“It comes from one of the domains of his Imperial Majesty’s Cabinet,” explains the engineer. “Stretches of forest, belts of fertile river valley, fur districts, hundreds of thousands of square versts, the best mines in these Urals which produce sometimes yearly seven million roubles, the entire Nerchinsk region, producing six million roubles, are ‘cabinetski,’” he remarks. “Even I, Ivan Vasilovich Poyarkov, am ‘cabinetski’!” He explains the origin of the term, going back to the old days when princedoms went to the courtiers of Catherine. Always for a great enterprise it was necessary to have a friend at Court. So the rich merchants and miners would form, with powerful members of the inner circle at St. Petersburg, alliances such as that made by the Stroganovs with Boris. Gradually, as time went on, the protected were swallowed by the protectors, until one by one the various estates had passed into the hands of the nobles of the Imperial Court. The mines in the Altai, which Demidov had opened up, were taken over in 1747 by the Emperor, those in the Zabaikalskaia Oblast at about the same time. With the passing of the years, what had been graft and expropriation was transmuted into vested interest, until now it is the established right of the Imperial Cabinet, or the Grand Dukes, to receive the revenues of these vast domains. In the mining regions their perquisite is from five to fifteen per cent. Save for the tax, however, miners are free to operate upon the ducal estates, and many are thus engaged. A fur-capped station-agent clangs the big bronze bell, waits a moment, and then clangs twice. The passengers climb back into the box-like steel cars of the express. The third bell sounds, and the train starts. We sit down beside the engineer and the conversation takes up the “cabinetski” again. “We have great traditions. One Governor, Neryschkin, of the ‘cabinetski’ mines at Nerchinsk, marched to fight the Czar. In 1775 he was appointed chief of the mineral belt in the Zabaikalskaia Oblast. He sat for eleven months at home with closed shutters. Then, on Easter Sunday, singing a devil’s hymn, and with a fat female on either side, he drove to church and ordered the service amended to suit a rather bizarre taste. He organized a series of glittering shows at the Crown’s cost, gave free drink to the populace, and throwing out many of his subordinates, appointed convicts in their stead. When he had used up all the tax-money in his keeping, he drew up cannon before the house of the rich merchant Sibirayakov, the operator of the mines, and made him hand out five thousand roubles. Finally he got together an army of Tunguses and the peasants, to march against the Czar. He was caught on the way and sent to Russia for punishment. It is the great honor of our service to be governor over the ‘cabinetski’ mines. Perhaps I shall rise there some day. Perhaps not. But I shall not march against the Czar.”