ALTAI 129 



have sent out engineers to prospect. A prospecting 

 party consists of a leader and from six to eight 

 workmen, with ten or fifteen horses, which are hired 

 at the nearest village and loaded with the neces- 

 sary saddle-bags to contain the provisions, tools, and 

 so forth. Ilie cost of a prospecting expedition 

 averages about £500. If the examination of the 

 pyrites or quartz gives favourable results, trees are 

 felled and a hut is built, the peasants using no 

 other instrument in the construction than the axe, 

 and not a single nail being employed. The claim 

 is afterwards marked out, two posts being erected 

 at each end of the plot decided upon, and is regis- 

 tered with the Commissioner of Police or the Director 

 of Mines. A Government surveyor then inspects 

 the claim and draws up a map. The preliminaries 

 being thus completed, the prospector may borrow 

 money on the security of his mine at the rate of 

 20 or 30 per cent. A mine that is once registered 

 must be worked. If the finder has not the means 

 to work it himself he is at liberty either to sell 

 or transfer it by some other process to another party. 

 If the claim is not worked it becomes forfeit to 

 the original owner of the land. The Nertchinsk 

 mines are the only ones in which convict labour is 

 employed, the village of Gorni-Zerentui being re- 

 served for the residence of convicts deported for 

 criminal ofifences and that of Akatui for political 

 offenders. It is generally believed in England that 

 the criminals thus employed in the mines are treated 

 with barbarous cruelty — that they are, in fact, 

 frequently compelled to work while in a dying con- 

 dition, or heavily fettered, and that they are often 

 obliged to sleep while attached by chains to heavy 

 wheel -barrows. I recollect reading a story, which 

 was supposed to be authentic, of miners keeping 

 the dead body of a fellow-prisoner down in the mine 



9 



