without special formalities. If he marries a second wife during the
life of his first, and lets her live in the same yurt, as usually
happens where the man is not very well-to-do, her lot is a pitiable
one. The first wife insists upon her rights, condemns the second to a
certain part of the yurt, and only allows her lord himself to exercise
his conjugal rights within strict limits. The wife is held in high
esteem among the Kirghiz: “We value our wives as we do our ambling
nags, both are priceless,” my Kirghiz friend Altibei said to me. The
men seldom leave their wives, the women still more rarely run away
from their husbands; but even in the steppe, love does sometimes break
all the bonds of tradition and custom. Abductions also occur, and
are not considered disgraceful. To carry off a maiden whose father’s
claims are exorbitant is considered by many as praiseworthy rather than
blameworthy on the part of both the abductor and abducted.
Among the Kirghiz, a new-born infant is washed in very salt water as
soon as it opens its eyes on the world. The washing is repeated for
forty days in succession, and then given up entirely. The suckling is
laid at first in a cradle filled with warm, soft, down-like camel wool,
so that it is completely covered, and does not suffer from cold in the
severest winter; later, it is dressed in a little woollen shirt, which
the mother holds over the fire about once in three days, to free it
from the parasites abundant in every yurt, but she never changes it for
another as long as it holds together. In winter, the careful mother
adds a pair of stockings, and, as soon as the child can walk, it is
dressed like a grown-up person.
Both parents are exceedingly fond of their children, treat them always
with the greatest tenderness, and never beat them, but they take a
pleasure in teaching them all kinds of ugly and unseemly words as soon
as they begin to speak, and when these are repeated by the child’s
innocent lips, they never fail to cause general amusement. The
different ages of the child are described by the name of some animal;
thus it may be “as old as a mouse, a marmot, a sheep, or a horse”. When
a boy reaches the age of four years, he is placed for the first time
on the back of a horse about the same age, richly adorned and saddled
with one of the children’s saddles which are usually heirlooms in a
family. The happy parents promise all sorts of pretty things to the
independent little rider, who has, for the first time, escaped from the
protecting arms of his mother. Then they call a servant or some willing
friend, and give horse and rider into his charge to be led from one
yurt to another, to announce the joyful event to all their relatives
and friends. Wherever the little boy goes, he is warmly welcomed and
overwhelmed with praises and dainties. A festival in the father’s yurt
celebrates the important day.
The child’s instruction in all that he requires to know begins
about his seventh year. The boy, who in the interval has become an
accomplished rider, learns to tend the grazing herds, the girl learns
to milk them, and to perform all the other work of a housewife; the son
of rich parents is taught to read and write by a mollah or anyone able
to impart such knowledge, and later he is instructed in the laws of his
religion. Before he has completed his twelfth year his instruction is
at an end, and he himself is ripe for life.
The Kirghiz honours his dead and their memory even more than he does
the living. Every family is ready to make the greatest sacrifices to
celebrate the funeral and memorial feast of a deceased member of the
family with as much pomp as possible; everyone, even the poorest,
strives to decorate as well as he can the grave of his departed loved
ones; everyone would consider it a disgrace to fail in paying full
respect to any dead person, whether relative or not. All this they have
in common with other Mohammedans; but the ceremonies observed at the
death and burial of a Kirghiz differ materially from those customary
among others of the same faith, and they are, therefore, worthy of
detailed description.
When a Kirghiz feels his last hour approaching, he summons all his
friends, that they may make sure that his soul gets into Paradise.
Pious Kirghiz, who are expecting death, have the Koran read to them
long before the end comes, though the words sounding in their ear may
be quite unintelligible. According to the custom among true believers,
the friends of a dying man gather round his bed and repeat to him the
first phrase of the confession of faith of all the Prophet’s followers,
“There is but one God”, until he responds with the second, “And
Mohammed is his prophet”. As soon as these words have passed his lips
the angel Munkir opens the gates of Paradise, and therefore all who
have heard the words exclaim, “El hamdu lillahi”,--Praise be to God!
