THE REAL SIBERIA
John Foster Fraser
The Siberian Gold Mines - The Nertchinsk Silver Mines - Convict Labour - The River shilka - Streitinsk - A Refractory Bedstead
JUST as Siberia, west of Lake Baikal, has everything to make it a grain-growing region, east of Baikal, as far is I could gather, it has everything to make it another California, or another Klondyke, or another South Africa, or whatever you call a stretch of country full of mineral wealth.
Most of the mines belong to the Czar, and there is much secrecy about their output. But every American or English miner I came across, and who had seen how the Siberian gold is worked, smiled broadly at the primitive methods. Maybe he would produce an ounce-weight nugget that had been lost in the washing, and then suddenly grow serious, and say, "I've been to California and Klondyke and South Africa, but - well, may I have some claims when proper machinery can be set to work!"
All the men I talked to agreed that the Russian is something of a "fuddler" in mining. He lacks scientific training. If he sees the gold he can get it, but he doesn't know a gold district when he is in it.
About £5,000,000 worth of gold has been officially sent out of Siberia into Russia every year, but this is probably not half the produce, for gold-stealing is rampant. In Western Siberia there are over eleven thousand gold miners emploved, and in Eastern Siberia only somee thirty thousand, though the production is nine or ten times as great. In Eastern Siberia the men are well paid, getting 3s. 4d. a day, which is a high wage for Siberia. The Western miners, in the neighbourhood of Senipalatinsk, for instance, only get fivepence a day.
The men work hard from three in the morning till seven at night, recognising neither Sunday nor feast day except that of the patron saint of the mine.
This continuous work is insisted on by the government because the men have far more money than they ever earn - obtained, of course, by selling stolen gold to some slit-eyed Chinese, who ostensibly purveys tea - and their free days are given up to riotous debauchery, sometimes ending in bloodshed. Money is thrown about in the usual mining camp fashion. The recklessness among the miners is now being stopped bv a government official holding as deposit the amount earned by the men, and only handing it over to them when they go home for the winter.
The Russian mine-owners are all enormously wealthy. They make for Irkutsk in the winter, and the man who has the wildest orgies and squanders the mnost money is regarded as the best fellow.
The government, anxious to develop the gold-mining industry - for Russia is in need of money - has temporarily remitted all duty on gold-mining machinery sent into the country. All over Siberia, therefore, is the intruding Kayoshnik, gold-hunter - English, French, or American engineers sent out usually by a syndicate to inspect places where gold is said to exist.
A Siberian prospecting party consists of a leader, an overseer, eight workmen, ten horses, eighteen saddle bags, provisions and tools, the outlay being about £500. When a likely valley is found, the gold-hunter seeks in the river-bed for pyrites, iron, slate, clay, or quartz coated with crystals. If the verdict on these is favourable trees are felled and a hut built.
The thickness of the earth covering the gold varies from two to twenty feet, and in regard to this I should point out that owing to the almost continuously frozen state of the soil and the dense forests, the gold deposits are protected against the denuding action of the water. If the tests yield 3/4 oz. of gold to 1 1/2 tons of earth, the result is good. If there is less than an eighth of an ounce it is poor. Sometimes as much as half a pound weight of gold is found in a ton and a half of earth.
If it is found worth while to mine, two posts are stuck up, one at each end of the ground, and the place is registered by the Commissioner of Police, or under an authority from the Director of Mines. A government surveyor next inspects the ground and prepares a map. After that the finder can borrow money on the security of his mine at the rate of from 20 to 30 per cent.
A claim is usually about three miles long. The breadth is determined by the distance between the two mountains in which the gold seam lies, but it is generally from 500 to 1,000 feet. No one is permitted to bold claims of more than three consecutive miles, but if you want to hold more the claims can be entered in the names of your wife, partner, or friends. When a mine is once registered it must be worked. If the finder has not the means, he may sell his claim or transfer it. But if it is not worked it is forfeited to the Crown.
All gold pays a tax to the government of from 5 to 10 per cent. on the yield, according to the district. On land belonging to the Czar, or on what are known as State lands, there is an additional royalty of some eight or ten shillings an acre.
What for many years hindered mining was that all gold won had to be sent to the government smelting-houses, either in Irkutsk or Tomsk. The gold having been smelted and assayed, was despatched to the St. Petersburg mint. The miner had to wait till it arrived there before receiving bills on which he could locally draw coin or gold ingots. This was an evil system. It tempted the merchant to circumvent the government and also, when short of money and unable to wait, obliged him to have his government acknowledgments discounted locally at a very high interest. All this, however, has recently been abolished. The gold is assayed on the spot, and after paying the tax, either in coin or in metal, the miner can proceed to sell.
