial punishments of England. Other stories are pure inventions, apparently set afloat to make political capital of. As an illustration of this, Mr Lansdell mentions the circumstantial account brought before Parliament by Mr Joseph Cowen, of the dreadful fate of " 700 persons, mostly men and women of education, packed in the hold of a small ship," and despatched by sea from Odessa to Saghalien, " the service for the ordi- nary transportation of criminals to Siberia," as a London paper explained, "being already overtaxed." Of these unfortunates, it was said, " 250 had died on board, 150 were landed in a dying state," &c. The facts are, as Mr 176 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. Lansdell shows, that the despatch of prisoners by the sea passage, instead of the overland route, was a humane measure of improvement, and that the large merchant steamer conveying the party in question arrived at Yladivostock a week or two before himself, the prisoners being all in excellent health, and not one death having occurred on the passage. He travelled by the (i convict route " across Asia, and his companion returned by the same road, at the very time that the roads were said to be blocked with convoys of exiles ; yet the whole number they met with, or definitely heard of, both in going and returning, did not, he thinks, amount to fifty. The fact is, that Siberian convicts are not, as a class, more deser- ving of sympathy than the occupants of any penal estab- lishment at borne; and it is generally the most desperate criminals that are sent to the far eastern settlements. Political prisoners are seldom to be seen in confinement. Mr Lansd ell's impression is, that " the greater number of them go to prison only for a short time, or not at all, and are then placed in villages and towns, where they are expected to get their living. Looking at the political prisoners I saw in the separate rooms of the various prisons, at those with whom I came into personal contact, and those of whom mention was made as living in the towns through which I passed, I think, if I had been commissioned to give a soverign to each, fifty coins would have sufficed for the purpose." The statistics obtained seem to show that, of those banished, only one seventh are condemned to hard labour; and their educational status may be gathered from the fact that, at the prison of Tiumen, where the exiles are brought from Europe and distributed over Asia, out of 470 prisoners, only 42 could read and write well, and 386 were wholly illiterate. Summing up his experiences, Mr Lansdell says : — ' " I have met with deep and almost universal conviction that the prisons of Siberia, compared with those of other countries, are intolerably bad. This I cannot endorse. A proper comparison would be between the Russian sent to LABOURING! POPULATION. 177 Siberia and the English convict as formerly transported to Botany Bay ; but comparing the convicts of the two nations as they now are, and taking the three primary needs of life — clothing, food, and shelter — the Russian convict proves to be fed more abundantly, if not better, than the English convict, and the clothing of the two, having respect to the dress of their respective countries, is very similar. A convict's labour in Siberia is certainly lighter than in England ; he has more privileges ; friends may see him ofterier and bring him food ; and he passes his time, not in the seclusion of a cell, nor under imposed silence, but among his fellows, with whom he may lounge, talk, and smoke. I am now looking at things from a prisoner's point of view, and referring more especially to his animal requirements. When we look at his intellectual, moral, and religious nature, then it must be allowed my former comparsion, as between Russian and English prisons, no longer holds good/' ' In these latter respects, he admits, the Russian system is sadly deficient; and one special hardship is, that the prisoner condemned to hard labour is robbed of Sunday rest. The Russian Criminal Code, while it has abolished capital punishment, except for murder, is not yet entirely purged of barbarous methods of punishment. The " knout" is no longer known, and Mr Lansdell found difficulty in getting a description of what it used to be like. The birch rod cannot be a formidable weapon, judging from the story told of a soldier who received 1 100 lashes for theft, and at the end of a fortnight came to Mr Lansdell's host, from whom he had stolen the goods, to ask for a glass of grog, remarking that " for a bottleful he would not mind having another 1100, if it might again be followed by a fine time in hospital." But the plete, a whip of twisted hide, which, however, is only used at three prisons in Eastern Siberia, must be a very efficient substitute for the knout. Mr Lansdell did not see it in operation, but the description he gives of it should take away any hankering for a closer acquaintance