_THE SILVER AND (SO-CALLED) QUICKSILVER MINES OF NERTCHINSK._
The supposed quicksilver-mines.--Inadequate evidence of their
existence.--Unsupported statements of writers.--Not known to
Anglo-Siberians.--Silver-mines perhaps intended.--Deleterious
fumes a myth.--Questionable allegations regarding
silver-mines.--Misstatements exposed.--Testimonies of Collins
and other eye-witnesses.--Accounts of ex-prisoners and Lutheran
pastor.--Nertchinsk Zavod and work in the mines.--Condition
of affairs in 1866.--Present state of things.--The Nemesis of
exaggeration.
When crossing the Pacific I heard it remarked by an American clergyman
that Mrs. Beecher Stowe, in her exaggerated account, as he thought it,
of American slavery, showed great shrewdness in assigning to her story
a locality that was very remote and unknown to most of her readers.
A similar observation might be made in regard to not a few of the
writers on Siberian exiles and their labours in the mines. How the idea
first came into my mind I know not, but when in 1874 an Englishman,
born in Russia, told me in Petersburg that the worst of Russian
criminals were put down in quicksilver-mines in Siberia, where they
were speedily killed by unhealthy fumes, it seemed to me like an item
of news I had heard before. Since my return from Siberia the question
has been frequently put to me, Did you go to the quicksilver-mines,
where the exiles are so cruelly treated? Baron Rosen also wrote,
“Eight persons of the above-mentioned eleven criminal categories were
dispatched at once to the quicksilver-mines of Nertchinsk; ... they
worked for long years underground in the mines, like the other forced
labourers.” Again, the _Newcastle Daily Chronicle_ for 21st November,
1878, quoting, apparently, Captain Wiggins, says: “Desperate criminals
only are sent to labour in the quicksilver-mines, and for these there
is a specially severe discipline provided, and ‘horrors,’ without
doubt, exist.” And I have somewhere read, if I mistake not, that in the
vicinity of Nertchinsk was a quicksilver-mine, which for a time was
worked, but that the loss of life entailed upon the convict labourers
was so great as to cause it to be given up.
Now it is somewhat remarkable that I have been unable to learn that
there is a quicksilver-mine in Siberia at all, or to get satisfactory
proof that one ever existed. This may perhaps surprise my readers, but
I proceed to explain myself thus:--The “English Cyclopædia,” under
the article “Mercury,” mentions various places where this mineral is
found, but says nothing of Siberia. Yet surely, if mines exist there,
affording employment for numerous labourers, we ought to hear something
of their output. Again, in “Ure’s Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures,
and Mines,” a standard book on mining (p. 120), we find a good deal
concerning the mines of Siberia, of those in the Urals, the Altai,
and Daouria (which last comprise those about Nertchinsk), but nothing
is said of quicksilver-mines in any one of these regions.[1] Again,
Mr. Atkinson, who spent several years in Asiatic Russia, went to the
district of Nertchinsk, and had friends among the mining engineers,
says: “Tin and zinc ores are found, but neither have as yet been much
worked, and I am not aware of the existence of quicksilver, though it
is said to be found in these regions.” Mr. Eden, in his valuable little
compilation on Siberia, speaking of its mineralogy, says, “Quicksilver
also is reported to exist in some of the north-eastern provinces”; but
he gives no authority for the report, says nothing of its being worked,
nor mentions the existence of it at Nertchinsk. I may further add that
recently I have seen the Englishman whom I met at Kiakhta, and who
since has twice passed through Nertchinsk. He asked particularly of an
officer connected with the mines for one of quicksilver, and was told
that, though there was said to be quicksilver in the neighbourhood, it
was not worked.
To these testimonies I must add my own, that neither in the town of
Nertchinsk, through which we passed, nor in the neighbourhood, nor
indeed throughout Siberia, did we anywhere hear of a quicksilver-mine.
The only testimony I have ever received in the opposite direction
is that of a released political exile, who has told me that he once
heard from some of his fellow-prisoners at Petrovsky Zavod, many miles
distant, that there was a small quicksilver-mine at Nertchinsk, but
so poor an affair that it was not worked. Subsequently my informant
was deported to four places in succession round about Nertchinsk, but
he neither saw nor heard anything more of the said quicksilver-mine.
