SIBERIA AND THE EXILES. 629 



usual terms of a ground-rent of thirty copecks per acre. The other 

 half of the miners continued at their old employment, and are now 

 efficient laborers, who accomplish more in freedom than they formerly 

 did in servitude, so that the mines are becoming more profitable every 

 year. Up to the year 1861 the return in most cases did not cover the 

 outlay. In order to cover the deficiency of laboring forces, persons 

 condemned to death and then pardoned were added to the free miners. 



From this time agriculture improved rapidly, and in the year 1876 

 half of Siberia was already settled. A free peasantry was formed, 

 such as we might desire to see in the whole of the country. There 

 are no servile persons like the Russian peasants, and, when I occasion- 

 ally by inadvertence called them " Russians," they would immediately 

 inform me that I was mistaken, they were " Siberians." " There is no 

 servitude here," they would add ; " we are all free men. Heaven is 

 high and the Czar rich, but we have nothing to fear, for we are in Si- 

 beria." Not the farmers alone, but the officers also, are inflated with 

 this air of freedom, and not unfrequently may we hear from the mouth 

 of one of the latter such words as, " If you want to see slaves, you must 

 go back over the Ural into Russia, where their home is." And these 

 people speak with truth, for, although serfdom is legally abolished 

 in Russia, it continues to exist in fact, even among the mercantile 

 classes. 



I had already been told in Russia that prosperity was generally 

 prevailing in Siberia, and shone in strong contrast with Russian pov- 

 erty, and I am again obliged to say here that even Russian poverty is 

 not so repulsively conspicuous as the misery in the German factory 

 and mining districts. I do not go too far in asserting that the Sibe- 

 rians lead a happy life ; and the best evidence in confirmation of this 

 opinion is found in the fact that the idea of an independent Siberia, 

 not attached to Russia, has already begun to dawn in a few speculative 

 minds. I must guard myself against the suspicion that I am falling 

 into a merely subjective judgment. My opinion is founded on careful 

 observations and conscientious inquiries. It is generally known that 

 in all countries and governments the farmers are always complaining 

 of hard times and high taxes, and I therefore took special pains to 

 compare these peculiar complaints with the representations of the 

 officers. I had arranged a kind of informal catechism in my head, 

 and used it on every suitable opportunity. The answers were, in all 

 cases, if not literally, substantially alike, and I can not forbear repeat- 

 ing one set of them here. My conductor and myself were staying a 

 short time in a little mountain-town, and in one of my excursions I 

 overtook an old peasant who I afterward learned was the head-man of 

 a small village. I invited him to take a seat in my carriage, and at 

 once opened my catechism upon him : 



" How is it with you here ? " said I. 



" God bears with our sins," he replied. 