As soon as the master of a yurt has closed his eyes in death,
messengers are sent in all directions to bear the tidings to his
relatives and friends, and, according to the rank and standing of the
dead man, these messengers may ride from ten to fifty or sixty miles
across the steppe from aul to aul. A relative in one aul may also carry
on the news to those in another. While the messengers are on their way,
the corpse is washed and enveloped in its “lailach”, which last every
Kirghiz procures during his lifetime, and stores up with his valuables.
When this duty has been fulfilled, the corpse is carried out of the
yurt and laid upon a bier formed by a half-extended yurt-trellis. The
mollah, who has been sent for, pronounces a blessing over the dead;
then the trellis with its burden is lifted up and fastened to the
saddle of a camel, and the train of assembled friends and kinsmen sets
out on its way to the burial-place, which is often far distant.
Whenever the dying man has breathed his last, the women begin the
lament for the dead. The one most nearly related to him begins the song
and gives vent to her heart’s grief in more or less deeply-felt words;
the others join in simultaneously at the end of every phrase or verse,
and one after another does her best to clothe her ideas in fit words.
The dirge becomes more and more mournful up till the moment when the
camel rises with his burden, and not by sounds and words only, but by
their whole conduct the women testify to their increasing grief. At
length they tear their hair and scratch their faces till blood flows.
Not till the funeral procession, in which the women take no part, has
disappeared from sight, do the cries and tears gradually cease.
Some men on swift horses have been sent in advance of the funeral train
to prepare the grave. This is an excavation, at most reaching only to a
man’s breast; at the end which points towards Mecca, it is vaulted to
receive the head and upper part of the body. When the corpse has been
laid to rest, the grave is covered with logs, planks, bundles of reeds,
or stones. It is not filled with earth, but a mound is heaped up on the
top of the covering and decorated with flags or the like, unless when
a dome-like structure of wood or bricks is built over the grave. When
a child dies its cradle is laid upon its grave. After the burial the
mollah pronounces a blessing over the corpse for the last time, and all
take part in heaping up the mound of earth. But the ceremonies do not
end here.
Whenever the head of a family dies, a white flag is planted beside the
yurt and left for a whole year in the same place. Every day during the
year the women assemble beside it to renew their lamentations. At the
time the flag is planted the dead man’s favourite horse is led up, and
half of its long tail is cut off. From that time forward no one mounts
it; it is “widowed”. Seven days after the death, all the friends and
relatives, even those from a distance, assemble in the yurt, hold a
funeral banquet together, distribute some of the dead man’s clothing
among the poor, and consult as to the future of those he has left
behind and the guardianship of the property. Then the bereaved family
is left alone with its sorrow.
When a woman dies almost the same ceremonies are observed, except that,
of course, the body is washed and dressed by women. But even in this
case the women remain within the aul to sing the mourning song. The
departed woman’s riding-horse has its tail cut, but no flag is planted.
When the aul is taken down, a youth selected for the honourable service
leads up the “widowed” riding-horse, puts the saddle of its former
master reversed on its back, loads it with his clothing, and leads it
by the bridle to its destination, carrying in his right hand the lance
which bears the mourning-flag.
On the anniversary of the death all the friends and relatives are
summoned once more to the bereaved yurt. After greeting and condoling
with the women, who are still shrouded in mourning garments, they fetch
the horse, saddle and load it in the same manner as when moving the
aul, and lead it before the mollah to be blessed. This done, two men
approach, seize its bridle, unsaddle it, throw it to the ground, and
stab it through the heart. Its flesh serves as a meal for the poor of
the company, its skin falls to the mollah. Immediately after the horse
has been killed, the lance is handed to the most important man among
the relatives; he takes it, pronounces a few words, breaks the shaft in
pieces, and throws these into the fire.
