ядек

281-816 ཆོས་

648

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ing the deliberations the maiden receives special consideration and enjoys various dignities. If circumstances favor, her kinswomen erect a jacal for her, and even if circumstances are adverse, she is outfitted with a pelican robe of six or eight pelts and other matronly requisites.

When all parties concerned are eventually satisfied a probationary marriage is arranged, and the groom leaves his clan and attaches himself to that of the bride. Two essential conditions—one of material character and the other moralare involved in this probationary union. In the first place, the groom must become the provider for and the protector of the entire family of the bride, including the dependent children and such cripples and invalids as may be tolerated by the tribe-i. e., he must display and exercise skill in turtle-fishing, strength in the chase, subtlety in warfare, and all other physical qualities of competent manhood. This relation, with the attendant obligations, holds for a yeari. e., a round of the seasons. During the same period the groom shares the jacal and sleeping robe provided for the prospective matron by her kinswomen, not as privileged spouse, but merely as a protecting companion; and throughout this probationary term he is compelled to maintain continence-i. e., he must display the most indubitable proofs of moral force.

During this period the always dignified position occupied by the daughter of the family culminates. She is the

observed of all observers, the subject of gossip among matrons and warriors alike, the recipient of frequent tokens from designing sisters with an eye to shares of her spouse's spoils, and the receiver of material supplies measuring the competence of the would-be husband. Through his energy she is enabled to dispense largess with lavish hand, and thus to dignify her clan and honor her spouse in the most effective way known to primitive life, and at the same time she enjoys the immeasurable moral stimulus of realizing that she is the arbiter of the fate of a man who becomes warrior or outcast at her bidding, and through him of the future of two clans-i. e., she is raised to a responsibility in both personal and tribal affairs. which, albeit temporary, is hardly lower than that of the warrior chief. In tribal theory the moral test measures the character of the man; in very fact, it at the same time both measures and makes the

character of the woman. Among other privileges bestowed on the bride during the probationary period are those of receiving the most intimate attentions from the clanfellows of the groom; and these are noteworthy as suggestions of a vestigial polyandry or adelphogamy. At the close of the year the probation ends in a feast provided by the probationer, who thereupon enters the bride's jacal as a perpetual guest of unlimited personal privileges (subject to tribal custom), while the bride passes from a half-wanton heyday into the duller routine of matronly existence.

The Whaling Steamer Eric leaves Sydney, Nova Scotia, the latter part of July, to carry supplies and letters to Peary. Mr. H. L. Bridgman, Secretary of the Peary Arctic Club, will probably accompany the relief party.

The Baldwin-Ziegler North Polar Expedition is on the way to the Arctic regions. Mr. Baldwin, before leaving, declined to outline his plans beyond stating that Franz Josef Land would be the base of the Arctic campaign.

M

Y subject is in striking contrast to the subjects upon which during this Lenten course learned lecturers have spoken from this platform. Their topics have been India, China, and southwestern Asia. Under the latter term were grouped Chaldea, Babylonia, Persia, Judea, and Arabia— that is, they have pictured the empires which are most ancient and the civiliza

tion the most hoary. In graphic résumé they have described what was accomplished on the venerable banks of the Ganges and Indus and Hoang-ho, of the Tigris and Euphrates and Jordan. The very mention of those regions suggests everything that is splendid and old. The distinguished Vice-President of this Society, when he sums up what his predecessors have said and supplies all that they have omitted, will have as his topic "Asia, the cradle of the race."

My subject, Siberia, evokes no association of ancient greatness and achievement. Its meagre history is confined to the last few centuries. Rich currents of human life have never flowed across it. The past of China, India, and southwestern Asia teems with power and wealth and glory. The past of Siberia has been in almost every mind only the synonym

of polar dreariness and desolation coupled with penal settlements and convict stations.

But what are India, Babylonia, Judea, and Arabia today? What influence do they in their present state exert upon the advance of humanity? Is there any indication of future or even present grandeur in the shadow they now cast upon the world's map? Even China, the long-lived empire, in whose antiquity cycles seem like years, has as its highest concern merely to exist, merely to defer for a season the dismemberment and dissolution which, however long delayed, are ultimately sure.

From them, dead or dying, we turn northward to Siberia, to that enormous tract which reaches from the Altai Mountains to the Arctic Ocean, from the Urals to the Pacific. No prophetic eye is needed, only the eye which seeing causes foresees results, to anticipate the day when Siberia itself shall be the greater Russia of the centuries which are to come.

