(Written. specially for the "*North-China Tue Acricenteral Coxprtioss oF Sipents In a way Iam sorry to prick the popular idea about Siberia. That idea is more dramatic than the actual condition. Si-bena to that useful but ill-informed individual "the man in the street' is a borrible stretch of frigid desert, dotted with gaunt prison houses and the tracks over the steppes are marked with the bones of exiles, who have died beneath the weight of chains, starvation and the inhospitable treatment of savage Russian soldiers!
We Britishers love to sup on_ horrors. An Armenian atrocity, the life of Captain Dreyfus on Devil's Island, the slow death of men chained to barrows in Siberian mines, all that is gruesome and cruel, thrill us, It is the convict life of Siberia—so contrary to all that we enlightened ones of the West think right—that we have had depicted luridly in books of travel, magazine articles, novels and melodramas. Later on I hope io visit some of these Siberian prisons and what I see there I will write down. But just now I want to wipe from the public mind the fallacy that Siberia is itself a yehenna-like region.
Away north where the and borders the Arctic there is no vegetation but moss and lichen. Beneath that is the great forest zone, a belt of dense woods two thousand miles wide, running east and west across Asia. But'further south is the agricultural region, through which I am travelling and which the Russian authorities seem anduntly anxious to develop. Anditisin this between the Urals and Lake Baikal that there are thousands of miles of country as flat us a billiard table and thousands of miles of pleasantly undulating wooded land—not I admit a place to go in search of picturesque scenery, but about as }as T have seen and ripe for agricultural project There is hardly any spring in Siberia, the change from the long winter to the blazing summer being little more than the matter of a fortnight. To talk of a Siber an winter is to make one shudder. Yet in all the towns T have visited people said: "Why do you come here in the summer when our roads are 20 dusty It is in winter we have a good time. It is cold, 30 degrees of frost. but you don't feel it much for it is so dry and the air so still. The sky is cloudless for a month at a time. Then the sledging—ah it is when the sledging is in full swing you should see a Siberian town!"
What has much impressed me since I crossed the Urals is that the human race—berond a few thin migratory tribes—should not have flourished more in this land. Now, however, since the opening of the railway, the Russian Government is almost going on its knees to induce Europ-can Russians, who on the southern sandy steppes find it so hard to make both ends meet, to emigrate to Siberia.
European Russia is thinly enough populated in all truth. But the parts ood enough for cultivation are under peasant proprietorship and a father's land is divided among the sons so each generation has a smaller and smaller piece of ground to nurture. The more venturesome hare their eres on Siberia where they hope a less starvation lifo is to be got. As I described in a former article there has been 'a steady flood of immigrants to this side of the Urals. On some of the trains are fourth-class carriages, about as bare as a guard's van on an English goods train and as Jacking in luxury. Bat the absence of cushions and lavatory accomodation does not, I fancy, trouble these new comers, Most of them have a stolid content. They pay about a shilling fare per hundred miles. In case of need the Government will make an advance.of £10 without interest.
'A Russian who desires to emigrate here must get permission from the authorities, The permission is necessary for land has to be allotted and arrangements made for State officials to conduct the parties. For the first three years no immigrant is called upon to pay taxes. In western Siberia a grant of some thirty-two English square miles is made to every man and in some cases there is an additional grant of six miles of forest. In central Siberia the extent of the grant is determined by the quality of land.
As the settlers are practically State tenants, sale and mortgage of land is forbidden. If an immigrant has a little money and wants to purchase a particular strip ho can do so on paltry terms. Near the large towns the cost for a square verst (a verst is about two-thirds of a mile) ranges from 10s. to 12s. whilst in other places good Jand can be bought: for Gs, a verst. The buyer must deposit half the sum in the local treasury. This ensures the delivery of the land for three years, use or profit. Full proprietorship is obtained by the buyer spending, on plant and work ing, a sum not less than twice the cost allotment. From 1893 to last year 19, 00,000 acres of State land in" western Siberia were transformed into immigration plots.
May is the month when the tide of immigration sets in. As Russian red tape is quite as slow unwinding as elsewhere there are often huge crowds of emigrants at stations, thousands even, waiting for days till they can be conducted to their plots. Naturally enough there is misery among the ignorant immigrants who get dumped in a particular district knowing little about the climate or the soil. So the Government, have appointed Commissions of Enquiry though neither the immigrant or those already settled have any voice, Further, there has been organised among Russian philanthropists a relief committee which has representatives at thirty stations where immigrants chiefly stop and these men give advice to the discouraged and sick.
I confess to being amazed at the inducements held out so that Siberia may be speedily peopled. At every station is the big steaming samovar so that hot water may be obtained for the constant occupation of tea drinking. At every station also is a big chest of medical appliances and there is always an offcial who must know how to render first aid to the injured. Food for children, sick persons and indigent may be got free. Other immigrants buy their food at cost price. On arriving at their destination the immigrants Wil receive seed from the Gorernment for next to nothing. Tools may be bought on easy terms. where in the United States—and Si-bena is frequently alluded to as the new America—have I seen such an expanse of magnificent agricultural land waiting for man and his plough. And yet there is small prospect for generations to come that Siberia through Russian farmers will give of its teeming abundance to the rest of the world.
The fact is the Russian is one of the worst farmers on the face of the earth. Tt is probably the strong strain of the Tartar in him that makes him indolent. He is certainly no born agriculturalist. Catherine
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.