Accordingly, on meeting, since my return, with an English acquaintance
who has spent a large part of his life in Siberia, and who knows it
well, I said to him, “You have heard, have you not, that there are
quicksilver-mines in Siberia?” to which he replied in the affirmative,
but he did not know where they existed; and when I asked him whether,
if I took upon myself to say that there was no such thing as a
quicksilver-mine in Siberia, he could contradict me, he thought
awhile, and then was obliged to confess he could not. The Englishman
from Kiakhta said the same; and my most recent informant, a released
political exile, who spent some years in the mines about Nertchinsk,
assures me to the same effect. In the face, therefore, of the prevalent
notion to the contrary, and notwithstanding what little evidence I have
been able to collect in their favour, I must express my grave doubts
as to whether mercury has ever been worked, in any sense worthy of the
term, by Russian convicts; and I shall further venture on the assertion
that there does not exist a quicksilver-mine in Siberia at all.
But perhaps _silver_-mines were intended instead of “quicksilver,” in
which case it should be observed that, if the quicksilver-mines have no
existence, then the slow process of killing convicts by their fumes is
a delusion. That working in quicksilver-mines is destructive to health
is perfectly well known; but working in silver-mines is quite another
matter. When at Barnaul, we heard nothing of any difficulty arising
under this head in the working of the Altai silver-mines. When in the
Rocky Mountains, I heard from a Russian lady, who had been down the
silver-mine near Virginia city, that the heat was very great, but she
said nothing as to the air being otherwise objectionable. Mr. Collins,
also, describing his descent of one of the Nertchinsk mines, the
silver-mine of Zarentunskie, says: “We now passed along another drift,
and found nothing unpleasant in this underground passage.” Moreover,
the two released exiles, to whose information I have already alluded,
have told me that they never perceived any objectionable fumes,--that,
in fact, there were none.
But, apart from the supposed deadly fumes, there has been a great deal
said and written respecting the Siberian mines in general, and those of
Nertchinsk in particular, which my experience and reading lead me to
question, not to say to contradict. The number of Englishmen who have
visited the great mine of Nertchinsk is represented, I believe, solely
by Captain Cochrane,[2] and great changes have taken place since his
day. In 1848, the Emperor Nicolas decided, with a view to carrying out
his plans in the regions of the Amur, that the whole of the people in
the Trans-Baikal should become Cossacks. Hitherto a large body of the
population had been employed in mining operations, and Mr. Atkinson
speaks of this sudden change as having closed the silver-mines of
Nertchinsk; but I suppose he means relatively, for the mines have been
worked for many years since by convicts, and, if we are to believe
all that is written on the subject, they are full of horrors to the
present day. But I shall venture to examine a few of these writings
which say so, and compare them with the statements of travellers and
eye-witnesses. I shall offer, too, my own experience, and then leave
the reader to judge respecting the truth of the whole.
The author of “The Russians of To-day” says (p. 216): “The miners are
supposed to be the worst offenders, and their punishment is tantamount
to death by slow torture; for it is certain to kill them in ten years,
and ruins their health long before that time. If the convict have
money or influential friends, he had better use the time between his
sentence and transportation in _buying a warrant_ which consigns him to
the lighter kinds of labour above ground, otherwise he will inevitably
be sent under earth, and _never again see the sky_ until he is hauled
up to die in an infirmary.” This was published in 1878, and I have
italicised the doubtful or erroneous words.
Again, the _Contemporary Review_ for September 1879, in an article
on “Conspiracies in Russia,” says (p. 143): “Of the treatment of
political exiles in Siberia, as it has been carried on _for a long
time past_, I have before me a thrilling description from the pen of
Mr. Robert Lemke, a German writer, who has visited the various penal
establishments of Russia with an official legitimation. He had been
to Tobolsk, after which he had to make a _long, dreary journey_ in a
wretched car, until a _high mountain_ rose before him. In its torn and
craggy flank the mountain showed a colossal opening similar to the
mouth of a burnt-out crater. Fetid vapours, which almost took away his
breath, ascended from it.”
