. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. upposedto be worked out by the first-comers many years ago, can nowbe made to yield a handsome profit again. The chief difficulty in Siberian gold-mining islabour. There is no skilledpersonnel to be had, andthe conditions of life atpoints remote from civili-sation are so disagreeablethat labourers often leaveas soon as they haveamassed a small sum. Imay add here my beliefthat Russia has secured inMongolia a tract of ex-tremely rich auriferous ter-ritory, but this is jealous
. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. upposedto be worked out by the first-comers many years ago, can nowbe made to yield a handsome profit again. The chief difficulty in Siberian gold-mining islabour. There is no skilledpersonnel to be had, andthe conditions of life atpoints remote from civili-sation are so disagreeablethat labourers often leaveas soon as they haveamassed a small sum. Imay add here my beliefthat Russia has secured inMongolia a tract of ex-tremely rich auriferous ter-ritory, but this is jealouslyheld by a group of Peters-burg capitalists, under of-ficial protection, and theforeign investor is notlikely to secure an inch ofit. But for the disturb-ances in China I believethat these gold - fieldswould have been sensa-tionally heard of beforenow. Irkutsk is, of course,typical only of the civilisation of Siberia in the towns. Thelittle settlements tell a different tale. Many of them are doingwell enough as regards agriculture, but the extreme loneli-ness of the life, and the length of the winter, are producing. mv- Poor Siberian Peasant. SIBERIAN CIVILISATION 153 a peculiar Siberian type of people—silent, morose, inexpres-sibly sad. Among the lowest classes, too, these conditions,with the presence of so large a proportion of criminals, inevit-ably breed their own series of crimes. The future of Siberia,however, obviously depends upon the success or failure ofthe Trans-Siberian Railway, and this is a question asked withgreat earnestness in Russia and of almost equal interest else-where. Will it pay? Will this gigantic enterprise be a suc-cess—financial, commercial, strategic? Russians themselves areby no means unanimous in reply. There are those who declarethat it will not only give Russia the ultimate mastery of Asia, butthat it will also pay a handsome dividend. On the other hand, Ihave heard it called a white elephant, a huge humbug and a finan-cial millstone. I may
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