During my stay thc agricultural question on Sakhalin had reached a stagc wherc it was difficult to understand anything. The Govcrnor-Gcncral, thc island commandant and thc district officials had no faith in the productivity of Sakhalin farmers. They wcre in no doubt that the attempt to adapt prisoners scntenccd to pcnal servitude to agricul- ture was a complcte failure and at the same time thcy insisted that if the colony should remain an agricultural colony, at whatever the cost, then government funds would be spent unproductively and the people would continue to be subjected to useless torture. This is what the Governor- General dictated to me:
"A prisoners' agricultural colony is quite impracticable on the island. The people must be given the means of earning a living; agriculture can only be an additional form of revenue."
The younger officials expressed the same opinion and fearlessly criticized the island's past in the presence of their superiors. When asked how things were going, the exiles themselves answered nervously, hopelessly, with bitter gri- maces. And regardless of their definite and unanimous attitude concerning agriculture, the exiles continue to plow and sow, the administration continues to give seeds on credit, and the island commandant, who has less belief than anyone in the future of farming in Sakhalin, issues orders in which "for the sake of getting the exiles interested in agriculture," he affirms that the achievement of peasant status by settlers who show no prospect of success in their farm work on the plots assigned to them "can never occur" (Order No. 276, 1890).
Up to the present, the amount of cultivated land has been shown by inflated and carefully selected figures (Order No. 366, 1888), and nobody can say cxactly what the aver- age amount of land is per homesteader. The agricultural inspector says the average amount of land per plot is 1,555 square sazhcns, or about two-thirds of a dcsyatin, and in a better district, i.e., Korsakov, the average is 935 square sazhcns. These figures arc probably incorrect, and they have minimal significance because the land is apportioned ex- trcmcly unequally among thc homesteaders. People who arrived from Russia with money or profited as rich peasants have three to five and even eight dcsyatins of arable land, and therc are many homesteaders, especially in the Korsa- kov district, who have only a few square sazhcns. Obviously the quantity of arable land increases each year, but the averagc arca of the plots docs not increase and threatens to remain constant.3
They sow government seeds which are always obtained on credit. In the best district, that is, in Korsakov, "the entire proportion of sown grain amounting to 2,060 poods contained only i 65 poods raised by thc homesteaders them- selves, and of the 610 persons who sowed the grain, only 56 men had their own seeds" (Order No. 318, 1889.) According to the agricultural inspcctor's data, an average of only 3 p^^s, i 8 pounds of grain is sown per adult in the Southern section. It is interesting to note that in the district with the best climatic conditions agriculture is less succcssful than in the Northern districts, but this does not prevent it from being thc best district.
In thc two Northcrn districts not oncc was a sufficicnt amount of warm wcathcr obscrvcd for thc full ripcning of oats and wheat, and thcrc wcrc only two ycars whcn it was warm cnough for thc barlcy to ripen.4
Spring and thc bcginning of summcr arc nearly always cold. In 1889 therc werc frosts in July and August, and bad autumn weathcr began on July 24 and continued to the cnd of Octobcr. Onc may combat thc cold, and thc acclima- tization of grains on Sakhalin would bc a vcry worthwhilc endeavor if it wcrc not for thc exceptionally high humidity, and thcrc may ncvcr bc any effcctivc way of combating humidity. During thc pcriod whcn thc shoots arc growing, flowcring and ripcning, and cspccially during thc timc of ripcning, thc number of foggy days on thc island is dispro- portionally largc, and for this reason thc earth yiclds insuffi- cicntly ripened, watery, wrinklcd and lightweight sccds. Or else, becausc of thc numcrous rains thc grain pcrishes, rots or germinatcs on the shcavcs in thc ficld. Thc timc for harvcsting grains, cspecially summcr wheat, always coin- cidcs with thc rainy scason and sometimcs thc cntirc harvcst remains in thc ficld bccausc of thc constant rains from August dcep into thc autumn. Thc rcport of thc agricul- tural inspcctor contains a tablc of crops for thc past five years bascd on data which thc island commandant calls "mcrc invcntion." From this tablc wc may conclude that thc avcragc grain harvcst is approximatcly thrccfold, a fact which may be corroboratcd by anothcr figurc: in i 889 thc harvcstcd grains avcragcd somc i i poods pcr adult pcrson, being a thrcefold yield of grain. Thc harvcstcd grain was poor. One day whilc cxamining samplcs of thc grain brought by scttlers to bc cxchangcd for flour, thc island commandant found that some of them wcre complctcly unfit for sowing and thc othcr grain samplcs contained a significant numbcr of unripcned and frost-killcd grain (Order No. 41, 1889).
In vicw of such poor yiclds, the Sakhalin homesteader, if hc is to be wcll fed, must have no lcss than four dcsya- tins of fertile land, must not stint in his own efforts, and must not pay any money to workers. In the not too distant future when the one-field system without fallow land and without fertilization will bring about the exhaustion of the soil and the exiles "recognize the necessity for changing to a more rational method of working the fields and to a new system of crop rotation," more land and more labor will be required, and the growing of grains will perforce be aban- doned as being unproductive and unprofitable.
Vegetable-raising, the branch of agriculture whose suc- cess does not depend so much on natural conditions as on the individual efforts and knowledge of the homesteader himself, obviously produces good results on Sakhalin. The success of local gardening is evident in that sometimes entire families live on turnips during the entire winter. In July a woman in Alexandrovsk complained to me that her flowers had not yet bloomed, while in one Korsakov hut I saw a bucket full of cucumbers.
From the agricultural inspector's report it appears that the 1889 harvest in the Tymovsk district yielded four and one-tenths poods of cabbage and about two ^^^ of various root vegetables per adult; in Korsakov the yield was four poods of cabbage and four and one-eighth ^^s of root vegetables. That same year the potato yield per adult in Alexandrovsk was about 50 poods, in Tymovsk it was 16 poods and in Korsakov it was 34 p^^s. Potatoes generally give abundant yields and this is not only corroborated by statistics biit by personal impressions. I did not see bins or bags of grain: I did not see settlers eating wheat bread althoiigh more wheat is sown here than rye; but I did see potatoes in every hit and heard complaints that many potatoes rotted during the winter.