Seeking means of providing earnings for the settlers, the administration in recent years has begun to order salted fish from them. The settlers obtain salt at reduced prices and on credit; the prison then purchases the fish from them at high prices in order to encourage them. I mention these insignificant earnings only because the prisoners say the prison soup cooked with fish cured by the local settlers is noted for its particularly repulsive taste and unbearable stench. The settlers do not know how tO fish or how to cure the fish, and nobody teaches them. According to the present custom the prison takes over the best fishing grounds and the settlers are left with rapids and shallows, where their cheap homemade nets arc torn to pieces by bushes and rocks. When I was in Derbinskoye the con- victs were catching fish for the prison.
The island commandant, General Kononovich, ordered the settlers to appear before him. In his speech he re- proached them for having sold unedible fish to the prison last year. He stated, "The convicts are your brothers and my sons. In cheating the prison you harm your brothers and my sons." The settlers agreed with him, but their faces showed that next year their brothers and his sons would again be eating stinking fish. Even if the setders learn to preserve the fish properly, the new earnings will still be meaningless to the settlers since sooner or Iater the sanita- tion authorities will be forced to forbid the consumption of fish caught in the upper sources of rivers.
I visited the prison fishery in Derbinskoye on August 25. The interminable rain brought misery to all nature. It was difficult to walk along the slippery shore. \Y/e first en- tered the shed, where sixteen convicts were salting fish under the supervision of Vasilenko, a former Taganrog fisherman. They had already salted 150 barrels, some two thousand poods. It would seem that if Vasilenko had not happened to be convicted, nobody would know how to handle the fish. There was a slope leading down from the shed to the shore, and on this six convicts were cleaning fish with sharp knives; the water was red and turbid. There is a strong stench of fish and mire mixed with fish blood. A bit farther on, a group of convicts, soaking wet and barefoot, were casting a small seine. They pulled it out twice while I was there, and both times the seine was full. All the keta looked extremely suspect. They all had protruding teeth, their spines were humped and their bodies were covered with bruises. The bellies of almost all the fish were stained brown or green, and a water excrement was being secreted. The fish cast on shore died very quickly, if they were not already dead in the water or had not died while struggling in the net. The few fish which remained un- blemished were called serebryanka [silver fish]. These were carefully set aside. They were not meant for the prison kettle, but would be especially "cured."
They do not know very much here about the natural history of the fish which enter the rivers periodically. They are not yet convinced that they should be caught at the mouth of the rivers and in their lower waters. The fish become unfit for consumption farther upriver.
While sailing on the Amur, I heard complaints from old inhabitants that at the mouth of the river real keta can be caught, but they only get lancet fish. On the boat I also heard people saying it was about time the fishing was regu- lated; they meant that it should be forbidden in the lower rcaches.1"
While the prisoners and the settlers were catching gaunt, half-dead fish in the upper reaches of the Tym, the Japanese were illegally fishing at the mouth of the river after blocking it with palings, while in the lower reaches the Gilyaks were catching fish for their dogs, and these fish were incomparably healthier and tastier than those which were being salted in the Tymov district for the people. The Japanese were loading junks and even larger ships, and the beautiful ship which Polyakov met at the mouth of the Tym in 1881 probably came again this summer.
For fishing to become a serious enterprise, the colony must be moved closcr to the mouth of the Tym or the Poronaya. But this is not the only thing that has to be done. It is imperative that the free inhabitants not be allowed to compete with the exiles, because wherever there is a con- flict of interests the free will always have the advantage over the exiles.
Moreover, the settlers arc faced with competition from the Japanese, who arc either fishing illegally or paying ex- port taxes, and from the officials who have acquired the best fishing grounds for fishing by the prisoners. The time is drawing ncar for the completion of the Trans-Siberian railroad and the large-scale development of shipping, and then people will hear about the incredible abundance of fish and game, and free people will be attracted to the island. Immigration will begin, and regular fishing enter- prises will be organized; in these the exiles will participate not as owner-entrepreneurs but merely as hired hands. And then it will happen, if we can judge by past occurrences, that complaints will be raised that the labor of the exiles is yielding place to the labor of free people, perhaps the Chinese and Koreans. The exiles will be regarded as an economic burden on the island, and with the increasc in immigration and the development of a settled industrial life the government will find ir more equitable and advan- rageous to be on the side of the free population, and penal servitude will be discontinued. In this way fish becomes the foundation of Sakhalin prospcrity, but that has nothing to do with thc penal colony.n
I have alrcady rcferred to rhe harvesting of sea cabbage when I was dcscribing the Mauka settlemcnt. From March i to August i a settler earns from i 50 to 200 rubles during the harvesting. A third of his carnings arc spent on food and hc brings two-thirds home. Thcsc are good wages; un- fortunatcly thcy arc only possible for settlcrs in the Korsa- kov district. Thc workcrs arc paid according to thcir capaci- ties, and thcir carnings rcflcct thcir expericnce, diligcnce and conscicntiousncss—qualitics which arc far from bcing common among thc cxilcs. It follows that not evcryone gocs to Mauka.12
Thcrc arc many carpcntcrs, cabinctmakcrs, tailors and so on among the cxiles, but most of thcm do nothing or thcy are farmers. Onc convict locksmith makcs Bcrdan riflcs and hc has alrcady sold four on thc mainland. Another makes unusual stccl watch chains, whilc anothcr smlpturcs on gcsso. Thcsc riflcs, chains and cxpcnsivc gcsso boxes throw no morc light on thc colony's cconomic stams than thc information that thcrc is a settler in the South who gathers whalcbonc along thc coast and another who digs for mollusks. All of this is incidcntal. Those clegant and cxpensive w^^cn articlcs which wcrc shown at the prison cxhibition demonstrate only that somctimcs fine cabinet- makcrs arc sentcnccd to penal servitude. They have no conncction with the prison, since it is not the prison which finds a market for thcm and it is not the prison which teaches craftsmanship to thc convicts. The prison has prof- itcd from the work of these skilled craftsmen, but the sup- ply of their work is considerably greatcr than the demand. One convict told me, "You can't even sell forged documents here!" Carpenters work for 20 kopecks a day and pay for their own f^^, while tailors sew for vodka.13
If we add up the average income of the settler from selling grain to the government, from hunting, fishing, etc., we obtain the pitiful figure of 29 rubles, 21 kopecks.14 Moreover, the average debt of each homesteader to the government is 3 i rubles, 5 i kopecks. Since the total income includes fodder and the government allowance and sums of money received through the mail, and since the exile's income chiefly consists of earnings received from the gov- ernment, which occasionally pays inflated prices, a good half of his income is purely fictitious and the debt he owes the government is in fact larger than the figures suggest.