Next to the sea-otter, the black fox, whose skin is of a rich and shining black or deep brown color, with the longer or exterior hairs of a silvery-white, furnishes the most costly of all the Siberian furs. The average price of a single skin amounts to 60 or 70 silver roubles, and rich amateurs will willingly pay 300 roubles, or even more, for those of first-rate quality. The skin of the Siberian red fox, which ranks next in value, is worth no more than 20 roubles; the steel-gray winter dress of the Siberian crossed fox (thus named from the black cross on his shoulders), from 10 to 12 roubles; and that of the Arctic fox, though very warm and close, no more than 6 or 8.
The bear family likewise furnishes many skins to the Siberian furrier. That of the young brown bear (Ursus arctos) is highly esteemed for the trimming of pelisses; but that of the older animal has little value, and is used, like that of the polar bear, as a rug or a foot-cloth in sledges.
The lynx is highly prized for its very thick, soft, rust-colored winter dress, striped with darker brown. It attains the size of the wolf, and is distinguished from all other members of the cat tribe, by the pencils of long black hair which tip its erect and pointed ears. It loves to lie in ambush for the passing reindeer or elk, on some thick branch at a considerable distance from the ground. With one prodigious bound it leaps upon the back of its victim, strikes its talons into its flesh, and opens with its sharp teeth the arteries of its neck.
Though singly of but little value, as a thousand of its skins are worth no more than one sea-otter, the squirrel plays in reality a far more important part in the Siberian fur-trade than any of the before-mentioned animals, as the total value of the gray peltry which it furnishes to trade is at least seven times greater than that of the sable. Four millions of gray squirrel skins are, on an average, annually exported to China, from two to three millions to Europe, and the home consumption of the Russian Empire is beyond all doubt still more considerable, as it is the fur most commonly used by the middle classes. The European squirrels are of inferior value, as the hair of their winter dress is still a mixture of red and gray; in the territory of the Petschora, the gray first becomes predominant, and increases in beauty on advancing towards the east. The squirrels are caught in snares or traps, or shot with blunted arrows. Among the fur-bearing animals of Siberia, we have further to notice the varying hare, whose winter dress is entirely white, except the tips of the ears, which are black; the Baikal hare; the ground-squirrel, whose fur has fine longitudinal dark-brown stripes, alternating with four light-yellow ones; and the suslik, a species of marmot, whose brown fur, with white spots and stripes, fetches a high price in China. It occurs over all Siberia as far as Kamchatka. Its burrows are frequently nine feet deep; this, however, does not prevent its being dug out by the hunters, who likewise entrap it in spring when it awakes from its winter sleep.
Summing together the total amount of the Russian fur-trade, Von Baer estimates the value of the skins annually brought to the market by the Russian American Fur Company at half a million of silver roubles, the produce of European Russia at a million and a half, and that of Siberia at three millions. As agriculture decreases on advancing to the north, the chase of the fur-bearing animals increases in importance. Thus, in the most northern governments of European Russia—Wjatka, Wologda, Olonez, and Archangel—it is one of the chief occupations of the inhabitants. In Olonez about four hundred bears are killed every year, and the immense forests of Wologda furnish from one hundred to two hundred black foxes, three hundred bears, and three millions of squirrels.
Although the sable and the sea-otter are not so numerous as in former times, yet, upon the whole, the Russian fur-trade is in a very flourishing condition; nor is there any fear of its decreasing, as the less valuable skins—such as those of the squirrels and hares, which from their numbers weigh most heavily in the balance of trade—are furnished by rodents, which multiply very rapidly, and find an inexhaustible supply of food in the forests and pasture-grounds of Siberia.
The chase of the fur-bearing animals affords the North-Siberian nomads—such as the Ostiaks, Jakuts, Tungusi, and Samoïedes—the only means of procuring the foreign articles they require; hence it taxes all their ingenuity, and takes up a great deal of their time. On the river-banks and in the forests they lay innumerable snares and traps, all so nicely adapted to the size, strength, and peculiar habits of the various creatures they are intended to capture, that it would be almost impossible to improve them. An industrious Jakut will lay about five hundred various traps as soon as the first snow has fallen; these he visits about five or six times in the course of the winter, and generally finds some animal or other in every eighth or tenth snare.
The produce of his chase he brings to the nearest fair, where the tax-gatherer is waiting for the jassak, which is now generally paid in money (five paper roubles = four shillings). With the remainder of his gains he purchases iron kettles, red cloth for hemming his garments, powder and shot, rye-meal, glass pearls, tobacco, and brandy—which, though forbidden to be sold publicly, is richly supplied to him in private—and then retires to his native wilds. From the smaller fairs, the furs are sent by the Russian merchants to the larger staple places, such as Jakutsk, Nertschinsk, Tobolsk, Kiachta, Irbit, Nishne-Novgorod, and finally St. Petersburg and Moscow; for by repeatedly sorting and matching the size and color of the skins, their value is increased.
About thirty years ago firs were still the chief export article of Siberia—to China, European Russia, and Western Europe—but since then the discovery of its rich auriferous deposits has made gold its most important produce. The precious metal is found on the western slopes of the Ural chain and in West Siberia; but the most productive diggings are situated in East Siberia, where they give occupation to many thousands of workmen, and riches to a few successful speculators.
The vast territory drained by the Upper Jenissei and its tributaries, the Superior and the Middle Tunguska, consists for the greater part of a dismal and swampy primeval forest, which scarcely thirty years since was almost totally unknown. A few wretched nomads and fur-hunters were the only inhabitants of the Taiga—as those sylvan deserts are called—and squirrel skins seemed all they were ever likely to produce. A journey through the Taiga is said to be one of the most fatiguing and tedious tours which it is possible to make. Up-hill and down-hill, a narrow path leads over a swampy ground, into which the horses sink up to their knees. The rider is scarcely less harassed than the patient animal which carries him over this unstable soil. No bird enlivens the solitary forest with its song; the moaning of the wind in the crowns of the trees alone interrupts the gloomy silence. The eternal sameness of the scene—day after day one constant succession of everlasting larches and fir-trees—is as wearying to the mind as the almost impassable road to the body.