Mr. Lemke then walks down with a guide, and--
“Entering a room of considerable extent, but which was scarcely a man’s
height, and which was dimly lit by an oil lamp, the visitor asked,
‘Where are we?’ ‘In the sleeping-room of the condemned! Formerly it
was a gallery of the mine; now it serves as a shelter.’ The visitor
shuddered. This subterranean sepulchre, lit by neither sun nor moon,
was called a sleeping-room. Alcove-like cells were hewn into the rock;
here, on a couch of damp, half-rotten straw, covered with a sackcloth,
the unfortunate sufferers were to repose from the day’s work. Over each
cell a _cramp iron_ was fixed, wherewith to lock up the prisoners like
ferocious dogs. No door, no window anywhere.
“Conducted through another passage, where a few lanterns were placed,
and whose end was also barred by an iron gate, Mr. Lemke came to
a large vault, partly lit. _This was the mine._ A deafening noise
of pickaxes and hammers. Then he saw some _hundreds_ of wretched
figures, with shaggy beards, sickly faces, reddened eyelids, _clad in
tatters_,--some of them _barefoot_, others in sandals, fettered with
heavy foot-chains. No song, no whistling; now and then they _shyly_
looked at the visitor and his companion.”
Mr. Lemke leaves the mine and speaks to one of the officers about the
convicts’ rest. “Rest!” said the officer, “convicts must always labour.
There is no rest for them; they are condemned to perpetual forced
labour, and he who once enters the mine _never leaves it_!” And so
on.[3]
These remarkable extracts may be appropriately followed by reference to
an article in the _Echo_ for May 5th, 1881. It numbered 100 lines, and
on reading it I had the curiosity to mark every line that appeared to
me to contain a misstatement or a blunder. No less than 20 were marked;
that is to say, one line in every five. The article is headed. “On the
Road to Siberia.” The author begins by starting his pedestrian exiles
on the _march_ at the Sparrow Hills at Moscow, and in crossing Russia
he gives them all sorts of difficulties by road to overcome; whereas I
have shown, in an earlier chapter, that for years past the prisoners
are taken by steam across Russia, and that the exile reaches the first
prison in Siberia without walking at all. Then the author places his
pedestrian exiles under the charge of _mounted, long-speared_ guards,
feeds them with bread and _oil_ (which latter I never yet heard of in
a Russian prison), and, what is more amusing, feeds the Cossack horses
with the _meal_ (whatever that may be) eaten by their masters. Then
having got his exiles over the Ural, he says:--
“Beyond the Ural, however, with its simple industries and markets, the
region becomes more barbarous; it is less relieved by the softening
aspects of social life; the exile population, clad in sheepskins,
thickens at every step; the cold grows so intense” [this, by-the-bye,
in the “open season,” _i.e._ the summer], “that occasionally the
Cossacks on guard are frozen, lance in hand; and the silver-mines are
now _not far distant_,--_immense caverns_, illuminated by torches of
pine, peopled by men with leaden-hued faces, caused by exhalations from
the copper ore, in which the silver is found imbedded; inhabited too
by _women_ and _children_, who share in the unhealthful labour, and
contribute their quota to the terrible totals of mortality, _living,
dying_, and being buried often _far below the light of day_.”
Now, when I read this, my first thought was to take Mr. _Punch’s_
advice, and “write to the _Times_,” but I repressed my feelings till I
could gather these extracts, italicise the questionable words, and then
calmly place before the reader such remarks upon the matter as I have
to offer. Let me, then, observe, in the first place, that neither of
these three authors professes to write from personal experience. Had
the writer in the _Echo_ been to Siberia in the “open season,” he would
not have frozen his mounted guard, lance in hand, but would have made
him trudge on foot at the side of his convoy, sweating beneath the load
of rifle and bayonet; and neither of the three writers, had they been
to Siberia, would have been so vague with regard to its geography. The
author of the “Russians of To-day” (p. 216) informs his readers that
“Siberia is a territory covering about _six_ times the area of England
and Scotland!” Had he written _sixty_ times he would have been not far
from the mark; but--perhaps six was a printer’s error!
Again, the _Contemporary_ writer says that Mr. Lemke “had been to
Tobolsk, after which he had to make a long dreary journey until a high
mountain was before him;” which sentence, though not expressly saying
so, leaves one to infer that the mountain was at least in the vicinity,
whereas the country about Tobolsk is flat, and there is no mountain
answering to the writer’s description, where convicts are employed,
within 2,000 miles. So, again, the writer for the _Echo_, almost
immediately after getting his exiles over the Urals, informs us that
“the silver-mines are now not far distant,” which is hardly an exact
way of speaking of 3,000 miles.
