fisheries. The electric telegraph has during the last few years been carried the whole length of this difficult coast, linking together the fishing stations. A specially built and handsomely equipped steamer with scientific staff is engaged in submarine exploration and survey work in the fishing interest. Loans are given on easy terms to fishermen to enable them to purchase their boats and tackle, and so evade the extortions of middlemen and Jews. (This measure on account of the insufficient sums advanced is only partially successful). The sale of spirits-formerly a curse to the fishermen has been entirely prohibited. Medical advice and dispensaries and trained nurses are now available for the sick. In addition to freedom from taxation the inhabitants are exempt from military service; they are granted free timber from the Crown Forests, and the right to kill fur-bearing animals, and to fish the salmon rivers. But the greatest boon to the fishermen is the frequent and regular service of excellent steamers which afford cheap transport and ready communication along the coast. Between Petchenga and the White Sea there are about thirty fishing stations and settlements where the steamers call and carry to the fishermen salt and necessary provender and comforts, and in exchange load hides, fish, and oils. The Russian peasant fishermen of the extreme North are very poor, and their thriftless habits are perhaps rather the result than the cause of their poverty. The fishing industry is precarious, for times of long continued storm may come, or the fickle fish may change their haunts and render the season a failure. Then the fisherman-whose reserve if he had any was swallowed up in the previous winter-has the cheerless prospect of another long winter of poverty, and the next season to be begun in debt. But if the Nordland fisherman of Norway, who is subject to the same vicissitudes of climate and fortune prospers, why should not the Russian? It has often been said, and with some truth, that the Russian people are the greatest bar to Russian progress. But one is reluctant to believe that the many splendid qualities of the Russian peasant, his capacity to work, his hardihood, his patience, stoicism, and amazing powers of endurance will not some day help to win for him prosperity. These virtues mostly passive have been fostered by his lifelong contest with ungenial environment and resistance to encroaching poverty. The active qualities he seems to lack-initiative, enterprise, energy, perseverence—would be stifled in any people by chronic poverty. Now much effort is being expended in behalf of these peasants, and with conditions favourable to industry and thrift they will have opportunity to rise if they can to the level of their Norwegian neighbours. The process must at best be gradual, but with material progress may come ambition to the Russian peasant and the consciousness that freedom is his right. The Laplanders are of a type inferior to the Russians; low in intelligence, stunted in stature, illformed and weather beaten. They have no towns and few villages, but prefer the desolate tundra to the coast, and wander in small groups over the wilderness, living in wigwam-like tents. They fish the lakes and rivers but not the sea, and have only one settlement on the coast. A group embarked as passengers, and the following day being St. Peter'stheir patron Saint's-they nearly all both men and women were drunk. Two infants were of the party and luckily for them they were safely ensconced in the light shoe shaped cradles made of reindeer skin stretched on a wooden frame in which Lap women carry their children. Since rounding the North Cape this so-called "land of the Midnight Sun " had been a sunless land. The sky a uniform pall of dull grey cloud scarce varied its grim tone by day or night save when a pallid lightening of the gloom gave vague suggestion of the sun's position. The cold grey sea flanked by the barren rocks of the forbidding coast and spreading vacant to the North responded with sulky aspect to the lowering sky. Now the weather had cleared and the sun shone out with grateful warmth from a brilliant cloudless dome. The atmosphere regained the extraordinary clearness peculiar to the higher latitudes, and the sea resumed its blue. Even the sun could not bring life to the bleak coast but made it look the sterner by hardening the contrast between the dark and naked rocks, and the spotless white of the glistening snow. One of the settlements of the Western Murman is Port Vladimir, picturesquely situated in a sheltered harbour land-locked by an island. Here a smart little cutter-rigged coaster-quite unRussian in her trimness-lay anchored in the smooth waters of the rock-encircled bay. She had just arrived from Novaia Zemlia with a cargo of casks of animal and fish oils, and hides of bears, walrus, seal, and reindeer, the spoils of the lines and rifles of the hardy fishers and hunters, who in summer wrest a scanty livelihood from these inhospitable islands. Her crew was a much beclothed and ill-kempt group of amphibians, but the captain, from his big felt boots to his deer-skin cap was every inch a captain. Not of Slav but of Norse type, he was a magnificent specimen of the bold and adventurous seafarer of the North, and in appearance a worthy descendent of the heroic Vikings. His grand head with fine featured and full bearded face and quick piercing eyes was poised on the massive shoulders of a powerful but alert and vigorous frame. He bore himself without suggestion of swagger, but with the easy confidence of conscious strength, and the habit to command obedience. This masterful mariner, radiant with energy and strong of purpose; the victor in many a wild conflict with an angry sea was the very beau ideal of the skilful daring sailor of the North. As the captain was of a stamp far superior to his crew, so his vessel, dainty as a little lady, looked like a stranger among the clumsy and uncouth craft around her. Here also two Tartar pedlars came on board with large wood boxes stuffed with the very acme of trash in unlimited variety. Ready-made clothing, rubbishy cutlery, purses, pencils, watches, gaudy ribbons, and gimcrack jewellery were jumbled together. Their tact and persistence as salesmen were rewarded by the foolish fishermen's purchasing of much flimsy stuff that could have been of no possible use to them. One brawny, dirty-fisted giant bought a gaudy bottle of nasty scent, presumably for some shortskirted, big-booted daughter of the shore. The descendants of the terrible Tartars, who for centuries ruled from Moscow, with an iron hand, are found wandering all over Russia in their characteristic costume, peddling haberdashery, and coaxing unwilling kopecks from the simple peasants. As passengers between the settlements, the steamer carried portly and big-bearded Russian merchants, who traffic prosperously on this coast. The poverty of the fishermen render them easy victims of merchant sweaters, who own many of the boats, and for the service of a crew pay, or are supposed to pay, one-third the value of the catch. The men are often engaged long before the opening of the season, and during the needy winter months the employer advances necessaries. At the end of the summer when the time of settlement comes the fisherman finds his season's earnings swallowed up by previous debt, and is at the mercy of the sweater for another year. It is to abolish this exploitation of the fisher that the government has instituted a system of loans to enable the men to purchase boats. |