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exportation of cereals and other cheap products from Siberia
possible. Only manufactured products could be profitably
exported by this means. But the development of Siberian
industries under present circumstances is hindered by the
necessity of procuring machines and tools from abroad,
which makes them so enormously expensive that only a
few capitalists can afford to buy them. If to this be added
the ignorance of the people (who are quite unfit to handle
modern machines) the ubiquitous monopolism, and the Asiatic
régime in general, it is evident that it must be long before
Siberia will be able to develop into an industrial country.
But cheaper means of communication are needed not
only for the industrial development of the country, but also
for providing its inhabitants with the necessities of life. In
a former chapter I have drawn attention to the fact that
the natives of northern Siberia are dying out from chronic
starvation. Wheat, which in Minusinsk on the upper Yenisei
may often be bought at 10 kopeks a pood—say 5d. per
cwt.—costs in Yeniseisk 80 kopeks to one rouble a pood,
at Turukansk 2 roubles, in the taiga or on the tundra
from 4 to 7 roubles a pood—and this on the same river!
And yet the great waterways of northern Siberia—the Ob,
the Yenisei, and the Lena—are teeming with the most
splendid fish, the country abounds in valuable minerals, and
to the forests there are no limits!
The necessity of cheaper communications therefore is
evident. And Siberia possesses these, or at all events the
potentialities for them, in her great rivers, making maritime
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