“Is that a city?” asked Dulcie.
“Yakutsk,” said Doctor Trigg, “is the principal city of the Lena Gold Fields, and lies over the Stanovoi Range, toward the western end of the Sea of Okhotsk. In this part of Siberia lie the vast gold fields known as the Russian Klondike. They produce, with incredible hardship and labor, over two hundred million rubles annually. A ruble,” he added, rolling an affectionate and whimsical eye at Dulcie, “is at present worth—hum—let me think—”
“About fifty cents,” said Mr. Hamilton promptly.
“Yes,” continued Doctor Trigg. “This bleak and terrible country, stretching on, desolate league after desolate league, has been unofficially the death chamber of thousands of political and criminal prisoners every year. Herded together, the lowest and highest, in horrible proximity, sometimes in chains, the poor wretches are sent here from civilization to work the mines for a ruthless State, to labor, suffer, and die. Often the keenest, cleverest intellectual, whose only crime was a chance word, misstated by some jealous contemporary, is chain-mate to the vilest wretch crawling. No redress, no pardon. The poet Shelley pictures Prometheus chained to a rock, the fox gnawing at his vitals, and Prometheus groans,
‘No rest, no change, no hope;
Yet I endure.’”
“Yes, conditions are said to be pretty bad,” mused Mr. Hamilton. “And this is called the storehouse of the world.”
“True,” said Doctor Trigg. “The mountains contain not only gold, copper and iron, but ninety-five per cent of all the platinum in the world. For you, little Dulcie, and for millions like you, for that delicate chain on your neck, and that pretty ring.”
“Costly enough,” added Doctor Sims gloomily.
“There are jewels to hang on your platinum chains, too. Stores of tourmalines, chrysoberyls, and lovely pale aquamarines hide in the Urals.”
“And the endless trickle of bloodstained gold and gems seeps slowly out, year after year and generation after generation, to trick and beautify and amuse the world,” said Doctor Sims. “Gr-r-r-r-r!”