Now the horses come snorting up, eager to prove their speed in the
race; the young riders who guide and bridle them start off at a given
signal and disappear in the steppe. The bard takes the mollah’s place,
and commemorates the dead once more, but also extols the living and
seeks to gladden their hearts. The women lay aside the singular
head-dress, which serves as a sign of mourning, and don their gala
attire. After the abundant repast, the vessel of intoxicating milk-wine
circulates freely, and sounds of joy mingle with the tones of the
zither.
Mourning for the dead is over; life asserts its rights once more.
COLONISTS AND EXILES IN SIBERIA.
Those who regard Siberia as merely a vast prison are as far from the
truth as those who look upon it as one immeasurable waste of ice.
Russia does indeed send thousands of criminals or others under sentence
of punishment to Siberia every year; and there are among these some
who, having been convicted of serious crimes against life and property,
are not free during the whole of their enforced sojourn. But only a
very small proportion of all the criminals are really in confinement
for the whole period of their sentence, and every one of them has
it in his power to render this confinement less severe, or even to
free himself from it altogether by his behaviour, and thus he enjoys
advantages which do not fall to the lot of the inmates of our prisons
and houses of correction. Wide tracts of the vast territory which is
governed by the Russian sceptre, great countries according to our
ideas, have never been used as penal colonies at all, and will probably
always remain free of those forced immigrants, who cause the settled
population much more disagreeableness, not to say suffering, than they
have to endure themselves. And along the same paths, which formerly
were never trodden save in sorrow, there now pass many free human
beings, hoping and striving to better their lot in the distant East.
Voluntary colonists join the compulsory ones even in such districts
and tracts of country as were formerly dreaded and shunned as the most
inhospitable regions on earth. A new era is opening for Siberia; for
blinding fear is gradually being replaced by illuminating knowledge
even among those classes of society which are more prone to fear than
desirous of knowledge.
The descriptions of Siberia with which we are familiar come, for the
most part, from the mouth or the pen of educated exiles, that is to
say, from people whom the settled inhabitants call “unfortunate”,
and treat as such. Probably only a very small proportion of the
descriptions in question are untrue, but they are, nevertheless,
inaccurate in most cases. For misfortune clouds the eyes and the soul,
and destroys that impartiality which is the only possible basis of
a correct estimate of the conditions of life. These conditions are
much better than we are accustomed to believe, much better, indeed,
than they are in more than one of the mountainous districts of our
Fatherland; for the struggle for existence in Siberia is an easy one as
far as man is concerned. Want in the usual sense of the word, lack of
the ordinary necessaries of life, is here almost unknown, or at least,
only affects those whose power of work has been weakened by illness or
other misfortune. Compared with the hardships against which many a poor
German dwelling among the mountains has to contend during his whole
life, without ever emerging victorious from the struggle, the lot of
even the convict in Siberia appears in many cases enviable. Privation
oppresses only the mental, not the bodily life of the residents in
Siberia, for whoever is faithful to the soil receives from it more than
he needs, and if any one forsakes it for some of the other occupations
customary in the country, he can earn quite as much by the honest
work of his hands as he could have reaped from the soil itself. Thus
do the present conditions of life appear to one who studies them with
unprejudiced eyes.
I have honestly striven to form an unbiassed judgment on the present
conditions of life among the inhabitants of the parts of Siberia
through which we travelled. I have descended into the depths of misery,
and have sunned myself on the heights of prosperity, I have associated
with murderers, highwaymen, incendiaries, thieves, swindlers,
sharpers, vagabonds, scoundrels, insurgents and conspirators, as well
as with fishermen and huntsmen, shepherds and peasants, merchants
and tradesmen, officials and magistrates, with masters and servants,
educated and uneducated, rich and poor, contented and discontented,
so that I might confirm my observations, widen my knowledge, test my
conclusions, and correct erroneous impressions; I have begged the
police officers to describe the exiles’ lot to me, and have questioned
the exiles themselves; I have sought out criminals in their prisons,
and have observed them outside of these; I have conversed with
peasants, trades-people, and colonists generally, whenever and wherever
it was possible, and have compared the statements made to me by these
people with the detailed communications made to me by the government
officials: I may therefore believe that I gathered as much information
as was possible, taking into account the speed and shortness of our
journey. In any case, I have collected so much material that I may
confine myself solely to the results of my own investigations in
attempting to give a rapid sketch of the life of exiles in Siberia. My
description will not be free from errors, but it will certainly be a
just estimate of the state of affairs.
