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the old peasant-communities compel the new-comer to pay
about 150 roubles for the right of membership in the
community, without which he is not allowed to settle within
its border. New-comers who form independent communities
of their own avoid this outlay, but very often fall into
the hands of “lawyers” and usurers instead. The
immigrants in their turn take revenge for the real or imagined
wrongs suffered at the hands of the “tscheldón” (a
nickname of the old settlers). Many of these are sectarians
or political offenders of some kind, whose previous
life-history has some vulnerable point, of which the new-comers
are not slow to avail themselves. Sometimes they denounce
a rich sectarian before the police, or the ecclesiastical
authorities; at another time they report an “unreliable”
political in order to get him banished and occupy his land
and house. In this they sometimes succeed, and thus
the “system of denunciation” is freely practised. The
sectarians in their turn accuse the new-comers, and not
without reason, of disturbing the good order of the
communities by introducing drunkenness, stealing, and immorality,
which were unknown before their arrival, and ask to be
delivered from the intruders. In the end it not
unfrequently happens that entire sectarian communities are thus
compelled to leave their old homes and move away into
the wilderness.
From the station of Taiga, situated in the midst of the
principal forest, a branch-line runs 56 miles to the city of
Tomsk, where I made a short visit to deliver a valuable
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