124 FOKESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. 



present forest officials are not in moral character, as well 

 as in professional skill and professional knowledge, such as 

 the high-minded and thoroughly educated gentlemen of 

 the service with whom I have been brought into personal 

 communication and correspondence. But once it was 

 otherwise, and it may be long before either the physical or 

 the moral effects of long-continued abuse of forests and 

 long-continued abuse of official powers are altogether 

 eradicated. 



Mining proprietors of forests can do with their forest 

 products as they chose, so long as these had not in some 

 way or another come under the surveillance of the Govern- 

 ment. It is of State forests only that I write, and I write 

 of what has occurred in times past, though times not very 

 remote from the present. 



It has been the case, if it be not so still, that 

 underlying the question of remuneration of officials in the 

 service of Government is the idea that it is an honour to 

 a man to serve his country, and that such service is best 

 recompensed by honour; and personal rank supplemented 

 with orders of knighthood, with appropriate decorations, 

 are the rewards dispensed with liberal hand by the Govern- 

 ment in almost all departments of the service, but often 

 without adequate pecuniary pay to cover necessary personal 

 and family expenditure. 



In answer to enquires, one of my correspondents in 

 this district wrote to me : 



' I was well acquainted with the Glavnoi Laesnicki, or 

 Commissioner of Woods and Forests in the district in which 

 are situated the mining works of the Ural. He told me 

 his range extended over thousands of versts in the Govern- 

 ments of Nijni Novgorod, Kazan, Viatka, Perm, Tobolsk, 

 Orenburg, and Ufa, and he received the large salary of 

 800 roubles ! less than 100 a year. He had under- 

 foresters in each district and at Government works, all 

 paid upon a like scale ! and these again had woodmen to 

 look after the felling and delivery of the timber, and 

 there was beside a cordon of guards all around at all 