With the exception of government officials, soldiers, and enterprising
trades-people, chiefly merchants, the stream of emigrants from
Russia to Siberia was made up, until 1861, solely of those who went
under compulsion: serfs of the Czar who worked in his own mines, and
criminals who were sent, chiefly, to those of the state. With the
suppression of serfdom, which had a deeper influence on the state
of society than was supposed, or than is even now recognized, the
emigration of the former class ceased at once. Millions of men were set
free by a word from their mild and large-hearted ruler; thousands of
them forsook the mines and turned their attention to the fruitful soil,
which their relatives had already been cultivating; the Czar’s mines
were almost depopulated, and even now they have scarcely recovered from
the effects of the blow. But the great imperial or crown-estate of the
Altai gained, instead of its former colonists, a new element which it
had lacked, a free peasantry, not indeed possessing heritable property,
but yet at full liberty to cultivate the rich soil. The suppression of
serfdom also altered the condition of those tracts of country which
had been chiefly colonized by convict exiles, for there, too, it
became possible to establish a free peasantry. But here the continuous
emigration-stream proves rather a hindrance than an advantage; for
in most cases the convicts who are exiled to parts of the country
already peopled introduce an element of disquiet among the settled
inhabitants, and prevent such hopeful and prosperous colonization
as in the crown-estate of the Altai, which has never been used as a
convict settlement, and never will be so used as long as it remains the
property of the Czar. On the other hand, many voluntary emigrants make
their way to the Altai, and on that account the population increases
more rapidly there than in the rest of Siberia.
It is a magnificent tract of country this crown-estate of the Altai,
and, as a landed property, it is also remarkable as being the largest
which can be found anywhere. For its superficial area may be stated in
round numbers at 400,000 square versts, or about 176,000 English square
miles. It includes within itself mountain ranges and plains, hill
chains and table-lands; it lies between navigable rivers, and contains
others which could be made navigable without special difficulty; it
still contains vast and utilizable forests, and wealth immeasurable
above and beneath the ground. Ores of various kinds have been
discovered at no fewer than eight hundred and thirty different places
within its boundaries, without taking into account other two hundred
and seventy spots at which it has been found, but which have never been
thoroughly examined. In the Altai, one literally walks upon silver
and gold; for auriferous silver-ore as well as lead, copper, and iron
intersect the mountains in veins, more or less rich, but usually worth
working; and the rivers flowing from them carry down golden sand. A
stratum of coal, whose extent has not yet been determined, but in which
a depth of seven or eight yards has been proved in various places,
underlies such an extensive tract, that, judging from the composition
of the exposed masses of rock, one is justified in concluding that
the whole northern portion of the estate stands above a great
coal-basin.[86] And yet the real wealth of the estate of the Altai
lies, not in its subterranean treasures, but in its rich black soil,
which spreads over mountain slopes and plains, and is swept together in
river-basins and hollows, so that it covers them to the depth of a yard
and a half. Beautiful, often grand, mountain districts alternate with
pleasing hilly tracts of arable land, and gently-undulating plains,
which the farmer prefers above all else, steppe-like landscapes with
fruitful valleys watered by a brook or river, forests of luxuriantly
sprouting trees, low and tall, with groves or park-like shrubbery.
