The Kirghese learnt from the Chinese how to irrigate
the land by damming up the mountain streams«and
drawing off the water in canals. The nomads thus
water about 75 Per cent, of their fields, and with better
results than the settlers obtain who occupy those parts
of the province suited to ordinary agriculture. By
both the land is left fallow to recuperate its powers, and
neither uses manure ; the settler because his fields are
usually too far distant from his homestead, and the
nomad because manure is his principal fuel. The predominating
cereal grown throughout the province is
spring wheat, and next oats, then millet (chiefly among
the nomads), barley, and spring rye. In the year of
my visit, it was intended to sow at the Zaisan station
winter wheat obtained from the Chinese in the Emil
valley, with the hope that it would yield a better crop,
being less exposed thy.n spring corn to the ravages of
grasshoppers and locusts. These latter, according to
Lebedour, belong to the species Gnllus Biguttatus
and Grillus Clavimanus*
Agriculture constitutes the chief pursuit of the settled
rural population of the districts of Ust-Kamenogorsk,
Zaisan, and parts east of the capital, but in the rewatered
districts a re those of Ust-Kamenogorsk, with its Alpine scener)
to the east, and the Kalbinsk range to the west. The Tarbagatai
range induces an incomparably smaller deposit of atmospheric moisture,
and the soil of the scattered eminences in the western and southwestern
parts of the province is too rocky for agriculture. Even in
the vicinity of the mountain peaks and high slopes, where more rain
falls, the surface is often either rocky* or else too much exposed to t e
early autumn winds, whilst at the foot of the mountains, where the soil
would allow of tillage, the rainfall is insufficient, without the assistance
of irrigation.
* In the Alexandroff volost alone, during the season of 1880, e
locusts destroyed more than 4,400 acres of corn, and grasshoppers
appeared in large numbers in the Ust-Kamenogorsk district and at
Zaisan station.
mainder of the province it is little developed. The
corn raised is almost entirely for home use. The fairly
satisfactory harvest of 1880 provided a normal quantity
of seed for 1881 ; but the small snow-fall told badly
upon fields not irrigated, because in so dry a climate
the successful germination of the spring corn chiefly
depends upon the abundance of moisture from the
melting snow. During the spring and first half of the
summer, little rain fell, and to make matters worse, in
some districts, the locusts and caterpillars appeared, so
that throughout the whole province there was only a
3J-fold harvest of wheat, and a 3§ one of oats. The
total wheat harvest amounted to 52,484 quarters (40,626
less than in 1880), and of oats to 22,548 (12,017 less
than in 1880), of which total a full half was gathered
by the nomads. O f potatoes (planted exclusively by
the settlers) a seven-fold crop was reckoned satisfactory.*
About the capital the harvest barely sufficeo tor
seed : in Pavlodar less corn was harvested than was
sown, whilst the highest average was less than a fivefold
crop— a difference verily from England, where a
farmer in the Weald of Kent tells me they sow 2^
bushels to the acre, and in a good year look for a twelvefold
y ie ld ! Things, however, in Semipolatinsk right
* The following represents the sowing and reaping in the province in
1881 :— » .
Rye .
Wheat
Oats
Barley ;
Buckwheat
Other grain, chiefly millet
Potatoes .
S o w n b y R e a p e d b y
S e t t l e r s . ■No m a d s . S e t t l e r s . N o m a d s .
Quarters. Quarters. Quarters. Quarters.
1 816 — 2.754 —
6,796 4.945 13,121 17,05 5
3.397 2,021 12,269 10,245
359 799 1,927 I 3,777
' ■ — 1 2 . —
432 902 1,455 8,997
3.259 21,844