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natives. These commissions, however, have not had much
success, owing mainly to the fact that the parties
concerned—the colonists and the Kirgises—have not had any
say in the matter. These steppes, as I have stated, are covered
with salt lakes and marshes, and the places where fresh
water and arable land exist are needed alike as
pasture-grounds for the Kirgises and as homesteads for the
colonists. Among the Kirgises has existed from time
immemorial a well-defined system of tribal land-ownership or
rather right of occupation, which has worked very well,
and the breaking up of this system, of course, is
accompanied by much misery and suffering. At present
commissions are at work with the aim of finding out how far
the steppes of western Siberia may be made suitable for
colonisation by the aid of artesian wells, and experiments
of this kind are being made, though with what success is
not yet known. Owing to the fact that the black soil of
the steppes of this region—as far as is known—is in many
places thin and consists mainly of turf, it is either not
suitable for cultivation at all or is very soon exhausted.
This soil, which cannot bear comparison with the rich
black soil of Russia, necessarily requires an intensive culture,
which, under present circumstances and at great distances
from centres of population, is not possible in Siberia,
excepting in a few districts near the western border.
The overwhelming tide of famine-stricken immigrants
is, of course, creating untold misery among hundreds of
thousands of these poor people in a land with such a severe
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