MEANS OF TRANSPORT 95 



people are available for forestry work. Work is usually 

 paid by the piece. Wages are cheapest in the scantily 

 populated areas in the north and east. For the 

 initial transport of the felled material from the forest 

 horses are generally used to convey it either to the 

 river, railway station, or the nearest local market. 

 The transport is done in winter, snow and frost being 

 counted upon to give the otherwise impracticable roads 

 a hard even surface and render them negotiable. 

 Streams, rivers and canals are the most practical, as 

 they are the most used of all communications for the 

 transit of the forest produce to the distant markets, 

 and Russia is well off in all of these. The rivers, of 

 which we daily read so much in the newspapers, are 

 put to a very different purpose in peace time. Then 

 you may see great rafts of timber, floated many miles 

 from the forests in which it was cut, proceeding silently 

 down-stream to some distant market. The length of 

 floatable water is thus estimated 69,000 versts (a 

 verst = about two- thirds of a mile) floatable, 83,000 

 versts navigable for boats, and 50,000 versts navigable 

 for steamers. It is estimated that European Russia 

 possesses 25,000 versts of river exclusively reserved for 

 the floating of large rafts of logs, etc., 1,500 used by 

 the timber boats of wood merchants, 38,500 versts of 

 double tow paths, together with 26,000 versts navigable 

 by steamboats. There are only about 2,000 versts of 

 canals. The most important river is the Volga, and 

 tributaries connected by canals with the Neva and 

 the Northern D wina ; then comes the Dnieper, Western 

 Dwina, Niemen, and the Vistula. The period during 

 which the rivers, which are free to all for this purpose, 