But I shall now proceed to give such personal information as I am able
about Nertchinsk, prefacing what I have to say with words from Mr.
Collins’s chapters describing his visit to the mines of the district.
This, I think, should go far to satisfy an ordinary reader as to the
quality of the miners’ food, clothing, and sleeping accommodation.
“This [gold] mine was a convict establishment, like all the mines east
of Lake Baikal. The men were well clad, and in visiting the hospital,
prison, and quarters, I found the arrangements for their health and
sleeping clean and comfortable. Cooks were preparing dinner for the
prisoners. I tasted of the soup, bread, and _kacha_, or grits, made
from buckwheat and milk, and found them good and well prepared. There
were a number on the sick list, mostly those who had recently arrived,
but they were in a warm, clean room, with clean beds and clothing, and
with a separate kitchen, where proper diet was prepared for them.”
This was published in 1860. Before leaving Asia I had an opportunity of
asking an American, who had visited the Nertchinsk mines, as to what he
saw, but he told of no such barbarities as those quoted above. Again,
I asked an Englishman living in Siberia about women working _in_ the
silver-mines, but he had never heard of such a thing, nor have I; and
my second exile informant denies it; so that I trust the women and the
children with “leaden-hued faces,” inhabiting the mines and “sharing in
the unhealthful labour,” exist only in the imagination of the writer
for the _Echo_. Had the article said that there were women and children
_at_ the mines, it would have been less difficult to believe, because I
found them at the gold-mines--the women employed in scrubbing, washing,
or hard female labour, and their children taken care of, clothed and
fed in a school; but this will be alluded to hereafter. Again, I met
a naval officer, who had seen the coal-mines at Dui, in Sakhalin, and
who spoke of the prison abuses there in no measured terms. He had
visited the mines at Nertchinsk five years before we met, and had
descended into one of them; but though he said the men looked sickly,
and sometimes had to “go on all fours” to get the mineral (which, I
suppose, all miners occasionally have to do), yet he had no barbarities
of which to speak, and did not confirm any of the notions with which
I entered the country, as to the prisoners being kept underground
by night and by day. He said they worked twelve hours a day, six on
and six off. I questioned, too, the chief of the gold-mines at Kara
concerning the silver-mines at Nertchinsk, which are not far off. He
denied that the prisoners were kept underground, and _thought_ they
worked in three sections of eight hours each.
I have three testimonies besides, not from prison officials,
travellers, or amateur philanthropists, but from men, two of whom
themselves worked in the mines of Nertchinsk; whilst the third, a
Lutheran pastor, told me of what he had heard direct from prisoners at
the mines, where it was his business periodically to visit. He said
that old convicts at Nertchinsk and Kara had told him of Rozguildieff,
a director, 20 years before, who gave them only 4 lbs. of bread a day,
and who used to go about with four Cossacks behind him, armed with the
knout, to thrash those who did not do the prescribed quantity of work.
He afterwards became blind. I have heard from another quarter that this
man used sometimes to condemn his prisoners, not to so many stripes,
but so many “lbs.” of the birch--to 10 or 15 lbs., for instance--which
meant that the man should be flogged until a certain weight of rods
had been used up. But a military officer was sent to inspect the
mines, and Rozguildieff was removed; since which time the pastor said
that all seemed going on well, and that he had heard no complaints of
abuse. I have also heard of this Rozguildieff and his cruelty from
a third person, who was at Petrovsky Zavod in 1866, with about 500
prisoners, many of them Polish insurgents. Another testimony respecting
the mines is from a Pole whom I met, engaged as a clerk at one of the
post-houses. He had been sent to Nertchinsk as a political prisoner,
condemned to hard labour, but he said he was not compelled to work.
Perhaps he had the good fortune to be taken as a servant, or employed
as a clerk; this he did not explain, but he said that the officers
were not cruel, and that of the prison treatment he had no complaint
to make. He had, he said, 3 lbs. of bread, and ½ lb. of meat a day. He
might write a letter every three months; and so well satisfied did he
seem with his present lot, that he said if the Emperor were to allow
his return to Poland he would certainly go; but if he were offered
permission to return only to Russia, he would prefer to stay where he
was. One reason for this, it has been suggested, might be that police
supervision is more irksome in Russia than in Siberia.
