The task is generally completed by noon, or early in the afternoon. For the labor they perform during the rest of the day, or on Sundays and holidays, they receive an extra pay of two or three roubles for every solotnik of gold they wash. Every evening the workmen come with the produce of their free labor to the office, the gold is weighed in their presence, and the artell credited for the amount of its share. This free-work is as advantageous for the masters as the laborers. The former enjoy a net profit of eight or ten roubles per solotnik, and all the working expenses are of course put to the charge of the contract labor; and the latter earn a great deal of money, according to their industry or good-luck, for when fortune favors an artell, its share may amount to a considerable sum. During Hofmann’s stay at the Birussa, each workman of a certain artell earned in one afternoon 72 roubles, and the Sunday’s work of another of these associations gave to each of its members 105 roubles, or £4. The artisans--who, though employed in a gold-mine, are not engaged in digging or washing the auriferous sand--are also rewarded from time to time by a day’s free-labor in places which are known to be rich. On one of these occasions a Cossack on the Oktolyk received 300 roubles for his share of the gold that was washed out of 49 wheelbarrows of sand. These of course are extraordinary cases, but they show how much a workman _may_ gain; and being of course exaggerated by report, are the chief inducements which attract the workmen, and keep them to their duty. If the free-labor is unproductive, many of the workmen desert or give up free-labor altogether, and in both cases the master is a loser. To prevent this, it is customary, in many of the diggings, to pay the workmen a fixed sum for their extra work. At the end of the season the workmen are paid off, and receive provisions for their home-journey. Generally, the produce of their summer’s labor is spent, in the first villages they reach, in drinking and gambling; so that, to be able to return to their families, they are obliged to bind themselves anew for the next season, and to receive hand-money from the agent, who, knowing their weakness, is generally on the spot to take advantage of it. After spending a long winter full of want and privations, they return to the Taiga in spring, and thus, through their own folly, their life is spent in constant misery and hard labor.