The system known as place-mining is the usual method adopted. But that is giving way to heavy machinery now there is the Trans-Siberian Railway. Quite recently a whole trainload of American mining machinery for one firm was run through from Riga to Irkutsk in twenty-one days.
We halted for a while at Nertchinsk, amid charming scenery, which has led at least one traveller to dub it "the Switzerland of Siberia." It is here there are silver mines, though not, as far as I could gather, very profitable ones. They are mines that have been worked since the opening of the seventeenth century. There have been some ninety mines, but at present nothing like that number are working. It seems that owing to the superior attractions of gold mining, voluntary labour is extremely difficult to get.
This explains the employment of convict labour. Indeed, the Nertchinsk mines are the only mines where there is convict labour. There are two convict villages, Gorni-Zeruntui reserved for criminals, and Akatui reserved for political offenders.
In the silver-mining district, two hundred miles long by about a hundred miles wide, there are seven prisons, and in the dozen government mines between three and four thousand convicts are engaged. There are women prisoners, and though they have to work, none of them are sent underground.
Those who are regarded as the worst of political offenders - men, for instance, who want to argue for political freedom with bombshells - and condemned to penal servitude, are kept at Akatui. I did not go there, for it lies 140 miles from Nertchinsk. Still, the opportunity was offered me. Those, however, who have visited it, told me it is the dreariest of all Siberian prisons. Sentries are everywhere, and no man has ever escaped. The rules are severe. The place is 3,000 feet above sea level, and its winter lasts long - from August until May - whilst the short summer is intensely hot, the thermometer registering 95 degrees in the shade, though at a depth of two feet the soil is frozen.
I made particular inquiries, but could hear nothing about any cruelties practised in the convict mines of Nertchinsk, such as keeping exiles in mines day and night, working them in a dying condition or in chains, or of making them sleep chained to wheel-barrows.
Though they are expiating their Anarchist opinions by a punishment that must be fearful, it cannot be said they are otherwise than humanely treated. For instance, if a man gets recognition for good conduct, he becomes a "free command." That is, though he must wear the convict dress, he is only under police supervision, and is at liberty to make what money he can by any art or trade. A "free command" may marry, and if he has any private money he can receive it. Also his friends are at liberty to visit him.
Mining cannot be followed all the year round, and so the prisoners work at other trades. The difficulty, so I was informed in various quarters, is not overmuch work, but how to find enough for all the exiles, who often hang about listlessly the whole day. The summer hours are from six to noon, and from two to even; the winter hours from seven to four; there is no work on Sundays or saints' days, and eight months' labour is reckoned a year's work. There are plenty of books in the prison. Any books are allowed so long as they are not socialistic.
Round about Akatui are local committees, which specially look after prisoners' children, the wives, and the sick. There is a discharged prisoners' aid fund, which does much the same work as the Samaritan Prison Society in England. At Gorni-Zeruntui is a large orphanage built by private subscriptions collected by Madame Narishkine, a lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Empress. Most of the children are not orphans at all, but the offspring of incompetent or incarcerated parents.
So through this district of convict mines and prisons, and picturesque mountain land, the train went rolling on at about eight miles an hour. On the hills were clumps of spruce and ash and white birch. Next came stretches of round-shouldered, treeless hills, such as you see from the railway carriage between Leeds and Carlisle. Then, when the line clung all day long to the northern bank of the Ingoda, there was swelling upland exceedingly pretty.
I was now travelling in the first breath of autumn. Old Siberians told me that as long as they could remember there had never been such a spell of fine weather. So I was fortunate. All the trees wore beginning to be tinged with the rich hues of the fading year, and on the banks were masses of brilliant wild flowers, flaunting red, and pale puce, and strong yellow, and gentle blue.
Each evening I spent a delicious hour standing on the gangway. The rattle-rattle, clang-clang of the cars over the metals I didn't hear. I only saw the day dying in exquisite sunset, and the rippled reflections in the rivers. Then sumptuous dusk fell on the land. When the train stopped the silence was like a pall.
A light moved mysteriously along the line. The murmur of the trees was heard, and away China-wards a shooting star streaked across the blackness. The awe of night hung heavily. Far off there was the sound of a horn. The engine roared loudly, and the roar went reverberating from hill to hill, so you were not conscious when it actually ceased. There was a creaking of the brakes, and once more we were on the move.
When we reached the river Shilka, born in the hills of Mongolia, there were often clearings to be seen with little homesteads on the water-side. Now and then was a village, and youths were sitting on tree-trunks fishing. The boats were just "dug-outs," long, narrow, and easily capsisable, and propelled with a paddle. We passed rafts on which little huts wore built, and there were women-folk making the midday meal.
Always were there the lone section huts on the line, and unfailingly the man and woman with the green-flag signal. The bare-footed children - and generally plenty of them - ran out and shouted gleefully.
