COLONISTS AND EXILES IN SIBERIA. 521 



" The villages spring up like mushrooms from the soil ? But 

 where? I see none. How far is the next village from yours?" 



" Fifteen versts " (ten miles). 



Thus does the peasant of the crown estate speak and think. 

 The vast land is not spacious enough for him, and yet the twentieth 

 part of what he has at his disposal would suiBce for him if he would 

 cultivate it. For the land is so fertile that it richly rewards even a 

 very small amount of labour. But if it does once fail, if the harvest 

 does not turn out as well as usual, if the peasant suffers from want 

 instead of from superfluity, he regards this not as the natural con- 

 sequence of his own laziness, but as a dispensation of God, as a 

 punishment laid upon him for his sins. 



In reality, however, he is very comfortable in spite of his sins 

 and their punishment, and has more reason to talk of his reward. 

 For not scarcity but superfluity troubles him. The government 

 allows each peasant fifteen helctars of the best land, usually at his 

 own choice, for every male member of his family; but of the 

 400,000 square versts of the crown-estate, only 234,000 had been 

 taken up till 1876, so it does not matter much even now whether a 

 peasant restricts himself to what he has a right to or not. Some 

 families use not less than twelve or fifteen hundred hektars, and to 

 these it is certainly a matter of indifierence whether they keep only 

 the number of horses necessary for their work, or twenty or thirty 

 more. In reality, it often happens that the superfluous animals 

 relieve the peasants from a heavy care — that of turning to account 

 the over-abundant harvest which the extremely deficient means of 

 transport prevent his converting into money. In a country in whose 

 capital, under ordinary circumstances, the pood or thirty-six pounds 

 of rye-meal is sold at sixpence, of wheat-meal at ninepence, of beef in 

 winter at about one shilling and twopence at most; where a sheep 

 costs four shillings, a weaned calf ten, a pig eight, and an excellent 

 horse seldom more than five pounds of English money, an unusually 

 good season lowers prices so far that the too-abundant harvest 

 becomes a burden. When the peasant, who in any case works only 

 when he must, can only get about one shilling and twopence for 

 about two hundredweights of grain, the flail becomes too heavy in 



