Rarely and reluctantly do the older and more experi- enced officials go out in search of new sites, since they are always occupied with other matters, while the younger officials are inexperienced and careless. The administration is sluggish, affairs are always being delayed, and the result is the overcrowding of already existing settlements. Finally, help is sought from convicts and military guards, and according to the reports they have sometimes succeeded in selecting good sites. Because there was no more space for distributing plots in the Tymovsk or Alexandrovsk districts, and because at the same time the number of poverty- stricken people was rapidly increasing, General Konono- vich proposed in his order (No. 280) of 1888 "to organize land-seeking parties composed of reliable convicts under the supervision of completely efficient and literate guards with experience of these affairs, or even officials, and to send them out to seek locations appropriate for settlements." These parties are wandering over unexplored territory un- trodden by the mapmakers; they search for sites with no available data on their height above sea level, the compo- sition of the soil, the water and so on. The administration can only guess at the suitability of these sites for settle- ment and farming, and so it happens that the final decision about the site is made haphazardly and at random. More- over, they never seek the opinion of a doctor or of a topog- rapher, who is nonexistent on Sakhalin, and the surveyor appears at the new site after the land has been cleared and is already populated.5
Recounting his impressions to me after his tour of the settlements, the Governor-General expressed himself as fol- lows: "Penal servitude does not begin with penal servitude, but with colonization." If the severity of the punishment is measured by the amount of work done and the physical deprivations resulting from the work, then the settlers on Sakhalin often suffer far more severe punishment than the convicts. The settler arrives at a new place which is gen- erally marshy and covered with trees, and he has only a carpenter's ax, a saw and a shovel. He fells trees, uproots stumps, digs canals in order to drain the site, and during the entire period of these preparatory labors he lives under the open sky, on the damp ground. The delights of the Sakhalin climate, with its gloom, almost daily rain and low temperature, are never felt so keenly as during this time when a man cannot escape even for a moment from the sensation of piercing dampness and shivering fits over many weeks. This is the true febris sachalinensis* with head- aches and rheumatic pains over the entire body caused not by infections but by climatic influences.
Thc settlement is built first and the road leading to it comes later, rather than the ocher way round. For this reason a tremendous amount of strength and health is in- voluntarily wasted on transporting heavy burdens from the post at a time when there are no footpaths to the new site. A settler loaded down with tools, provisions and so on walks through the dcnse taiga, either up to his knees in water, or scrambling over mountains of windfalls, or en- tangled in stiff clumps of marsh rose.
Clause 307 of the Code 011 Convicts states that people outside the prison must be supplied with lumber for build- ing their homes. The clause is interpreted to mean that the settler must cut and prepare the lumber for himself. In the past convicts werc assigned to help settlers, and money was provided for hiring carpenters and purchasing material; but this arrangement was abandoned when it was discovered, as one official told me, that "the plan resulted in idleness, and the convicts worked while the settlers played games of pitch-and-toss." Now the settlers do their own work, help- ing one anOther. A carpenter builds the frame, a stovemaker builds up the stove, sawyers cut the boards. Anyone who lacks the strength or the know-how but has some money can hire someone to do the work. Those who possess strength and endurance do the hardest work. Anyone who is weak or has lost the habit of hard peasam-like work in prison, if he is not playing cards or pitch-and-toss, or is nm bundling himself up against the cold, takes on some comparatively light work. Many break down with fatigue, lose courage and abandon their unfinished homes. The Chinese and Caucasians who do nm know how to construct Russian huts usually cscape during the first year. Almost half of the homesteaders on Sakhalin have no homes, and the explanation seems to be that the setders encoumcr great difficulties at the outset when they setde down. According to data I took from the report of the agriculmral inspcnor, homesteaders in 1889 without homes constituted 50 percem of the total in the Tymovsk district, in thc Korsakov dis- trict thc figure was 42 perccm, and in thc Alexandrovsk dis- trict, wherc households are built with lcss difliculty and the sctders buy their homcs more oftcn than build them, it was only 20 percem.
Whcn the framc is completed, window glass and iron- ware are givcn to the homcsteader on crcdit. Thc island commandam spcaks about this crcdit in one of his ordcrs: "'With extremc regret wc inform you that this crcdit, to- gether with many others, is a long timc in corning, and this lack of credit paralyzes the will to seule down. . . . Last autumn during my tour of the Korsakov region, I saw houses which were waiting for glass, nails and iron stove bolts; today I again saw thesc houscs in the same state of cxpectancy'' (Order No. 318, 1889).'
They do not consider it necessary to invcstigatc a new site evcn after it is setded. They send out fifty to a hun- dred homestcaders to the new site and add scores morc every year. Meanwhile nobody knows how much arable land is available for how many peoplc, which is the reason why exuaordinarily soon after having setded the new area, the new setdement is beset by ovcrcrowding and a surplus of people. This is nm only evidem at the Korsakov Post; every one of the posts and setdemems of both the Northern disuicts is crammed with people. Even such an undoubtedly solicitous person as A. M. Butakov, the commander of the
Tymovsk district, settles people on plots haphazardly, with- out giving thought to the future, and in no other district are there so many co-owners and multi-cohomesteaders as in his. It seems that the administration itself has no faith in the agricultural colony and has little by little come to believe that the settler requires the land only for a short while, perhaps a period of six years, since as soon as he achieves peasant status he will immediately leave the island, and under such conditions the problem of plots has merely formal significance.
Of the 3,522 homesteaders whom I recorded, 638, or 18 percent, are co-owners. If we exclude the Korsakov dis- trict, where only one settler is assigned to a plot, this per- centage will be significantly greater. In the Tymovsk dis- trict, the younger the settlement, the larger the percentage of half-owners. In Voskresenskoye, for instance, there are ninety-seven homesteaders, seventy-seven of whom are half- owners. This means that each year it becomes more diffi- cult to find new sites and to divide up the plots for settlers.8