CONDITION OF SIBERIA.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1583, 1 April 1887, Page 3

CONDITION OF SIBERIA.

In an interesting recent paper on Siberia as a colony, Professor Petrie points out that there are two classes of colonists there—those attracted by the immense wealth of the countrj in furred animals and minerals, and an industrious people from the Eussian peasant class engaged in agriculture. The number of wild animals taken in the boundless forests of Siberia shows a great reduction from year to year. The fisheries are capable of great development, and multitudes of fish are thrown away because the art of salting and preserving is not understood. In Ural, the Southern steppes, Altai, and other places, there is immense mineral wealth in silver, gold, iron, leid, copper, anthracite, graphite, Ac. The steppes (quite different from tne Central Asiatic and Kirghisian) are well suited for cattle-breeding; they have excell rat grass and numerous birch woods, and aiso many lakes, large and small. In Western Siberia, about 32 per sent of the whole land is arable. With her four rivers of the first rank, three of them flowing north and the other east, Siberia is well off for inter-communica-tion by water and for transport of commerce to neighbouring countries. Notwithstanding 300 years of occupation, the Russians in Siberia only amount to 4,800,000, and there are nearly as many natives. The Russian colonist in Siberia diverges from the Sclav type, as the Yankee does from the Englishman. At present, farming and cattle-breeding in Siberia are carried on in an irrational way, commerce is in absolute dependence on European liussia, and the roads are dreadfully bad, so that, e.g., people commonly make circuits rather than use the post route from Tomsk to Irkutsk. There is, however, a party of ictelligent Siberians bent on gaining the iibe:ties aud advantages of the mother country, stopping the deportation of criminals, aud promoting education, &c. Many thousand roubles hare been contributed by Sibenan merchants to the Tomsk University and other institutions. — Nature.