Gradually the Shilki widened until it was a broad, noble stream. We overtook a light draught steamer with a stern paddle. That indicated we were near Streitinsk, and practically the end of the great Trans-Siberian Railway. From there onward there would be 1,428 miles to journey by boat on the Shilka and Amur till Khabarovsk was reached. Then the railway would be meet again, and 253 more miles in the cars would land me at Vladivostock, "the gate of the East."
The Russians kept telling me that very soon the whole line by the river-side would be completed. That I doubt. Indeed, I doubt whether Russia ever intended to lay the line along this route. Glance at a map, and you will see it would have to make a great journey half round Manchuria, which is divided by the Amur from admitted Russian territory. But Russia is in Manchuria ostensibly to keep the peace. I believe Russia will evacuate it about the same time England proposes to evacuate Egypt.
To the east of Chita I saw a little line branch south. That line strikes straight across Manchuria to Nikolsk, sixty miles north of Vladivostok.
The Manchurian line will enormously save the distance between Irkutsk and Vladivostok, and do away with the dread which haunts all travellers on the Shilka and Amur of the water running low, and the boat being left stuck on a mud bank for a month. We Britishers think it is a high-handed proceeding for Russia to plant this line across Manchuria, Chinese territory, with hardly as much as "by your leave." But there it is.
Of course, it was only to be expected that Streitinsk station should be on the opposite side of the river to Streitinsk itself.
It was pitch dark when the big funnel - chimneyed engine gave its last snort, and the porters began to drag our luggage out. There was noisy vituperative haggling before getting a wheezy dray to carry one's belongings. The carts kept smashing into one another on the crooked, jolting little path down to the water edge.
On the other side of the river blinked odd lamps along the town front for nearly two miles. But we had to stand in the slush till the ferry came. Then all the carts tried to get on at once, and boxes tumbled into the water, and the police fought back the drivers, and the passengers fought each other.
Only about a third of us did get the ferry, which swung from an anchor in mid-stream. Horses got restless and backed, and wore sworn at, and altogether the fifteen minutes'journey across the Shilka was not without its perils.
The baggage belonging to my two Russian and French acquaintances, together with my own, was lost. So we had to roam among the carts trying to find it. It was decided the Russian lady should jump into the droshki, hasten off to the good hotel in Streitinsk, and secure rooms before others got there, while the other two of us ferreted for the lost property.
I found it, but the driver was a fool - at least I thought him so at the time for not understanding my Russian. He cried "Nitchevo!" and with a clatter disappeared into the darkness. He wasn't such a fool after all, for he made for the hotel - the only decent, clean, respectable hotel in the town.
Streitinsk that night looked like a few old barns stuck anyhow on a humpy wilderness of dust. It was a melancholy-stricken hole.
I asked my French lady if it didn't remind her of the Grand Boulevard in her beloved Paris? She shuddered.
The hotel was a big darksome place. There was a Slavonic concert in one of the rooms - quite a barn, but tricked out in blue and gold and red, and beneath swinging, smelling oil lamps sat the elite of Streitinsk, the military and the merchants, and their wives and children.
We didn't intend to, but we disturbed that concert. The bedrooms, little boxes of places with large cracks in the walls, the doors without htndles or keys, and having to be fastened with a padlock run through staples, abutted on a gallery in the concert-room. The landlord, a thin man with short grey hair on end, didn't seem to care a rap for the concert. Here were three distinguished people who had come to his hotel, and they were his consideration! We told him we would wait.
Wait! He wouldn't think of it. Up the creaky wooden steps did his men struggle with our baggage, and the two ladies had as many boxes as ladies usually have. These were dumped in the gallery. Would we inspect the rooms? They were poor places, but we selected two. The baggage was distributed anyhow. It had to be sorted.
I found my room was bigger and better than that of the ladies. Would they care to change? They were delighted.
Then the baggage had to be re-transferred. Next it was necessary an extra iron bedstead should be carried into the ladies' room. The sheer cussedness of things insisted that the bed should shed its stays all up the stairs, and then double and tumble to pieces when the gallery was reached.
The three of us sat down and laughed till the tears came. There was nothing else to do. Had the audience risen and slain us they would have been justified. They, however, looked on, but with the eyes of those accustomed to little things like that. They didn't object in the least.
But all was fairly well in the end. The ladies decided to take their evening meal in privacy in their room. I hunted out the restaurant, and had my supper among a crowd of Russian officers who had come along from Streitinsk barracks to the concert. They were nice, rather noisy fellows. We became quite merry, and toasted eternal friendship between England and Russia.
But the recollection of that iron bedstead shedding bits of itself, and finally collapsing in the concert-room, will make me laugh on my death-bed.
Chapter XIV: Down the Shilka and Amur Rivers
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