THE FUTURE OF SOUTHERN SIBERIA..
IF the present Czar decides that the Trans-Siberian Rail- way shall be completed at any cost, and in the shortest possible time, it is because he knows that in Southern Siberia are vast regions of admirable climate and fertility, abounding in mineral wealth, and suited for the life of Europeans, which would then be brought within practicable range of the whole Slavonic population of European Russia. The colonisation of Southern Siberia is no longer a dream. It has already begun in the West. On either side of the upper Irtish are lands alike in
wonderful fertility, but not in natural features, covering an area as great as that of Asia Minor. On the left bank is the Steppe of Ishim, on the right, that of Bara,ba. The latter lies parallel with and south-east of Omsk, the former wholly south of that city. The natural appearance of the Ishira Steppe is that of a broken park, divided into masses of deciduous trees and widespread savannahs. In other parts it is flat and lacustrine, with rich natural meadows and deep black soil. The Baraba Steppe, on the other side of the Irtish, is another natural park, but of a more northern type. The trees are mainly pine and birch, and its landscape is more varied and broken. But it is equally rich as corn-land. On these two steppes one-third of the whole population of Siberia is now gathered in a great agricultural community, and two-thirds of the corn there raised is already exported beyond the Urals. Many of the colonists are emigrants from Voronej, Samara, and Central Russia ; and the whole are typical Slays, with no admix- ture of the Tartar. Beyond these steppes lie two regions of even greater interest, and even greater natural re- sources. The first is the " Alpine " district south of the Kirghiz Steppe, the other the far-distant Valley of the Amoor. The Central Asian Plateau, which projects into Siberia between these districts, though possessing a climate tempered by that curious inversion of European conditions which causes temperature to rise with altitude, must probably remain the home of a pastoral people. But the railway will give means of access to the southern border of the Kirghiz Steppe ; and to the Alatau Mountains, "Alps without snow," or on which the snow-line lies so high that only the loftiest peaks are covered, and avalanches are unknown, whither the nomad population of the Kirghiz Steppe migrate and are lost to sight in summer among valleys, pastures, fruit-trees and rushing streams, over an area larger than that which holds the forty millions of Japan. In the south-west and south of Siberia, Slav colonisation is a natural process, to be hastened in the near future by the facilities offered by the new railway, but not due to direct State encouragement. In the south-east, events are hurrying on an imperial " plantation " of Slays, which can hardly fail to play an important part in the development of the Fax East. If it succeeds, a New Russia will before long bE planted opposite to New Japan, commanding a road by watei up the Sungari river through the heart of Manchuria, covering one-third of the distance from the Russian frontier to Pekin. The Amoor Valley is the site of the coming Slav colony. The enormous river curls like an inverted letter co across the fiftieth parallel of latitude, the valley thus lying roughly between the latitude of London and Paris. In South. EastSiberia climate is, as before noticed, less closely con- nected with latitude than in Europe ; but that of the middle and upper Amoor is said to be unequalled in the Old World, —a compound of all that is best in the temperature and weather of Canada and California. The natural drawbacks which have hitherto retarded its development are the immense distance from Russia proper by land, and the unfortunate deflection of the lower Amoor by the coast- range of mountains, which sends the enormous volume of the lower river rolling due north for five hundred miles, in place of pouring into the ice-free waters of the sea of Japan. Nature seems to mock the Russian desire for open ports on whatever side they penetrate to the coast-line. The climate of the lower Amcor is cold and damp, its port, Nikolaevsk, was foredoomed to failure, and the Slav colonies planted above the port, mainly drawn from the ranks of Russian "sectaries," though offering, like the New England Colonies, a refuge for tender consciences, have not succeeded. The scheme had from the first all the elements of failure. The site of the colonies was unfavourable, and the fact that the natural flow of Russian immigration was by land east- wards and not by sea, and from the coast westwards, was forgotten. Yet this immigrant stream had already begun ; and while the new colonists were being " dumped " among the fogs and sandbanks of the lower Amoor, the forerunners of the Slav invasion had already crossed the barren highlands of Davuria, and reached the fertile valleys of the upper Amoor and its tributaries. Fifty years ago, Nertchinsk, on the Shilka, though nominally a place of exile, suggested to an English visitor the thought of " home " in the vales of Derbyshire. He found "a summer not long, but hot, agriculture and horticulture flourishing, a magnificent flora, tobacco growing and maturing in the fields, and vege- tables of all kinds good and plentiful." The Shilka is the northern tributary of the Amoor, running through the Trans-Baikal province. The plateaus which separate it from the northern slopes are bare and forbidding. But here are plentiful streams, temperate forests, rich meadows, abundance of fish and game, and small lakes swarming with water.fowl. General Anosoff used to say that the valley of the Tom might be made the Birmingham and Sheffield of Asia. By that time the valleys of the Shilka and upper Amoor will rival those of the Rhine and the Moselle.