with it. The taking N 178 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. of the life of the criminal is simply at the discretion of the executioner who wields this murderous implement. It is used only in exceptional cases of incorrigibility — in fact, the prison director at Tiumen stated that, out of 80,000 exiles who had passed through his hands, only one had been flogged ; and the doubtful excuse is offered for it that, as an escaped criminal knows he can commit half- a-dozen murders without danger of hanging, some other strong deterrent is needed to protect the inhabitants. This is not by any means a fanciful danger, as may be judged by this account of an approach to the penal colony of Kara, in the Trans-Baikal province : — ' " As we drove along and darkness crept on, there passed us labouring men, who saluted us. ' Who/ said I, ' are they ? ' ' They are convicts,' said the Colonel (the com- mandant of the colony.) ' Convicts/ said I ; ' How then are they loose ?' ' Oh/ said he, ' a large proportion of the condemned — perhaps half— live out of their prisons in their houses en famille. But they ought not to be out after dark/ I then began to inquire respecting the crimes of the prisoners, and was informed that there were in the place about 800 murderers, 400 robbers, and 700 vagrants, or brodiagi (a class mostly composed of convicts who have escaped and been recaptured) ; and having been told what proportion of these were loose, I was not surprised to hear the Colonel say he usually, if possible, avoided being out at night. I approved of his caution." ' CHAPTER XL THE CONQUEST OF SIBERIA. WHILE engrossed with matters pertaining to forestry, and matters of such interest as mines of iron, of copper, and of gold, it may not have occurred to some of my readers that we have got beyond what was at one time considered the boundary of Europe. Yet such is the case. The Ural mountains, throughout much of their extent, constitute this boundary, and here they constitute the boundary between Russia and Siberia. Even in Perm, the produce of the soil, and the nationality, language, and customs of the inhabitants, partake decidedly of an Asiatic character ; but geographically it belongs to Russia. The boundary consists of hills rather than mountains ; the slope or inclination is slight, the elevations inconsider- able, and in many cases it appears more as a rolling, un- dulating country than even as a region of hills, and the traveller by the highway might fail to know when he had crossed the boundary line — but there stands at the spot an obelisk. It is a plain stone, with no other inscription than the word ' EUROPE 'on one side and ' ASIA' on the other, and is said to have been erected in honour of Yermak, a Cossack robber chief, who, towards the end of the sixteenth century atoned for his crimes by discovering and partly conquering Siberia for the Russians. ' Yermak,' writes Michie, ' being outlawed, found his way, with some two hundred adventurers, across the Ural. After pillaging the Tartars for some time, his handful of troops, i.e., robbers, became so wasted by constant fighting that he could no longer maintain himself amongst his numerous enemies. It then occurred to Yermak to return to Moscow, announce his discoveiy, and make his peace 180 FORESTRY IN -EASTERN RUSSIA. with the Tsar. The robber was promoted to the rank of a hero, and was appointed to command an expedition for the conquest of Siberia. Yermak first crossed the Ural in 1580, and in 1660 nearly all the Siberian tribes were subjugated by Russia.' In regard to the mountain range, he says: CI had formed great conceptions of this mountain chain, but the illusion was dispelled when, on inquiring for the Urals, I was pointed to dusky, wooded, undulating hills, in appear- ance not more imposing than the Lammermoor range in Scotland. I know not why thy are so darkly shaded on most of our maps, and made to look like a formidable barrier between the two continents. They certainly cover a broad expanse of country, but in elevation they are really insignificant, and rendered still more so in appearance by their very gradual rise from the level country. The eleva- tion in the latitude of Ekaterineburg is little more than 2000 feet above the sea; and the plain on the Siberian side being between 800 and 1000 feet in elevation, the gentle slope of the mountains makes them look diminutive.' Of the conquest of the country, Dr Lansdell tells : — ' It can hardly be said that Siberia was familiar to the Russians before the middle of the sixteenth century ; for, although at an earlier period an expedition had penetrated as far as the Lower Obi, yet its effects were not permanent. Later, Ivan Vassilievitch II. sent a number of troops over the Urals, laid some of the Tartar tribes under tribute, and in 1558 assumed the title of " Lord of Siberia.'' Kutchum Khan, however, a lineal descendant of Genghis Khan, punished these tribes for their defection, and regained their fealty, and so ended again for a while the result of the Russian expedition. A third invasion, however, was made in a way quite unex- pected. Ivan Vassilievitch II. had extended his conquests to the Caspian Sea, and opened commercial relations with Persia ; but the merchants and caravans were frequently pillaged by hordes of banditti, called Don Cossacks, whom the Tsar attacked, killing some, and taking prisoner or THE CONQUEST OF SIBEKIA. 