85. TARTAR ENCAMPMENT.
CHAPTER XVII.
SIBERIA—FUR-TRADE AND GOLD-DIGGINGS.
Siberia.—Its immense Extent and Capabilities.—The Exiles.—Mentschikoff.—Dolgorouky.—Münich.—The Criminals.—The free Siberian Peasant.—Extremes of Heat and Cold.—Fur-bearing Animals.—The Sable.—The Ermine.—The Siberian Weasel.—The Sea-otter.—The black Fox.—The Lynx.—The Squirrel.—The varying Hare.—The Suslik.—Importance of the Fur-trade for the Northern Provinces of the Russian Empire.—The Gold-diggings of Eastern Siberia.—The Taiga.—Expenses and Difficulties of searching Expeditions.—Costs of Produce, and enormous Profits of successful Speculators.—Their senseless Extravagance.—First Discovery of Gold in the Ural Mountains.—Jakowlew and Demidow.—Nishne-Tagilsk.
Siberia is at least thirty times more extensive than Great Britain and Ireland, but its scanty population forms a miserable contrast to its enormous size. Containing scarcely three millions of inhabitants, it is comparatively three hundred times less peopled than the British Islands. This small population is, moreover, very unequally distributed, consisting chiefly of Russians and Tartars, who have settled in the south or in the milder west, along the rivers and the principal thoroughfares which lead from the territory of one large stream to the other. In the northern and eastern districts, as far as they are occupied, the settlements are likewise almost entirely confined to the river-banks; and thus the greater part of the enormous forest-lands, and of the interminable tundras, are either entirely uninhabited by man, or visited only by the huntsman, the gold-digger, or the migratory savage.
And yet Siberia has not been so niggardly treated by Nature as not to be able to sustain a far more considerable population. In the south there are thousands of square miles fit for cultivation; the numbers of the herds and flocks might be increased a hundred-fold, and even the climate would become milder after the labor of man had subdued the chilling influences of the forest and the swamp. But it is easier to express than to realize the wish to see Siberia more populous, for its reputation is hardly such as to tempt the free colonists to settle within its limits; and thus the Russian Government, which would willingly see its more temperate regions covered with flourishing towns and villages, can only expect an increase of population from the slow growth of time, aided by the annual influx of the involuntary emigrants which it sends across the Ural to the East.
Many a celebrated personage has already been doomed to trace this melancholy path, particularly during the last century, when the all-powerful favorite of one period was not seldom doomed to exile by the next palace revolution. This fate befell, among others, the famous Prince Mentschikoff. In a covered cart, and in the dress of a peasant, the confidential minister of Peter the Great, the man who for years had ruled the vast Russian Empire, was conveyed into perpetual banishment. His dwelling was now a simple hut, and the spade of the laborer replaced the pen of the statesman. Domestic misfortunes aggravated his cruel lot. His wife died from the fatigues of the journey; one of his daughters soon after fell a victim to the smallpox; his two other children, who were attacked by the same malady, recovered. He himself died in the year 1729, and was buried near his daughter at Beresow, the seat of his exile. Like Cardinal Wolsey, after his fall he remembered God, whom he had forgotten during the swelling tide of his prosperity. He considered his punishment as a blessing, which showed him the way to everlasting happiness. He built a chapel, assisting in its erection with his own hands, and after the services gave instruction to the congregation. The inhabitants of Beresow still honor his memory, and revere him as a saint. They were confirmed in this belief by the circumstance that his body, having been disinterred in 1821, was found in a state of perfect preservation, after a lapse of ninety-two years.
One day, as his daughter walked through the village, she was accosted by a peasant from the window of a hut. This peasant was Prince Dolgorouky, her father’s enemy—the man who had caused his banishment, and was now, in his turn, doomed to taste the bitterness of exile. Soon after the princess and her brother were pardoned by the Empress Anna, and Dolgorouky took possession of their hut. Young Mentschikoff was finally reinstated in all the honors and riches of his father, and from him descends, in a direct line, the famous defender of Sebastopol.
Marshal Münich, the favorite of the Empress Anna, was doomed, in his sixtieth year, to a Siberian exile, when Elizabeth ascended the throne. His prison consisted of three rooms—one for his guards or jailers, the second for their kitchen, the third for his own use. A wall twenty feet high prevented him from enjoying the view even of the sky. The man who had once governed Russia had but half a rouble daily to spend; but the love of his wife—who, although fifty-five years old, had the courage and the self-denial to accompany him in his banishment—alleviated the sorrows of his exile. The venerable couple spent twenty-one years in Siberia, and on their return from exile, fifty-two children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, were assembled to meet them at Moscow. The revolution which placed Catherine the Second on the throne had nearly once more doomed the octogenarian statesman to banishment, but he fortunately weathered the storm, and died as governor of St. Petersburg.