The  shafts  were  forty,  thirty-eight  and  thirty-five  feet
deep.  A  windlass  straddled  the  top  of  each.  The  open-
ings were  less  than  five  feet  square,  and  you  could  see
that  the  interiors  of  the  shafts  were  stoutly  timbered.
From  the  foot  of  each  shaft  branched  out  a  short  tunnel;
from  here  the  pay  dirt  was  coming.  Twenty  men  were
at  work,  and  about  eleven  sledge  loads  of  dirt  were  being


58  THEOUGH  SIBERIA

excavated  a  day.  Each  load  was  at  once  taken  off  to  the
washing  creek  at  Gavrielovsk,  where  the  interesting  part
of  the  work  took  place.
All  of  the  mines  of  Salaijeer  are  cahinetski  —  the  per-
sonal property  of  the  Tsar,  ex  officio,  a  part  of  the  Tsar's
great  Altai  estates.  As  such,  the  mines  are  leased  out  to
companies  and  private  individuals,  ten  per  cent,  of  the
total  output  being  liable  to  sequestration  for  the  Tsar's
private  purse.  Human  nature  being  notoriously  frail  and
the  Tsar  being  too  busy  nowadays  to  come  around  in  person
for  his  dues,  the  full  ten  per  cent,  is  not  often  taken.  Offi-
cially, the  cahinetski  superintendent  of  mines  is  empowered
to  take  only  five  per  cent.,  or  even  three  per  cent.,  should
the  mining  operations  be  "  experimental."  Hence  the
size  of  your  tax  depends  in  large  measure  on  your  success
in  persuading  the  cahinetski  superintendent  that  your  ef-
forts are  merely  "  experimental."  You  find,  as  a  bad
man  at  Irkutsk  told  us,  that  you  can  afford  quite  a  lot
of  "  experimental "  plant  and  methods  on  a  really  rich
holding,  if  keeping  a  few  industrious  men  to  play  with
those  weird  machines  lifts  a  five  per  cent,  tax  on  gross
earnings  from  your  annual  budget.
