Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/648

628 sent out. The region, which comprises 8,200 geographical miles, is rich, immensely rich, in subterranean treasures. It is penetrated by veins of silver and gold. Up to the year 1861, seven hundred and thirty mines were opened, and two hundred and sixty abandoned. The precious metals are not the principal treasure; the region also contains copper, tin, antimony, lead, and iron, and includes an immense coal-field. The surface of the land is correspondingly productive, and will compare well in agricultural capacity with the best parts of Germany. The climate is generally mild. During four months a hot summer prevails, which is followed by two months of autumn, four of winter, and two of spring. The mean temperature is not high enough perfectly to ripen grapes, but oranges grow well in the southern parts. The fact that the people live to be very old is the best testimony to the good qualities of the climate. When I traveled over the country, in 1876, I was assured that only four doctors were settled within the whole of the vast territory, and they did not live in very great luxury. Men die here of old age without the help of medicine, and live long and happily without doctors.

Since the house of Romanoff has taken possession of the country, any one can settle there, cultivate such land as suits him, and erect factories, on the single condition of paying an annual rent of thirty copeks—about seventeen cents—per acre; but the fee of the land remains the Czar's; the tenant can cut the wood, but the soil belongs to the imperial domain. He can not mine for gold and silver, or other metals, for these go with the title to the land. As it always has been and is now generally in the Russian Empire, the old ways are encroached upon in every direction. The Romanoffs had for the exploitation of the mines mingled a number of their serfs from Russia with the men already there, and no one could enter upon a systematic or regular cultivation of the soil. The serf-laborers, with their wives and children, received as much as was necessary to satisfy their wants. Till 1861 the population consisted, with rare exceptions, of imperial officers and socage-laborers, mining experts, and superintendents, who were always trained men, and contributed much to the amelioration of the manners of their underlings, who, in other respects, had much to complain of in their treatment. On the 1st of March, 1861, there were living on the crown-lands 145,630 souls, or, in round numbers, 350,000 persons—for in Russia women and minors are not enumerated in the statistical reports. In the mines alone more than 25,000 men were employed, when Czar Alexander, with a stroke of the pen, abolished serfdom, not out of humanity, but in order to weaken the political power of the Staroste.

The serfs in the mines represented only about half of the 25,000 miners—or 12,000 men—and became free peasants without owning any property in the real sense of that word, all lands belonging to the Czar; but they received as much land as they needed, on the