The last testimony I would offer is perhaps the most satisfactory of
all, because it came to me direct in English from one who, implicated
in the Polish insurrection of 1863, was sent as a political exile to
Nertchinsk, with several like offenders from the Russian and Polish
aristocracy, he himself being a man who had received a university
education. The accounts he gave me relate to the condition of things
in 1866 and 1867. The principal centre of the mining district, he
said, was called Nertchinsky Zavod, or Bolshoi Zavod, “the great
works,” at which, however, the _mines_ were abandoned before 1865,
and the prison was afterwards used for a hospital. Round about were
various mines, works, hospitals, and prisons, such as Kadaya, Akatuya,
Klitchka, Alexandreffsky, Algatche (the last a smelting place), and
some others. At Stretinsk and Sivakoff, on the Shilka, were ship-yards,
where prisoners were employed. There would seem to be labour going on
still at Nertchinsk and at Algatche, since, from the Governor’s letter
to me, it appears that some of my books have been sent to these two
places, and to the hospital at Stretinsk; but the greater part of the
mines just mentioned have now passed out of Government into private
hands. I am speaking, however, of things as they were in the time of
my informant, who laboured at Kadaya, Akatuya, Alexandreffsky, and
Nertchinsky Zavod. Kadaya was only two or three versts from the Chinese
frontier,[4] Alexandreffsky was about six versts from the frontier,
and 35 from head-quarters. At most of the places there were prisons
built: at Alexandreffsky, of stone; at Kadaya, of wood; and at Akatuya,
partly of wood and partly of stone. At Nertchinsky Zavod the prison
was very old, and was empty. The commandant, General Chitoff, living
there, he preferred to house the convicts at a convenient distance.
At Alexandreffsky there were not less than 700 prisoners in three
buildings. Of these, 30 or 40 were Russian political offenders; the
remainder were Polish insurgents of 1863. At Akatuya there were 110
prisoners, 60 of whom were Polish priests, together with 22 other
prisoners sent to join them for extra punishment.
Akatuya, by reason of its isolation and loneliness, was regarded as
the worst place of all, there being no village around it. There was
reported to have been a Tatar in this prison, before 1866, chained
to the wall, but this was an exceptional case, and such things, it
was said, were not done to the political prisoners, some of whom
had friends who could bring influence to bear in their favour. My
informant, being counted “noble,” was exempted from wearing chains
during the journey, but on his arrival he had irons, he said, of 7
lbs. (Russian) on the feet, and the same weight on the hands. If so,
these handcuffs must have been heavier than any I have seen in Russia
or Siberia. There were sometimes cases in which criminal prisoners
burst into fits of ferocity, and were guilty of such insubordination
as to call for special punishment. At Sivakoff, for instance, he had
known men suspended for a time by the armpits, but none were chained
to barrows or tools, as has been sometimes done. In the case of my
informant himself, who insulted the Governor-General Korsakoff, and
also joined others in a league to refuse to work on Sundays (the cruel
and unjust regulation to this effect was enforced on these exiles in
1866), he, with many more, and for a considerable time, was put first
on half rations, then deprived of meat, then of milk, and then was not
permitted to lounge in the yard, but had to go straight from work to
his ward. The priests had joined in this resistance to Sunday labour,
and there were also Protestants and a Jew among the league. Some of
the priests, however, were the first to give in, and all at length
followed, so that they had afterwards only four holidays in the course
of the year, though this was exclusive of bath-day, which recurred once
a fortnight, and was a holiday as at Kara.
I asked as to the formation of the mines, and found that some of
them had shafts and galleries; one shaft in particular, by reason of
its construction, being dangerous to descend. In some cases it seems
that the granite was dug from the side of a hill, and the work of the
prisoners consisted largely of boring holes for blasting, which were
charged with powder by Cossacks or labourers, and, in the absence of
the prisoners, were fired. From an engineering point of view, the
mines, as far as I could understand, were worked badly enough; and
this agreed with what I had heard elsewhere. The mineral was brought
to the surface in baskets, but they had no steam or horse-power. There
were veins of silver, but often the galleries did not follow them, and
the mines seemed to subserve the purpose of providing hard labour for
malefactors, rather than that of bringing gain to the Emperor. Whilst
my informant was talking to me, he had in his hand some pins, and,
holding up one of them, he said, “I did not see a piece of silver as
big as that all the time I was at Akatuya.”
