The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-10-31
PICTURE OF SIBERIA.
ITAFFORDS EXCELLENTAGRf RURAL OPPORTUNITIES.

RURAL OPPORTUNITIES
 Special Inducements Held Out by th
 Government for the Settlement of tn
 Country-Russians Poor Farmers.
 In way, I am sorry to prick the
 popular idea that Siberia is a horrible
 stretch of frigid desert, dotted witt
 Eaunt prison houses, and the tracks < aver the, steppes are marked with the
 bones of exiles who have died beneath
 the weight of chains, starvation and the inhospitable treatment of savage < Russian soldiers! It Is the convict life
 of Siberia-so contrary to all that we
 enlightened ones of the west think
 right-that we have had depicted lu-
 ridly in books of travel, magazine ar
 ticles, novels and melodrama, Later
 on l hope to visit some of these Siberi-
 an prisons, and what see there I will
 write down. But just now I want to
 wipe from the public mind the fallacy
 that Siberia is in itself Gehenna- like
 region.
 Away north, where the land borders
 the Arctic, there is no vegetation but
 moss and lichen. Beneath that is the
 great forest zone, belt of dense woods < two thousand miles wide, running east
 and west across Asia. But further south Is the agricultural region
 through which I am travelling, and which the Russian authorities seem ar
 dently anxious to develop And it is
 In this region between the Urals and X Lake Baikal that there are thousands sof miles of country as flat as billiard
 table, and thousands of miles of pleas
 antly undulating wooded land-not
 admit, a place to go in search of pie turesque scenery, but about as fair as I have seen, and ripe for agricultural projects.
 There is hardly any spring in Siberia, the change from the long winter to the blazing summer being little more than the matter of fortnight. To talk of @ Siberian winter is to make one shud- 4der. Yet in all the towns I have visi- ted people said, why do you come here in the summer, when our roads are s so dusty? It is cold thirty degrees of frost, but you don't feel it much, for it ais so dry and the air is so still The Sky is cloudless for month at time. Then the sledging-ah, 1t is when the sledging is In full swing you should see a Siberian town!'
 URGED TO ANTICIPATE
 What has much impressed me since I crossed the Urals is that the human race beyond a few thin migratory tribes should not have flourished more IoV, ci, bo opening of the railway the Russian government Is almost going on it's knees to induce European Russians, who, on the southern candy steppes, ind 1t so hard to make both ends meet, to emigrate to Siberia.
 European Russia is thinly enough populated in all truth. But the parts good enough for cultivation are under | peasant proprietorship, and fathers land Is divided among the sons, so each ! generation has a smaller and smaller piece of ground to nurture. The more i ventllresome have their eyes on Siberia, where they hope a less starvation life is to be got. As I described in former article there has been a steady flood of en1igrants to this side the Urals. On | some of the trains are fourth-class car rfages about as bare as guards van | 0n an English goods train, and as much l lacking in luxury. But the absence of | cushions and lavatory accommodation !, does not, I fancy, trouble these new comers Most of them have stolid content. They pay about shilling fare per hundred miles. In cases of need the government will make an ad- vance of ten pounds without interest. < A Russian who desires to emigrate here must get permission from the au- thorities. The permission is necessary for land has to be allotted, and ar made for state officials to conduct the parties. For the first three years no immigrant is called upon to pay taxes In western Siberia grant ,f some thirty-two English square miles Is made to every man, and in some cases there Is an additional grant If six miles of forest. In central Sibe- nia the extent of the grant is deter mined by the quality of land.
 AS the settlers are practically state :anants sale and mortgage of land are Iorbidden. If an immigrant has l1t- .la money, and wants to purchase