SIBERIA— FUR-TRADE AND GOLD-DIGGINGS. 



213 



and find an inexhaustible supply of food in the forests and pasture-grounds of 

 Siberia. 



The chase of the fur-bearing animals affords the ^^'orth-Siberian nomads — 

 such as the Ostiaks, Jakuts, Tungusi, and Samoiedes — the only means of pro- 

 curing the foreign articles they require ; hence it taxes all their ingenuity, and 

 takes up a great deal of their time. On the river-banks and in the forests 

 they lay innumerable snares and traps, all so nicely adapted to the size, strength, 

 and peculiar habits of the various creatures they are intended to capture, that 

 it would be almost impossible to improve them. An industrious Jakut will 

 lay about five hundred various traps as soon as the first snow has fallen ; these 

 he visits about five or six times in the course of the winter, and generally finds 

 some animal or other in every eighth or tenth snare. 



The produce of his chase he brings to the nearest fair, where the tax-gath- 

 erer is waiting for the jassak, which is now generally paid in money (five pa- 

 per roubles = four shillings). With the remainder of his gains he purchases 

 iron kettles, red cloth for hemming his garments, powder and shot, rye-meal, 

 glass pearls, tobacco, and brandy — which, though forbidden to be sold publicly, 

 is richly supplied to him in private — and then retires to his native wilds. 

 From the smaller fairs, the furs are sent by the Russian merchants to the 

 larger staple places, such as Jakutsk, Nertschinsk, Tobolsk, Kiachta, Irbit, 

 Nishne-Novgorod, and finally St. Petersburg and Moscow ; for by repeatedly 

 sorting and matching the size and color of the skins, their value is increased. 



About thirty years ago firs were still the chief export article of Siberia — to 

 China, European Russia, and Western Europe — but since then the discovery 

 of its rich auriferous deposits has made gold its most important produce. The 

 precious metal is found on the western slopes of the Ural chain and in West 

 Siberia ; but the most productive diggings are situated in East Siberia, where 

 they give occupation to many thousands of workmen, and riches to a few suc- 

 cessful speculators. 



The vast territory drained by the Upper Jenissei and its tributaries, the Su- 

 perior and the Middle Tunguska, consists for the greater part of a dismal and 

 swampy primeval forest, which scarcely thirty years since was almost totally 

 unknown. A few wretched nomads and fur-hunters were the only inhabitants 

 of the Taiga — as those sylvan deserts are called — and squirrel skins seemed all 

 they were ever likely to produce. A journey through the Taiga is said to be 

 one of the most fatiguing and tedious tours which it is possible to make. Up- 

 hill and down-hill, a narrow path leads over a swampy ground, into which the 

 horses sink up to their knees. The rider is scarcely less harassed than the 

 patient animal which carries him over this unstable soil. No bird enlivens the 

 solitary forest with its song ; the moaning of the wind in the crowns of the 

 trees alone interrupts the gloomy silence. The eternal sameness of the scene 

 — day after day one constant succession of everlasting larches and fir-trees — is 

 as wearying to the mind as the almost impassable road to the body. 



But suddenly the sound of the axe or the creaking of the water-wheel is 

 heard ; the forest opens, a long row of huts extends along the banks of a riv- 

 ulet, and hundreds of workmen are seen moving about as industrious as a hive 