The climate, though not mild, is by no means intolerable, and nowhere
hinders profitable cultivation of the exceedingly fertile, and, for the
most part, virgin soil. Four months of hot, almost unvarying summer,
four months of severe continuous winter, two months of damp, cold,
and changeable spring, and a similar autumn, make up the year, and
though the mean warmth of the best half of the year is not sufficient
to mature the grape, it ripens all the kinds of grain which we grow in
Northern and Central Germany; and in all the southern portions of the
crown property the temperature is high enough to admit of melon culture.
Such is the character of the land which has been free, for more than
two generations, from exiled criminals, and which now harbours such
colonists as, within certain limits, one would like to see throughout
the whole remaining and not less rich and fertile southern portion
of Siberia. Of course these farmers of the Altai cannot be compared
with our peasants who inherit their land; but they compare favourably
with any ordinary Russian peasants. One can see that their fathers and
grandfathers have been serfs of the greatest and most exalted Lord of
the Empire, not half-slaves of a master who, powerless himself, demands
the most absolute subjection; one can also assure oneself in many ways
that the lack of landed property has in no wise hindered them from
becoming prosperous, that is, from earning more than enough to supply
their necessities.
From the time that the Altai was declared the property of the Czar, the
lot of its inhabitants was comparatively fortunate, not to say happy.
Until their release from serfdom, they had all been employed either
in mining, or in some work connected therewith. Those who were not
actually in the mines were occupied, some with the felling and charring
of trees, others with conveying of the charcoal to the smelting-houses,
and others again with the transport of the metal. With the increase
of the population the burden of compulsory service became lighter. In
the fifties, there were so many able-bodied men available, that the
compulsory service to their lord, the Czar, was limited to one month in
the year, with the condition, however, that each serf-workman should
furnish a horse. The distance which a workman had to cover with his
horse was taken into account according to its length. As compensation
for absence from home, each serf-workman received 75½ _kopeks_ for the
period of his work, but, in addition to this nominal pay, he had the
right to cultivate as much of the Czar’s land as he could, and to till
it as he pleased, as well as to cut down as much wood in the Czar’s
forests as he required for building his house, and for fuel, and he
was burdened with no taxes or tribute whatever. The number of workmen
which a village was obliged to furnish was in proportion to the number
of its inhabitants; the distribution of the burden of service among the
different heads of families was left to the members of the community
themselves.
The work of the miners was less easy. They were drawn from the towns
and villages of the crown-estate, instead of the soldiers levied
elsewhere, were treated like soldiers in every respect, and were only
freed after twenty-five years of service. They were divided into
two classes: the miners proper, who worked in regular relays, and
the workers connected with the mine, who were obliged to perform a
certain prescribed amount of work each year, the time being left to
their own choice. The latter were engaged in charcoal-burning, felling
trees, making bricks, transport, and the like, and they received 14
roubles yearly. Having yielded the required service, they were free
for the rest of the year, and might do as they pleased. Those who
worked in the mines, on the other hand, were compelled to give their
services year in, year out. They worked in twelve-hour relays, one
week by day, the next by night, and every third week they were free.
Each miner received, according to his capability, from six to twelve
roubles a year for such necessaries as had to be paid for in money,
but in addition he was allowed two _pood_ (72 lbs.) of flour a month
for himself, two _pood_ for his wife, and one _pood_ for each of his
children. He was also at liberty to till as much land, and breed and
keep as many cattle as he could. Each of his sons was obliged to attend
school from his seventh to his twelfth year; from his twelfth to his
eighteenth he was engaged as an apprentice, and rewarded at first
with one, later with two roubles a year. At the age of eighteen his
compulsory service in the mines began.
On the first of March, 1861, the day of the emancipation of all the
serfs in the Russian Empire, there were in the crown property of the
Altai 145,639 males, of whom 25,267 were at work in the mines or
smelting works. All these were released from their compulsory service,
not indeed in a single day, but within two years. No fewer than 12,626
of them forsook the mines, returned to their native villages and began
to till the soil; the rest remained in the mines as hired labourers.
[Illustration: Fig. 74.--Miners in the Altai returning from Work.]