C H A P T E R V I I .
TH E P R O V IN C E OF S EM IP O L A T IN S K : IT S E C O N O M Y .
Minuteness of Russian provincial statistics.-—Governor s report for
1881.— Agriculture and irrigation.— Cereals grown, and by whom :
quantity sown and reaped.— Cossack gardening.— Cattle breeding.
— Agriculture.— Facilities for development of trade, and factories.
— Gold mining.— Mechanics and artisans.— Trade at fairs and with
China.— Population according to religions and ranks.— Marriages,
etc.— Number of ratepayers.— Location of population.
WH E N crossing Siberia in 1879 I had no conception,
until I reached the end of my journey,
of the minuteness with which the governors of provinces
transmit to head-quarters the affairs of the most distant
corners of the Empire.*
The statistics first accorded to me in the government
chancellerie, at Vladivostock, were to my mind
«The y report, for instance, as to i j Agriculture, the system pursued,
and by whom, together with the kinds and quantities of crops sown and
reaped ; the kinds, number, places, and circumstances of breeding of
cattle ; the sustenance of the people, their industries and manufactures,
trade, with the number, kinds, and value of wares purchased and
sold : together with the increase or decrease, ranks, and religions
of the population. 2. Taxes, duties, and personal liabilities with their
administration. 3. The social welfare of the people, public morality
and public buildings, fires, and-post houses. 4. Health of the people,
number of hospitals,,doctors, patients, diseases, epidemics and epizootics,
together with circumstances attending violent and accidental
deaths ; prisons and benevolent institutions. 5* National education,
schools, etc.
little short of a revelation, and I began • to suspect
that I was learning secrets ; but when I asked for the
like information in Central Asia, the usual courtesy of
the Russian officials granted my request; and not only
so, but the new report for the government of Semipo-
latinsk for the preceding year (1881) being not quite
ready at the time of my visit, it was subsequently
forwarded, most obligingly, to my English address, so
that I became supplied with the latest and most trustworthy
statistics relating to the province. Should these
statistics appear, here and there, to overburden this
and the following chapters, I would beg the reader’ s
indulgence, promising that it shall not occur again, if
only-for the simple reason that for no province to be
described hereafter do I possess equal stores of information.
I hope, moreover, here to give my readers
such an illustration as I have never seen in English,
of a part of the economy of what was, till quite recently,
an ordinary Siberian province, with the fulness of which
information he may perchance be as much surprised
as I was.
To begin, then, with agriculture. In the extreme
west of the Kirghese Steppe, about Orenburg, the 50th
parallel of north latitude is the southern limit of agriculture
without irrigation. T o the east, in the province
of Semipolatinsk, this limit is on the 53rd parallel,
north of which there is only an unimportant part of
the province, consisting chiefly of basins enclosing saline
lakes, where the soil is tob much impregnated with salt
to be profitable for tillage.*
* The remainder of the province, consisting of more than; 130,000
square miles, is scantily watered, with the exception of the mountainous
districts and certain vast tablelands, that from their altitude intercept
the south-west winds, and so contribute to the fall of rain and snow,
and consequently the formation of rivers and brooks. The only well-
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