SIBERIAN AGRICULTURE. 269 



man, accustomed to the neat enclosures of an agricul- 

 tural district in his own country, which once led an 

 American critic to describe it as having the appearance 

 of being finished with a pencil rather than with a 

 plough, the land has a ragged and untidy appearance. 

 Hedges and ditches there are none, but patches of corn 

 alternate with tracts of grass or waste land, with no 

 apparent method or order. Driving from the foot of 

 the Altai Mountains to the town of Biisk, a distance of 

 upwards of fifty miles, in September, I received the 

 impression of passing over a continuous patch -work 

 quilt, masses of golden corn shining in a setting of 

 grass and flowers, alternating with patches of newly- 

 stacked hay. 



There are no signs of manure of any sort being in 

 use, the fertility of the soil, and the vast amount of 

 virgin land merely awaiting the plough, being con- 

 ducive no doubt to apathy and carelessness on the part 

 of the farmer with regard to the future. " The land," 

 as Mr Simpson remarks, " is very rich, and there is a 

 royal waste of everything — of time, of space, of natural 

 products."^ Your Siberian peasant sows | his seed and 

 then sits down and placidly waits for it to grow and 

 ripen. It does not seem to occur to him, as it does to 

 the onlooker, that however fertile the soil the phos- 

 phates must some time become exhausted, and that 

 however plentiful the virgin land, a day will come 

 when its limit will have been reached. When these 

 things come to pass he will doubtless learn wisdom ; in 

 the meantime he is blissfully content. 



This is not all that strikes the Englishman, however, 

 if he happens to be of an observant turn of mind. For 

 to any one who takes the trouble to note it, the absence 

 of English-made agricultural implements is painfully 



^ Sidelights on Siberia. J. Y. Simpson. 



