518 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR, 



customs, at least widened views into the country over which they 

 ruled in the name of the Czar. Even now, Barnaul, the capital of 

 the crown-lands, is a centre of culture such as can be found nowhere 

 else in Siberia; and, while the mining industry was at its best, it was 

 the undisputed intellectual capital of Northern and Central Asia, and 

 the light emanating from it shone the more brilliantly because it 

 found in every mining centre a focus which helped to spread it more 

 widely. Thus the royal domain of the Altai has always held a pro- 

 minent position among the districts of Siberia. 



It was probably never the intention of the administration of 

 the Altai to specially favour the peasant class. Until the suppression 

 of serfdom, at all events, the class was regarded much as a necessary 

 adjunct to the working of the mines. But times have changed. From 

 the day on which the serfs were emancipated, mining has retro- 

 graded as steadily as agriculture has advanced. The authorities have 

 not yet been able to make up their minds to abandon the old routine 

 of work, but they have to pay such high sums to get it carried on 

 that the net profit from the mines is now inconsiderable. Throwing 

 open the mines freely to energetic workers, probably the only thor- 

 ough means of improving the present state of things, has been 

 proposed in some districts, but is still far from being an accomplished 

 fact. The free use of the soil, as far as the plough penetrates, has 

 been customary so long that it has become, to a certain extent, a pre- 

 scriptive right. To be sure, as I have already pointed out, no one 

 owns the land he tills, not even the spot on which his house stands, 

 but, in the peasants' eyes, what belongs to the Czar belongs to the 

 " good Lord God ", and the latter willingly permits every believer to 

 make use of it. As a matter of fact, the administration of the 

 crown-lands levies forty kopelcs of annual rent on every hektar of 

 land (2 acres) which is brought under the plough; but it is not 

 particularly strict in the matter, and the peasant on his side does 

 not feel it at all incumbent on him to be very precise. Thus each 

 peasant, in reality, cultivates as much as he can, and chooses it 

 wherever he pleases. 



It is doing the peasant of to-day on the crown-lands no more 

 than justice to describe him as well-built, wide-awake, handy, skilful, 