THE TWO CONQUESTS

Prior to this great result two conquests were necessary. The first con

quest was to bring the domain under a single master, either an individual or a nation, so that throughout the wide. extent only one authority should be acknowledged. This was to be a conquest by force over the barbarians and scattered tribes which constituted its only inhabitants. It was possible when ever sufficient force from outside should be employed. The second conquest was that over inhospitable and hostile nature, over distance and climatic conditions. It was to introduce a national element and make a cold and repellent region pulsate with the warmth and energy of national impulse and life. It was to conquer the wilderness by civilization, but a wilderness which the civiliization of even the recent past would have been unable to subdue. Through the centuries for this second conquest the land had been waiting. Civilization has been well defined as the victory of mind over external obstacles. Not till the close of the nineteenth century had science furnished civilization the arms for the subjugation of Siberia.

THE FIRST CONQUEST

It is of interest and significance to us Americans when recalling our colonial history to observe how while one wave pressed outward across the Atlantic another wave pressed eastward into Asia. The stream of European conquest which reached the American shores from western Europe was paralleled in Siberia by a contemporaneous stream of conquest from eastern Europe.

In 1558 the English Elizabeth began her memorable reign. That same year Ivan the Awful gave Gregori Strogonoff twenty square miles of desert land upon the River Kama, with permission to attack anything toward the east. "The

Good Companies of the Don," a euphemistic name for the mob of brigands and outlaws, furnished an army. Irmak Timofeeff, the more than Pizarro or

Cortez of the Slavs, became chief commander of their wild forces. Having no seas to cross, there was no need for him to embark and disembark his troops. He could always be marching on. In 1580 the brigand chief attacked and carried by assault Sbir, the capital of a powerful descendant of Genghis Khan. Ever since the province has been called Sibir, or Siberia, from the name of the conquered capital. Streams of Cossacks followed and spread in every direction from the path he had marked out. In 1649 Khabaroff, with three cannon and one hundred and fifty men, marched to the extreme east and occupied the Amur Basin. That territory then owed a nominal allegiance to China, and from it the Russian adventurers were compelled to retire by the treaty of Nevshink. Meanwhile resolute explorers and pioneers had been pushing northward and eastward all over the trackless waste which lay between Russia and the Pacific. Meanwhile in America men as dauntless and determined had been pushing westward from the Atlantic in continuous warfare with nature and the Indians.

Nicolas Nicolaievitch Muravieff was made governor of eastern Siberia in 1847. He was the son of an illustrious father and one of five illustrious brothers, all of whom served Russia well. He realized that what the Nile is to Egypt the Amur is to Siberia. It was then an almost unknown river. obedience to his orders, Lieutenant Nevelsky made forty-five ineffectual attempts to find its mouth. He succeeded only at the forty-sixth. Herein is illustrated both the geographic ignorance of the time and the tireless persistence of the Russian.

In

Muravieff sent to the Chinese Government at Pekin asking permission to navigate the river. navigate the river. Without waiting for an answer that would probably never come, he embarked upon its bosom May 18, 1854. It was the time of the Cri

mean War. Allied Great Britain, France, Turkey, and Sardinia were hammering at the ramparts of Sebastopol, which they finally took after a siege of three hundred and fifty-one days and the loss of over 100,000 men. In 1860 Count Ignatieff, alone and unsupported save for Russian prestige," obtained from the Chinese Government its signature to the treaty of Pekin. Thereby the left bank of the Amur and the right bank of the Usuri were ceded to Russia. In point of fact, China in no way suffered from the cession. She had derived no revenue from the ceded territory and had never sent governors into it or exercised any control over it. None the less, that acquisition was to be so momentous in its consequences that, in comparison, the temporary check received by Russia at Sebastopol was a bagatelle. By that treaty the first conquest of Siberia became complete. In its entirety it recognized the authority of the Tsar. From the banks of the Neva north of the Altai Mountains as far as the Sea of Japan the whole prodigious tract was under a single rule. While the world looked on, Russia, almost unconsciously, was shifting her maritime base; alone of the European states, she from her continental dominions looked out upon eastern seas. Though other western nations held isolated ports and islands in eastern waters, Russia alone reached and dominated those waters by broad territorial possessions that were continuous.

