Well, these convicts not possessing the rights of free citizenship, are, on arriving in Siberia, appointed to reside in, or registered as belonging to, a certain district of the province where the Governor-General may determine to colonise them. After three years' residence, certain advancement is held out to these people, if they can produce a certificate of good behaviour. They are allowed to marry, to become settlers, to clear and cultivate land at pleasure. They are exempt from taxes for the space of twelve years; and after that they only pay a trifle. These convicts are, however, legally dead, can never hold property in their own name, and of course can never return to Russia. But so far from this latter restriction being a real hardship, if a return to their native air were permitted them, it is highly improbable that any would avail themselves of the privilege. Siberia is really the land of promise to them. The descendants of these convicts become free agriculturists, and live in independence. They pay to government a tax of from three to four pounds, sterling, per head,[23] per annum, which is very much higher than the tax levied on the peasants of Russia proper. But there the peasant had, in addition to the small tax to government, an _obrok_ to pay to his master, amounting on an average to about four pounds sterling a year. The Russian peasant, before the emancipation, got nothing in return for this tax, but was bound body and soul to his master, and unable to do anything to better his condition that was not entirely agreeable to the arbitrary will of his owner. The peasant in Siberia, on the other hand, is absolutely free in all things to follow the bent of his own will. He has no master to dread and serve, and owes obedience to nothing but the law of the land. The Siberian peasantry are treated with every liberality by the government, whose ruling purpose with respect to that country is to colonise it with industrious communities, who will turn its natural wealth to account, and become an arm of support to the state. For the single tax above-mentioned, the peasant receives as much land as he can clear, as much timber as he chooses to fell, and no rent is required from him. The land he has worked is his own. No other person can disturb his possession, and the government even cannot claim from him any portion of the land so acquired without his formal renunciation. The primeval forest may be said to cover the whole of Siberia--the cleared spaces are as drops in the bucket, and the bare steppes, where timber is scant, bear but an insignificant proportion to the whole. In the immediate vicinity of some of the large towns, where the people have been burning wood for two hundred years, a palpable impression has been made on the forest, and there it has been found necessary to restrict the cutting of wood to certain limits, both as to the quantity consumed, and the boundaries within which trees may be felled.