122 SIflEKIA. 



CIIAPTKR IX. 

 The Industries of the rural population. 



Indiiytriiil oarnin{/s; tisliiiig and iiuriiirig; ilie galhoring oi Cf'dar nuts; boo koeping; th*; 

 hewing of limbor and wood fuel; knstar industries; the carrying trade; conchiding remarks. 



AFTER the sketch of agricuUine, cattle raising and forestry presented in the preceding 

 account, which constitute the cliief sources of the prosperity of the mass of the Siberian 

 popuUition, theie remains now to pass to a survey of the other and secondary sources. In 

 consequence of their merely auxiliary importance, it is only possible to set apart a much less 

 space than was necessary to devote to agriculture, so that the pages here following will form 

 not so much a description as a short survey, a catalogue raisonne of those industries in 

 which the Siberian people are occupied. 



Most prominent on account of the number of hands employed must be placed the 

 fishing and hunting industries. 



The internal waters of Siberia, both the large rivers and the greater part of the steppe 

 lakes, were once very rich in fish. In the lakes there chiefly bred perch, crucian carp, pike, 

 dace and such coarse fish; in the rivers, the most various species of white and red fish, 

 beginning with the same perch and pike and ending with n e 1 m a, sturgeon, sterlet, eel pout, 

 trout. The abundance of fish was fabulous. There exist credible evidence of a mass of fish, 

 which completely filled the bed of the river from its bottom to its surface, and which even 

 leaped into the windows of passing steamers. At the present time the supplies of fish in the 

 Siberian waters have become considerably exhausted. In the limits of the purely agricultural zone 

 thickly populated with Russians, fishing already almost exclusively serves the wants of the 

 population along the banks for their own consumption, and in but few locaUties provides 

 them with more important earnings. Fisheries are now principally concentrated in the lower 

 reaches of the great Siberian rivers, outside the limits of the cultivated zone. Thus in West- 

 ern Siberia there are the districts of Berezovsk, Surgutsk and Tobolsk, and the Xarymsk 

 country; in Eastern Siberia, the lower waters of the Yenisei, the Yakutsk territory, Kam- 

 chatka, et cetera. The fisheries in these parts are partly without owners, partly belong to the 

 bank population consisting of peasants or natives. The grounds belonging to the peasants 

 are for the most part exploited by themselves individually or on the artel principle. On the 

 contrary, the natives work but insignificant portions of the immense fisheries which actually 

 belong to them. The remainder they let, as a rule for a mere trifle, to the neighbouring 



