A more careful examination of the supposed map* would bring out other interesting facts.  Let me notice one by way of illustration.  Had serfage been the result of conquest we should have found the Slavonic race settled on the State Domains, and the Finnish and Tartar tribes supplying the serfs of the nobles.  In reality we find quite the reverse; the Finns and Tartars were nearly all State Peasants, and the serfs of the proprietors were nearly all of Slavonic race.  This is to be accounted for by the fact that the Finnish and Tartar tribes inhabit chiefly the outlying regions, in which serfage never attained such dimensions as in the centre of the Empire.

     * Such a map was actually constructed by Troinitski
     ("Krepostnoe Naseleniye v Rossii,” St. Petersburg, 1861),
     but it is not nearly so graphic as is might have been.

The dues paid by the serfs were of three kinds:  labour, money, and farm produce.  The last-named is so unimportant that it may be dismissed in a few words.  It consisted chiefly of eggs, chickens, lambs, mushrooms, wild berries, and linen cloth.  The amount of these various products depended entirely on the will of the master.  The other two kinds of dues, as more important, we must examine more closely.

When a proprietor had abundance of fertile land and wished to farm on his own account, he commonly demanded from his serfs as much labour as possible.  Under such a master the serfs were probably free from money dues, and fulfilled their obligations to him by labouring in his fields in summer and transporting his grain to market in winter.  When, on the contrary, a land-owner had more serf labour at his disposal than he required for the cultivation of his fields, he put the superfluous serfs “on obrok,”—­that is to say, he allowed them to go and work where they pleased on condition of paying him a fixed yearly sum.  Sometimes the proprietor did not farm at all on his own account, in which case he put all the serfs “on obrok,” and generally gave to the Commune in usufruct the whole of the arable land and pasturage.  In this way the Mir played the part of a tenant.

We have here the basis for a simple and important classification of estates in the time of serfage:  (1) Estates on which the dues were exclusively in labour; (2) estates on which the dues were partly in labour and partly in money; and (3) estates on which the dues were exclusively in money.

In the manner of exacting the labour dues there was considerable variety.  According to the famous manifesto of Paul I., the peasant could not be compelled to work more than three days in the week; but this law was by no means universally observed, and those who did observe it had various methods of applying it.  A few took it literally and laid down a rule that the serfs should work for them three definite days in the week—­for example, every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday—­but this was an extremely inconvenient method, for it prevented the