KUKAL JNDUSTEIES. 1 23 



peasants, or, in the majority of cases, to capitalists who conduct the industry on commercial 

 principles with the assistance of numerous parties of hired labourers. 



The catching of fish is carried hoth summer and winter, the most various means being 

 made use of. According to the habit of this or that fish, nets of the most various sizes, 

 lines, seines with several scores of hooks, with bait and without, are employed. In winter, some 

 rivers are fenced right across, and traps are placed in gaps left in the weir. At the end of 

 the winter when the water in the rivers goes bad and the fish rushes for fresh water into 

 the small spring streams, they are caught at such points through holes in the ice in bag- 

 nets, ladles, and even by hand. But the wholesale fishing on commercial lines in the lower 

 reaches of the rivers is carried on exclusively in summer, with the aid of huge drift nets 

 250 to 300 or more sagenes in length. In their choice of means for catching the fish, peas- 

 ants and natives and the traders on a large scale trouble themselves very little about the 

 future and do not disdain to use the most rapacious methods, to which in a large measure 

 must be attributed the exhaustion of the supply of fish in the Siberian waters. 



The fish once got, if not consumed on the spot, goes on the market either frozen or 

 salted. But salting in Siberia is carried out very badly so that the fish acquires a bad taste 

 and quickly spoils. This circumstance is a great obstacle to the proper development of the 

 Siberian fishing trade. 



This industry also exists in the Littoral territory in the waters of the Northern Pacific. 

 Besides fish, seals and morses are caught. The meat and fat of the latter are eaten by the 

 natives, the tusks alone being sold. Whales are taken in the same waters, and fur seals on 

 the Commander Islands. This industry will be described in the next Chapter. 



Hunting and trapping form the employment mainly of the population of the northern 

 uncultivated borderland of Siberia, as also of the transition zone, separating this region 

 from the cultivated tract. As a secondary occupation they exist also in a fair number 

 of localities of the agricultural zone, situated near enough to the uninhabited forest 

 areas. 



The taigas and urmans form the arena of the hunter's industry, these boundless forest 

 lands everywhere lying adjacent to the inhabited zone of Siberia on the north. This industry is 

 conducted partly with firearms or, in the case of some natives, with bows and arrows, partly 

 with traps of the most variable construction. The most widely spread form of sport is squirrel 

 shooting, after which come the killing of various wood and water birds. Fur animals, formerly bre- 

 eding in abundance throughout Siberia, have now, with the exception of the squirrel, common fox, 

 ermine and bear, almost disappeared from Western Siberia, so that in that country but very 

 few hunters are now occupied in catching either the sable or the marten. The chief supply 

 of valuable peltry now proceeds from the northern regions of Eastern Siberia, where the 

 destruction of wild animals has not yet assumed such dimensions. Large animals, such as 

 bear and elk, ai'e hunted over all Siberia, but this kind of sport is not open to every hunter 

 but only to the more skilful and courageous. In the tundras of Eastern Siberia the native 

 Tunguz and others hunt the northern reindeer; in the southern mountainous parts of the East- 

 ern Siberian governments and Amouria, various kinds of animals, among others the m a r a I, 

 or Siberian stag, whose horns fetch a high price. 



