TENURE AND USE OF LAND. 93 



particular in its agricultural zone is absolutely insignificant compared with the part which the 

 great Siberian tract plays, and still more in former years. Formerly when yet there was 

 no communication by steamer, this tract was the sole aftery uniting European Russia with 

 Siberia, and through it, with China. The traffic over the tract both summer and winter was 

 enormous. The conveyance of travellers and goods, posts and prisoners, local officials and 

 bodies of troops, absorbed almost the whole working power of the population along the tract. 

 Comparatively few were engaged in agriculture along the tract and even they did not see 

 in it their principal occupation. The mass of the population lived exclusively or almost 

 exclusively by the trade of carriers or innkeepers. At the present time the importance of the 

 tract is far from being what it was. The steamer communication on the Irtysh and Obi has 

 almost completely killed the summer traffic upon the section of the tract between Tinmen 

 and Tomsk, the steamer communication on the Chulym has absorbed a considerable part of 

 the traffic between Tomsk and Achinsk. The tract here only wakes up in the winter, and 

 even then the traffic now is much less than formerly, and is far from yielding the former 

 profits to the tract population. The latter has therefore thrown itself into agriculture, the 

 cultivated patches have everywhere been increased, and will be still further enlarged in 

 future, and the population of the tract have alreaiiy lost a considerable part of their 

 former peculiar character. 



Here the general description of the agricultural zone of Siberia may be closed. As 

 far as concerns the outlying regions, mention has already been made of the territory of 

 Yakutsk as a district absolutely uncultivable and inhabited by native trappers and fishermen. 

 Here it may be permitted to indicate only the importance of the Lena tract, along which 

 almost all the Russian population of the territory is gathered and which furnishes thereto 

 its chief source of existence. The three steppe territories as already intimated contain cultivable 

 oases where agriculture both exists and is capable of further development. Beyond these the 

 whole expanse of these territories serves but as the wandering grounds of the Kirghiz, who 

 live exclusively by the products of their cattle raising and do not promise at any near future 

 date to pass over into the agricultural or industrial state. The attempts at such a passage to 

 agriculture met with among the Kirghiz are as a rule quite isolated and devoid of any 

 serious importance. Even the Kirghiz settled in separate households in the peasant colonies 

 of the southern part of the Tobolsk government and who have not unfrequently accepted 

 orthodoxy are also employed exclusively in cattle raising, th(^ pasturing of cattle on land 

 hired from the peasants, not seldom in horse-stealing; only the more wealthy among them 

 sow oats, in order to feed their numerous horses. The only exception to this general charac- 

 terization are the Kirhgiz living in a part of the Zaisan district and upon the foothills of the 

 Scmirechensk territory, the so-called Kirghiz of the Great Horde and the Dikokamenny, whose 

 life is woven of a very curious combination of nomad existence with very intensive irrigat- 

 ional agriculture. Tliese Kirghiz too, like the others, have their places for winter and summer 

 roaming, but from the latter they wander otf several times in the course of the summer to 

 their lands under tillage in order to water, plough and sow them, and to harvest the grain. 

 On the arrival of the Russian population the Kirghiz not only taught them their own agric- 

 ultural methods, but surrendered to them a considerable part of their irrigated lands, while 