Below the junction of the Shilka and Aregun rivers, the Amoor proper begins. The soil and climate of the great valley are such that as we read the vivid descriptions of it written by Mr. Atkinson, the artist, botanist, and first ex- plorer of this district in the season of its summer perfection, we are not surprised to find that the appeal to the colonising instincts of Europe becomes more insistent and conscious in each successive page. "Here are vast tracts of country," he writes, "where man has never broken the turf. Even the rocks are covered with shrubs and flowers, while round their base are rich pastures which prove the fertility of the soil. Beyond are well-wooded slopes, covered with the timber for dwelling-houses. Numerous rivulets cross these plains, well stored with fish, and game is abundant ; but so long as the scanty population is forced to pay taxes in sables' skins, they will form no permanent settlement, nor pay atten- tion to the riches of the soil." At midsummer the ground was seen as a carpet of flowers, while in other parts the tall grass reached above the head of a man on horseback. This splendid country reaches not for a few miles of the river's course, but for a thousand miles past the inflow of the Sungari and Ussuri rivers from Manchuria, and until the Atnoor has begun its final and unpropitious bend to the north. Between the Sungari and Ussuri Mr. Atkinson noted another vast plain where thou- sands might be settled, and where, with moderate industry, the soil would supply not only the necessaries, but the luxuries of life. Wide meadows, thick forests, oaks, elms, limes, and lower down a forest of ash-trees, formed part of the attractions of the middle Amoor. The river was f nil of sturgeon which were never caught, the woods and pas- tures abounding in food which no one ate. "The grass is never cropped, except by wild animals ; on the banks, not- withstanding their luxuriance, neither man nor his works are visible ; Russia has obtained a territory more valuable than all the supposed cotton districts of Africa, watered by hundreds of streams flowing into the great artery that passes through its entire length ; the climate is good and well suited to Europeans ; its animals belong both to the hot and cold regions, while its splendid herbage and flora prove that the temperature is neither too severe in winter nor too hot in summer." Of its future he was certain. "The Russian colonist will change all this."
Why he delayed to do so has been partly explained above. But the Trans-Siberian Railway will pass down the centre of this valley, parallel with its two thousand miles of waterway, and bring the migrating Slays by their old "overland route" to the Far East. As at present designed, the railway will leave the river at the point of its northern bend, and turn due south to Vladivostock. But for two thousand miles the valley will be peopled with good Russians, or with the children of Russian fathers and Tartar mothers, just as in the regions north of the Great Wall of China, beyond which a Chinese woman may not pass, a mixed Chinese and Mongol race has grown and increased. Even if only half Slays they will be the devoted servants of the Czar, for whom the Tartar and Bariate nomads cherish a personal devotion unsurpassed by the loyalty of the pure-blooded Russian. When the railway is completed, the settlement of this New Russia will be pro- vided for by a comprehensive scheme, including grants of land and money. Meantime, even in the Vladivostock district, the Chinese immigrants are being expelled, and the country purged of the only Asiatic race which so far has proved too stubborn material to be Russianised. The southern movement of the agricultural population of European Russia since the emancipation of the serfs, has already extended beyond the Euxine to the Sub-Caucasian districts. Its diversion to the southern fringe of the Siberian territory would be a natural and peaceful solution of the problem of Russian expansion.
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