Читать книгу The Awakening of the East: Siberia—Japan—China - Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Importance of the Siberian mines—The gold-mines—Insufficiency of organization principally due to unfavourable climatic influences—Railway extension would bring about an increase in the value of the mining industries—Silver, copper, and iron mines.

However productive Siberia may eventually become, it can never solely depend for its prosperity upon its agricultural resources. Happily, the subsoil is richer than the upper crust, on account of the great abundance of ore of various kinds which it conceals. The gold and silver mines, however, alone, up to the present, have been worked to any extent, although a few of the iron mines have been slightly exploited. Even in the case of gold, however, only the alluvial mines have been touched in those valleys where gold exists, and nowhere have the rock veins been opened. More can hardly be expected in a country which is nearly destitute of the proper means of transport; hence the extreme difficulty of conveying the necessarily heavy and elaborate machinery required for the extraction of the gold from the rock. Then, again, the rock ore is only to be found at great distances from inhabited centres in unexplored forests and mountainous regions. The diggings, on the other hand, are much easier, demanding no other implements than a sieve and a spade. The siftings have been exploited in great numbers from end to end of Siberia, their takings proving, since 1895, equal to two-thirds of the gold product of the whole of the Russian Empire, the fourth largest gold-centre in the world, coming immediately after the United States, Australia, and the Transvaal. The amount of gold abstracted from the Siberian mines since 1895 amounts to not less than £5,000,000, and this figure, high as it is, is, in all probability, much under the mark, the miners very often retaining a good deal of their findings for themselves. The Government is the only buyer of Siberian gold. It has the right to claim on purchasing the gold from the miners between 15 and 20 per cent. of the ore. This system of taxation is extremely pernicious, since it tempts the miners, as already stated, to conceal the real amount of their takings. An increase in the surface tax would compensate for the suppression of the official claim upon the net product, and would put an end to a great deal of fraud. I have been assured that a reform in this sense may soon be expected. The enforced obligation of selling to the State becomes, in the long-run, exceedingly irksome to concessionaires, because it forces them to send their gold to a great distance, to the laboratories at Tomsk and Irkutsk, where the official agents analyze it to determine its value, whereas, of course, it would be much simpler to send it direct to Europe, and there sell it to speculators who would promptly pay the price demanded. Another drawback in the present system is that the miners have often to wait a long time for ready cash, which is absolutely necessary to them in their business. Sometimes the Government keeps them waiting until their gold has reached St. Petersburg, and they are ultimately obliged to discount it according to the very high tariff rates prevailing in Siberia. The transport of the metal to Europe by the State is as expensive as it is troublesome, since it has to be conveyed to Moscow and St. Petersburg in charge of a military escort. I have on several occasions seen between the Yenissei and Lake Baikal carts bringing gold from the mines, escorted by three or four soldiers ready to fire on the least signs of possible attack. Another drawback to the Siberian mining industries are the primitive implements used in abstracting the ore from the soil, which, as M. Levat, a distinguished engineer, very truly observed to me, were of a sort that apparently dated from the days of Homer. Under these circumstances, it is the custom in Siberia to work the surface of the mine only, and after enough ore has been extracted from it, to abandon the place entirely.

Owing to the geological formation of the country, the more important Siberian mines will not be found, as in California, on the mountain slopes, but at depths covered by marshlands. Their exploitation, therefore, is much more costly, as it is necessary before commencing operations to cart away an immense quantity of the upper surface of the earth. Hence it happens that if a mine is disturbed at the surface, and then abandoned by the miners, it is, so to speak, spoilt, as any attempt to work it again in all probability will result in disappointment. For this reason, many excellent mines in the basin of the Obi and of the Yenissei have been already exhausted, and the centre of the mining industry in these regions has been transferred to the banks of the Amur and the Lena, and this notwithstanding the many difficulties the miners have to face, as the soil hereabouts is invariably frozen for about twenty yards in depth, and work can only be pursued for about 120 consecutive days in the year. The miners’ salaries, too, are exceedingly high. In the diggings at Olekma, an affluent of the Lena, wages are 3s. 4d. per diem, that is to say, double what they are on the Yenissei, and eight times as much as in the neighbourhood of Semipalatinsk, where the Kirghiz workmen receive only fivepence. Notable progress, however, has been made in these regions during the last few years, as the mines are gradually leaving the hands of adventurers and small associations, to be concentrated in those of important companies, financed by the richer Siberian merchants, and even by large Russian firms. The great mining company of Olekma extracted in 1880 £1,000,000 worth of gold, and maintained its reputation at £680,000 in 1896, proving this mine to be one of the richest in the world. With the introduction of proper means of transport, and, above all, a liberal reform in the legislation, doubtless the Siberian mines would become infinitely more valuable than they are at present.

Already European capitalists are paying attention to Asiatic Russia, and one or two important groups of French mining engineers during the past three years have been inspecting those parts of the country which are said to be richest in ore. I was never more surprised than to find on board a boat on the Amur two English engineers, whose acquaintance I had made in December, 1895, in the far-away goldfields of the Transvaal. All that the mines of Siberia need to become of enormous value are sufficient capital and up-to-date methods of working them. The silver mines of Nertchinsk, which in old times had an unenviable reputation as the site of the most terrible Siberian penal settlement, are now of little value. On the other hand, copper, iron, and coal-beds are distributed in great abundance in various parts of the country, and seem to constitute its principal and most permanent source of wealth. The copper mines have not been exploited at all, but are known to exist in the Upper Yenissei, in the districts of the Minusinsk, celebrated throughout Siberia for its agricultural prosperity; others may be discovered more to the west, on the Irtysh. Iron is found in great quantity in the western regions, in the Altai Mountains, on the borders of the Yenissei, and in the valley of the Angara, and to the east in Trans-Baikalia, where its iron mines have been fairly well exploited, but hitherto not on any considerable scale. Coal will certainly be found in considerable abundance in the western plains, and in the last few years a vast coal area has been found, beginning about 150 miles south of the Trans-Siberian line near the town of Kuznetsk, and extending to the Upper Obi. In 1887 a new and still larger field was discovered at about 80 miles east of Tomsk, and, moreover, close to the railway line. At the extremity of Siberia, near Vladivostok, and, consequently, close to the sea, other coal-beds have been opened of late.

Siberian industries are at present very limited, and consist of a few unimportant distilleries, breweries, brick-kilns, match manufactories, etc. It is therefore evident that for some long time to come the inhabitants will be compelled to devote their attention and energies to the development of the natural products of the soil. All new countries are forced to do this in the first stages of their civilization, and since the United States, New Zealand, and Australia failed in manufactures in their earlier days, Siberia may surely content herself by following in their wake.