. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across d annual tax which is never above the easy ability of the sub-ject to pay: it is generally asserted that the taxes in Asia are much light-er than those of European Russia, to make sure that there shall be no dis-content among the people. The Russian Government requires that everysubject shall pay a tax, not so much for the value of the article receivedas an acknowledgment of subjection. In the settled portions of Russia the tax is ])ayable
. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across d annual tax which is never above the easy ability of the sub-ject to pay: it is generally asserted that the taxes in Asia are much light-er than those of European Russia, to make sure that there shall be no dis-content among the people. The Russian Government requires that everysubject shall pay a tax, not so much for the value of the article receivedas an acknowledgment of subjection. In the settled portions of Russia the tax is ])ayable in inoney, but inthe wilder regions taxes are collected in kind. On the shores of the Arc- COLLECTING THE TAXES. 438 tie Ocean and through all the northern part of Siberia the yessaJc, or tax,is one fox-skin; in Kamtchatka it was formerly one sable-skin, but sincethe increase in the price of the fur, one skin is received for every four in-habitants, who arrange the division among themselves. In some of thegrain-growing parts of the Empire the tax is paid in grain ; on the AmoorRiver it is paid in fish, and among the Kirghese and Turcomans it is paid. KIRGHESE CHIEF AND FAMILY. in cattle, sheep, or horses, which constitute the circulating medium of thecountry. In return for this tax, and provided the new subject in Central Asiabehaves himself, he has the protection of a powerful government. TheRussian Government has its faults, but it is immeasurably superior to theold way in which these countries were ruled. By the religion of the Moslem might makes right, and this was thefoundation of the governmental system of the Kirghese and Turcomantribes, together with the khanates previously mentioned. Robbery was arecognized means of making a living; not robber}^ by detail, as practisedby highwaymen and burglars, but wholesale robbery in which entire tribeswere concerned. Many thousands of people lived by raiding, and the raid 28 434 THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.
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