I inquired carefully respecting the hours of labour, and heard that
in 1866 it was 13 hours a day, which agrees with the hours I found
at Kara in the gold-mines. At noon they came out of the mines to
dinner--unless, that is, a man had arranged his hours otherwise; for
it seemed that so long as they did not worry the Cossacks or prevent
their lounging about and smoking, the prisoners might do their allotted
number of hours when they pleased. There was, moreover, no definite
amount of mineral required of every man daily, and hence he might work
hard or not, pretty much as he liked.
This, then, appears to have been the condition of things at Nertchinsk
15 years ago;[5] and from what I heard in Siberia, matters since seem
to have improved rather than otherwise, though it must not be supposed
that the lot of the convicts is an easy one. I am far from attempting
to make it appear so. No doubt the corporal punishment inflicted in
many cases is very severe. I shall have more to say of this hereafter.
The period of an exile’s life spent at the mines, before being set
free to colonize, cannot but be hard. Whatever laxity of discipline
may prevail, as compared with the prisons of other countries, the
herding together of the worst of characters, the deprivation of social,
intellectual, and religious privileges, to speak of nothing else,
must to many make life in the mines, from the nature of things, a
burden. But this is very different from killing exiles by inches in
quicksilver fumes, or keeping men, women, and children underground by
night and by day, with insufficient clothing, food, and sleep. Such
gross misstatements must in time be refuted, and the revulsion caused
by their exposure often makes people too easily believe less severity
than really exists. The treatment of prisoners necessarily depends
greatly upon those who are set over them, and the study of human nature
about us renders it quite needless to go to Siberia to discover that
among prison officials there are both bad and good. That there have
been instances of cruelty in the mines I do not doubt, but I believe
far less have occurred than some writers would have us believe; and I
trust that what has here been written may tend to throw some light upon
a matter of which many are desirous to know the truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Speaking, however (p. 56), of “Mercury or Quicksilver,” the author
says: “Argental Mercury, or native silver amalgam, has been found
at ... Kolyvan, in Siberia.” But Kolyvan is thousands of miles from
Nertchinsk, and on the Obi, where there are no quicksilver-mines.
Further (on page 66 of “Ure’s Dictionary”), the imports of quicksilver
are given as coming from Spain, the United States, Chili, Australia,
Hanse towns, Hanover, Austria, Italy, Mexico, and other parts, but
nothing is said of any from Siberia.
[2] Perhaps this is not to be wondered at, if the inaccessibility of
the place be considered. It is 5,250 miles east of Petersburg, 700
miles nearly due north of Peking, about 480 north of the Chinese wall,
and 1,000 miles west of the Pacific. Captain Cochrane went there half
a century ago, at which time there were 1,600 convicts in the mines,
and he speaks sternly of their treatment, their miserable huts, and
of their haggard, worn-down, wretched, half-starved appearance. But
he stayed at the place only a day, and his book does not say that he
entered the mines at all.
[3] On my reading this description to one who knows from painful
experience what the mines were like, he laughed outright at its
absurdity.
[4] This is the place to which the Russian poet Mikhaïloff was banished
for writing his proclamation or manifesto, _Molodom pokoleniou_, “To
the rising generation,” as was also his literary friend Tchernichewsky,
who is called the intellectual chief and founder of Nihilism.
Mikhaïloff died and was buried at Kadaya; Tchernichewsky, who it seems
is feeble and delicate in constitution, was not compelled to work, nor
did he carry chains; and after spending a certain time at Kadaya, he
was removed to Viluisk, in the province of Yakutsk.
[5] I have quite unexpectedly had the opportunity of submitting this
chapter, in manuscript, to a second released exile, who was at the
Nertchinsk mines at the time alluded to, and who, after expressing his
great surprise at the accuracy of my account, confirmed it almost to
the letter, adding, however, that he thought I underrated the number
of political exiles; but he referred to the numbers deported in 1863
and during the present year, rather than to the average number for the
intervening years.