VLADIVOSTOK

Though holding a coast line of many hundred miles along the Pacific, she then possessed no city or inhabited tract adjacent to a harbor upon its shores. In 1861 forty men were sent by Alexander II. They landed at the head of a bay bearing the significant name of Bay of Peter the Great, at the extreme southeastern point of the Russian possessions in Asia.

Erecting a fort, with a presumption that seems amusing, they gave to the spot the name of Vladivostok, "The Mistress of the East." Other fortifications were erected, and a city speedily arose, which boasts over 40,000 inhabitants today. It is lighted by electricity and shows every indication of western progress. Its erection on that splendid and potential harbor is a typical illustration of the fruits that spring from the establishment of Russian Government in Siberia.

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS IN SIBERIA

In discussing Siberia, statements of dimension and distance confuse and bewilder rather than enlighten. It is of small advantage to dwell upon its area of over 4,900,000 square miles. If the forty-five states which compose the American Union were taken up and planted bodily in the midst of Siberia, they would be enclosed in every direction by a wide border of land. In this border territory all the countries of Europe except Russia could likewise be planted bodily, and there would remain still unoccupied 300,000 square miles, an area twice the size of imperial Germany.

We have now to consider certain gloomy and repellent facts that at first discourage speculation and half paralyze hope. Only as we realize what Siberia is, only as we consider the immense disadvantages as well as the advantages of its geographic position,

north it takes the form of a prodigious plain, which descends gradually to the Arctic. Plain and plateau are alike north of the fiftieth degree north latitude that is to say, that its most southern points, except along the Amur and the Usuri and in west Siberia, are farther north than any locality in the United States. Its Cape Chelyuskin, in 77° 36′ north latitude, reaches nearer to the Pole than any other continental spur of land in either hemisphere. Shut in by

mountains from the Pacific and the south, Siberia is open and without protection to the winds from the Arctic. So, scattered over its surface, are tracts unsurpassed in intensity of cold. In this regard Verhoyansk has the preëminence. Its average temperature during the three winter months is -53° Fahrenheit, while sometimes an extreme of 90° is reached. Its average annual temperature is only two degrees above zero; yet even there human beings cling like the moss and lichens and manage to exist the whole year through. The trend of land gives a northern direction to the masses of water-the Obi, the Yenisei, the Lena, and their tributarieswhich we call rivers and which for months through much of their course are frozen rather than flowing seas.

THE ZONES

The 4,900,000 square miles of territory naturally divide into three roughly parallel zones. North of an imaginary line, in general coinciding with the sixtyninth parallel, is the zone of the tundra. Here are comprised about 1,600,000 square miles. In a part of this territory the ground is frozen throughout the year, in winter to the depth of 40 feet, yet something like 100,000 human beings know no other home than the tundra. Between the sixty-ninth and sixtieth parallels is the forest zone, covering an extent of about 2,320,000 square miles and containing a population of less

than 1,000,000. The supply of timber is practically exhausted. Its fur-bearing animals render it above any other part of the globe the land of the fur hunter. Its broad rivers are packed with fish. Its wealth of minerals and metals is accessible in the very surface of the ground. South of the sixtieth parallel is the zone of arable land, embracing about 900,000 square miles in a belt nearly 4,000 miles long and from 250 to 300 miles wide. This is the Siberia which today counts the most. It is the part now being brought into intimate connection with the rest of the world. The prime requisite for its development has been inhabitants, and then means of communication and transportation. Beside unequalled capacity for the production of cereals, it is dotted all over with great deposits of coal, iron, gold, and the most useful and valuable minerals and metals. The word Altai means golden.

COLONIZATION

But in the mind of the Russian, no less than of the foreigner, Siberia up to a few years ago has meant only suffering and exile. It seemed set apart by God and the Tsar as the prison-house of the outlaw and the felon. In 1899 a ukase of Nicholas II forbade the entry hereafter of convicts and suspected persons, and thus ended its woeful old-time mission forever.

From the dawn of creation up to the present time Siberia has been waiting even as North America waited through the ages for the states that were to arise within its boundaries. In 1888 its real colonization began when 26,000 immigrants crossed its frontiers. Then 30,000 came in 1889, 36,000 in 1890, 60,000 in 1891, 100,000 each year from 1892 to 1896, then 150,000, 200,000, and now more than 250,000 annually. While excluding undesirable persons, the government adopts generous measures toward