516 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



to perform a certain prescribed amount of work each year, the time 

 being left to their own choice. The latter were engaged in char- 

 coal-burning, felling trees, making bricks, transport, and the like, 

 and they received 14 roubles yearly. Having yielded the required 

 service, they were free for the rest of the year, and might do as they 

 pleased. Those who worked in the mines, on the other hand, were 

 compelled to give their services year in, year out. They worked in 

 twelve-hour relays, one week by day, the next by night, and every 

 third week they were free. Each miner received, according to his 

 capability, from six to twelve roubles a year for such necessaries as 

 had to be paid for in money, but in addition he was allowed two 

 pood (72 Ibs.) of flour a month for himself, two pood for his wife, 

 and one pood for each of his children. He was also at liberty to till 

 as much land, and breed and keep as many cattle as he could. Each 

 of his sons was obliged to attend school from his seventh to his 

 twelfth year; from his twelfth to his eighteenth he was engaged as 

 an apprentice, and rewarded at first with one, later with two roubles 

 a year. At the age of eighteen his compulsory service in the mines 

 began. 



On the first of March, 1861, the day of the emancipation of all 

 the serfs in the Russian Empire, there were in the crown property 

 of the Altai 145,639 males, of whom 25,267 were at work in the 

 mines or smelting works. All these were released from their com- 

 pulsory service, not indeed in a single day, but within two years. 

 No fewer than 12,626 of them forsook the mines, returned to their 

 native villages and began to till the soil; the rest remained in the 

 mines as hired labourers. 



I do not think I am mistaken in referring the more comfortable 

 conditions of life on the crown-property of the Altai, as compared 

 with the rest of West Siberia, back to its own past. The parents and 

 forefathers of the present inhabitants, notwithstanding their bondage, 

 never felt oppressed. They were serfs, but of the lord and ruler of 

 the vast land in which the cradle of their fathers stood. They were 

 obliged to labour for their master, and to yield up their sons for 

 nearly a generation to his service; but this master was the Czar, a 

 being in their eyes almost divine. In return, the Czar maintained 