181 scattering others. Among the dispersed were 6000 free- booters, under the command of a chief named Yermak Timofeeff, who made their way to the banks of the Kama, to a settlement at Orel, belonging to one of the Strog- anoff's, where they were entertained during a dreary winter, and where Yermak heard of an inviting field of adventure, lying on the other side of the Urals. Thither he determined to try his fortunes, and after an unsuccess- ful attempt in the summer of 1578, started again with 5000 men in June of the next year. It was eighteen months before he reached the small town of Tchingi, on the banks of the Tura ; by which time his followers had dwindled down, by skirmishes, privation, and fatigue, to 1500 men. But they were all braves. Before them was Kutchum Khan, prince of the country, already in position, and, with numerous troops, resolved to defend himself to the last. When at length the two armies stood face to face, that of Yermak was further reduced to 500 men, nine-tenths of those who left Orel having perished. A desperate fight ensued, the Tartars were routed, and Yer- mak pushed on to Sibir, the residence of the Tartar princes. It was a small fortress on the banks of the Irtish, the ruins of which are still standing, and of which I have seen a photograph, if I mistake not, among Mr Seebohm's collection. 'Yermak was now suddenly transformed to a prince, but he had the good sense to see the precariousness of his grandeur, and it became plain that he must seek for assistance. He sent, therefore, fifty of his Cossacks to the Tsar of Muscovy, their chief being adroitly ordered to represent to the Court the progress which the Russian troops, under the command of Yermak, had made in Siberia, where an extensive empire had been conquered in the name of the Tsar. The Tsar took very kindly to this, pardoned Yermak, and sent him money and assist- ance. Reinforced by 500 Russians, Yerrnak multiplied his expeditions, extended his conquests, and was enabled to subdue various insurrections fomented by the conquered 182 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. Kutchum Khan. In one of these expeditions he laid siege to the fortress of Kullara, which still belonged to his foe, and by whom it was so bravely defended that Yermak had to retreat. Kutchum Khan stealthily followed the Rus- sians, and, finding them negligently posted on a small island on the Itish, he forded the river, attacked them by night, and came upon them so suddenly as with compara- tive ease to cut them to pieces. Yermak perished, but not, it is said, by the sword of the enemy. Having cut his way to the water's edge, he tried to jump into a boat, but, stepping short, he fell into the water, and the weight of his armour carried him to the bottom. Thus perished Y ermak Timofeeff, and when the news reached Sibir, the remainder of his followers retired from the fortress, and left the country. ' The Court of Moscow, however, sent a body of 300 men, who before long made a fresh incursion, and reached Tchingi almost without opposition. There they built the fort of Tiumen, and re-established the Russian sovereignty. Being soon afterwards reinforced, they extended their operations, and built the fortresses of Tobolsk, Sungur, and Tara, and soon gained for the Tsar all the territory west of the Obi. Ihe stream of conquest then flowed eastward apace. Tomsk was founded in 1604, and became the Russian head-quarters, whence the Cossacks organised new expeditions. Yeneseisk was founded in 1619, and, eight years afterwards, Krasnoiarsk. Passing the Yenesei, they advanced to the shores of Lake Baikal, and in 1620 attacked and partly conquered the popu- lous nation of the Buriats. Then, turning northwards to the basin of the Lena, they founded Yakutsk in 1632. and made subject, though not without considerable diffi- culty, the powerful nation of the Yakutes; after which they crossed the Aldan mountains, and in 1639 reached the Sea of Okhotsk. Thus in the span of a single lifetime — 70 years — was added to the Russian crown a territory as large as the whole of Europe, whose ancient capital, as I have said, was Tobolsk.' RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS • 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 • 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date DUE AS STAMPED BELOW AUG 0 1 2003 FEB 0 3 2005 DD20 15M 4-02 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY