[Illustration:  TAIL PIECE—­QUARTERS]

CHAPTER XXXVII.

The descendants of exiles are in much greater number than the exiles themselves.  Eastern Siberia is mainly peopled by them, and Western Siberia very largely so.  They are all free peasants and enjoy a condition far superior to that of the serf under the system prevalent before 1859.  Many of them have become wealthy through gold mining, commerce, and agriculture, and occupy positions they never could have obtained had they lived in European Russia.  I know a merchant whose fortune is counted by millions, and who is famous through Siberia for his enterprise and generosity.  He is the son of an exiled serf and has risen by his own ability.  Since I left Siberia I learn with pleasure that the emperor has honored him with a decoration.  Many of the prominent merchants and proprietary miners were mentioned to me as examples of the prosperity of the second and third generation from banished men.  I was told particularly of a wealthy gold miner whose evening of life is cheered by an ample fortune and two well educated children.  Forty years ago his master capriciously sent him to Siberia.  The man found his banishment ‘the best thing that could happen.’

The system of serfdom never had any practical hold in Siberia.  There was but one Siberian proprietor of serfs in existence at the time of the emancipation.  This was Mr. Rodinkoff of Krasnoyarsk, whose grandfather received a grant of serfs and a patent of nobility from the empress Catherine.  None of the family, with a single exception, ever attempted more than nominal exercise of authority over the peasants, and this one paid for his imprudence with his life.  He attempted to put in force his full proprietary rights, and the result was his death by violence during a visit to one of his estates.

The difference between the conditions of the Russian and Siberian peasantry was that between slavery and freedom.  The owner of serfs had rarely any common interest with his people, and his chief business was to make the most out of his human property.  Serfdom was degrading to master and serf, just as slavery degraded owner and slave.  The moujik bore the stamp of servility as the negro slave bore it, and it will take as much time to wear it away in the one as the other.  Centuries of oppression in Russia could not fail to open a wide gulf between the nobility and those who obeyed them.  Thanks to Alexander the work of filling this gulf has begun, but it will require many years and much toil to complete it.