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Stephen Glottoff the island of Kadiak in 1763, and Krenitzin the peninsula of Aljaska in 1768. When we consider the scanty resources of these Russian navigators, the bad condition of their miserable barks, their own imperfect nautical knowledge, and the inhospitable nature of the seas which they traversed, we can not but admire their intrepidity.

In the Polar Sea there are neither sables nor otters, and thus the islands lying to the north of Siberia might have remained unknown till the present day, if the search after mammoth-teeth had not, in a similar manner, led to their discovery.

In March, 1770, while a merchant of the name of Lächow was busy collecting fossil ivory about Cape Sviatoinoss, he saw a large herd of deer coming over the ice from the north. Resolute and courageous, he at once resolved to follow their tracks, and after a sledge-journey of seventy versts, he came to an island, and twenty versts farther reached a second island, at which, owing to the roughness of the ice, his excursion terminated. He saw enough, however, of the richness of the two islands in mammoth-teeth, to show him that another visit would be a valuable speculation; and on making his report to the Russian Government, he obtained an exclusive privilege to dig for mammoth-bones on the islands which he had discovered, and to which his name had been given. In the summer of 1773 he consequently returned, and ascertained the existence of a third island, much larger than the others, mountainous, and having its coasts covered with drift-wood. He then went back to the first island, wintered there, and returned to Ustjansk in spring with a valuable cargo of mammoth-tusks.

There hardly exists a more remarkable article of commerce than these remains of an extinct animal. In North Siberia, along the Obi, the Jenissei, the Lena, and their tributaries, from lat. 58° to 70°, or along the shores of the Polar Ocean as far as the American side of Bering Strait, the remains of a species of elephant are found imbedded in the frozen soil, or become exposed, by the annual thawing and crumbling of the river-banks. Dozens of tusks are frequently found together, but the most astonishing deposit of mammoth-bones occurs in the Lüchow Islands, where, in some localities, they are accumulated in such quantities as to form the chief substance of the soil. Year after year the tuskhunters work every summer at the cliffs, without producing any sensible diminution of the stock. The solidly-frozen matrix in which the bones lie thaws to a certain extent annually, allowing the tusks to drop out or to be quarried. In 1821, 20,000 lbs. of the fossil ivory were procured from the island of New

Siberia.

The ice in which the mammoth remains are imbedded sometimes preserves their entire bodies, in spite of the countless ages which must have elapsed since they walked on earth. In 1799 the carcass of a mammoth was discovered so fresh that the dogs ate the flesh for two summers. The skeleton is preserved at St. Petersburg, and specimens of the woolly hair-proving that the climate of Siberia, though then no doubt much milder than at present, still required the protection of a warm and shaggy coat-were presented to the chief museums of Europe.

The remains of a rhinoceros, very similar to the Indian species, are likewise

found in great numbers along the shores, or on the steep and sandy river-banks of Northern Siberia, along with those of fossil species of the horse, the muskox, and the bison, which have now totally forsaken the Arctic wilds.

The Archipelago of New Siberia, situated to the north of the Lächow Islands, was discovered by Sirowatsky in 1806, and since then scientifically explored by Hedenström in 1808, and Anjou in 1823. These islands are remarkable no less for the numerous bones of horses, buffaloes, oxen, and sheep scattered over their desolate shores, than for the vast quantities of fossil-wood imbedded in their soil. The hills, which rise to a considerable altitude, consist of horizontal beds of sandstone, alternating with bituminous beams or trunks of trees. On ascending them, fossilized charcoal is everywhere met with, incrusted with an ash-colored matter, which is so hard that it can scarcely be scraped off with a knife. On the summit there is a long row of beams resembling the former, but fixed perpendicularly in the sandstone. The ends, which project from seven to ten inches, are for the most part broken, and the whole has the appearance of a ruinous dike. Thus a robust forest vegetation once flourished where now only hardy lichens can be seen; and many herbivorous animals feasted on grasses where now the reindeer finds but a scanty supply of moss, and the polar bear is the sole lord of the dreary waste.

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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 Ire

land, 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 riverbanks; 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, fiftytwo 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.

In this century, also, many an unfortunate exile, guiltless at least of ignoble crimes, has been doomed to wander to Siberia. There many a soldier of the grande armée has ended his life; there still lives many a patriotic Pole, banished for having loved his country "not wisely but too well;" there also the conspirators who marked with so bloody an episode the accession of Nicholas, have had time to reflect on the dangers of plotting against the Czar.

Most of the Siberian exiles are, however, common criminals-such as in our country would be hung or transported, or sentenced to the treadmill: the assassin, the robber--to Siberia; the smuggler on the frontier, whose free-trade principles injure the imperial exchequer-to Siberia; even the vagabond who is caught roaming, and can give no satisfactory account of his doings and intentions, receives a fresh passport-to Siberia.

Thus the annual number of the exiles amounts to about 12,000, who, according to the gravity of their offenses, are sent farther and farther eastward. On an average, every week sees a transport of about 300 of these "unfortu nates," as they are termed by popular compassion, pass through Tobolsk. About one-sixth are immediately pardoned, and the others sorted. Murderers and burglars are sent to the mines of Nertschinsk, after having been treated in Russia, before they set out on their travels, with fifty lashes of the knout. In former times their nostrils used to be torn off, a barbarity which is now no longer practised.

According to Sir George Simpson's "Narrative of a Journey Round the World" (1847), Siberia is the best penitentiary in the world. Every exile who is not considered bad enough for the mines-those black abysses, at whose entrance, as at that of Dante's hell, all hope must be left behind-receives a piece of land, a hut, a horse, two cows, the necessary agricultural implements, and provisions for a year. The first three years he has no taxes to pay, and, during the following ten, only the half of the usual assessment. Thus, if he choose to exert himself, he has every reason to hope for an improvement in his condition, and at the same time fear contributes to keep him in the right path; for he well knows that his first trespass would infallibly conduct him to the mines, a by no means agreeable prospect. Under the influence of these stimulants, many an exile attains a degree of prosperity which would have been quite beyond his reach had he remained in European Russia.

Hofmann gives a less favorable account of the Siberian exiles. In his opinion, the prosperity and civilization of the country has no greater obstacle than the mass of criminals sent to swell its population. In the province of Tomsk, which seems to be richly stocked with culprits of the worst description, all the

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