or together 538,385, being an increase on the previous
year of 7,665. Divided according to religious beliefs,
496,150 (or 92*16 per cent.) were Muhammadans,
4 i >875 (or 7*78 per cent.) were of the Russian Orthodox
Church, and the remainder (*o6 per cent.) consisted
of 75 Raskolniks or dissenters, 86 Romanists,
13 Protestants, 180 Jews, 3 Karaim (Jews), and
3 Pagans. Again, divided according to ranks,
there were of the nobles and aristocracy, including
regular and Cossack officers, 1,448 ; Russian clergy,
171 ; Muhammadan mullahs (exclusive of those in the
Kirghese vollosts), 82 ; upper-class citizens and merchants,
1,352 ; bourgeois, 9,979 ; peasants, 4,762 ;
Cossacks, 23,177 ; ordinary soldiers, 4,732 ; reserved,
244 I retired, with their families, and the families of
soldiers and reserved, 2,647; Kirghese, 489,134 (of
whom 45 were nobles and 2,489 descendants of
“ sultans”), and of others 657. Hence, of the entire
population, the classes ranged as follows : 90*85 per
cent, were K irgh e se ; then followed the Cossacks,
4*31 per cent.; bourgeois; 1*85 ; peasants, 88; and
soldiers, 88. O f the Kirghese little more than one-
third were pure nomads, having no' other dwelling
than their tents, whereas the remainder do not wander
in winter from their fixed quarters. The remaining
57,431 (or 10*67 Per cent.) constitute the settled population,
of whom 34,547 (including 8,180 Kirghese)
live in towns, and 22,884 in rural districts. The
number of marriages throughout the province in 1881
was 2,131 ; births, 5,665 males and 4,570 females, or a
total of 10,235, of whom 59 were illegitimate ; deaths,
6,680 males and 4,457 females, or 11,137, leaving a
decrease of population in the province of 902.*
* The foregoing figures are founded, so far as the town of Semi-
Among the orthodox population there were 419
marriages, 2,019 births (58 being illegitimate), and
1,401 deaths, or 3*35 per cent. Among the’Muhammadan
town population there were 166 marriages, 13
divorces, 443 births, and 606 or 4*23 per cent, of
deaths. Owing to the inaccurate method of registration
among the Muhammadan population of the
districts, their returns are not worthy of credence ;
but they stand at 1,546 marriages, 15 divorces, 7,773
births (including 1 illegitimate), and 9,130 or i*68 per
cent, of deaths. The number of ratable persons in
the towns of the province at the end of the year was
4,534, and of those exempted 364 : a total of 4,898,
or 162 more than in 1880. The number of peasants
was 1 f 103 ratable and 8 exempt— a total of 1,1 r 1, or
8 less than in 1880, whilst the Cossack population was
augmented by 4 men and decreased by 2.
The settled population of the province, excepting
the Tew inhabitants stationed in pickets, farms, mills,
etc., inhabit 57 Cossack villages, 5 peasant hamlets,
polatinsk is concerned, on a census taken by the statistical committee
on one day in March, 1882 ; for the other towns and settled rural
populations, on the lists compiled a month or two earlier by the local
police authorities ; but for the Kirghese population of the districts,
from the data deduced from the vollost family lists compiled in 1880.
These last data, says the report, particularly for Zaisan station, cannot
be complete. In several starchinstvos or sub-districts, for instance,
the number of females is returned at less than half the number of
males; so that these data would show throughout the province only
4'42 persons to each Kirghese kibitka, whereas on all occasions when
an actual census of the Steppe population has been taken, the average
number of Kirghese of both sexes to each kibitka has beer» 5.
Reckoning, then, the kibitka at 5 persons, the Kirghese population of
the province should amount to 553,080, and so the total population to
602,331 of both sexes. On this computation, the population of the
districts (excluding the towns and urban settlements) will be : Semi-
polatinsk, 128,752; Pavlodar, 112,559; Ust-Kamenogorsk, 72,658;
Karkaralinsk, 148,871 ; and Zaisan station 104,944.