ers, but swarming with mosquitoes. The road, which before had been comparatively smooth and dry, became a quagmire of black, tenacious mud, in which the wheels of our heavy tarantas sank to the hubs, and through which our progress was so slow that we were four hours in traversing a single stretch of about eighteen miles. Attempts had apparently been made here and there to improve this part of the route, by laying down in the soft marshy soil a corduroy of logs; but the logs had sunk unequally under the pounding wheels of ten thousand loaded freight wagons, leaving enormous transverse ruts and hollows filled with mud, so that the only result of the "improvement" was to render the road more nearly impassable than before, and to add unendurable jolting to our other discomforts. At last, weary of lurches, jolts, and concussions, we alighted, and tried walking by the roadside; but the sunshine was so intensely hot, and the mosquitoes so fierce and bloodthirsty, that in twenty minutes we were glad to climb back into the tarantas with our hands full of flowers, and our faces scarlet from heat and mosquito bites. Upon comparing our impressions we found that we were unanimously of opinion that if we had been the original discoverers of this country, we should have named it either Florida or Culexia, since flowers and mosquitoes are its distinctive characteristics and its most abundant products.

At the gate-keeper's lodge of one of the last villages that we passed before reaching Tiumen, we were greeted with the ringing of a large hand-bell. The sound was strangely suggestive of an auction, but as we stopped in front of the village gate, the bell-ringer, a bare-headed man in a long black gown, with a mass of flaxen hair hanging over his shoulders and a "savings bank" box suspended from his neck, approached the tarantas and called our attention to a large brownish picture in a tarnished gilt frame resting on a sort of improvised easel by the road-side. It was evidently an ikon or portrait of some holy saint from a Russian church; but what was the object of setting it up there, and what relation it bore to us, we could not imagine. Finally the bell-ringer, bowing, crossing himself, and invoking blessings on our heads, implored us, "Khrista radi" ["For Christ's sake"], to contribute to the support of the holy saint's church, which, it appeared, was situated somewhere in the vicinity. This combination of an auctioneer's bell, a saint's image, a toll-gate, and a church beggar greatly amused Mr. Frost, who inquired whether the holy saint owned the road and collected toll. The gate-keeper explained that the saint had VOL. XXXVI.-24.

nothing to do with the road, but the church was poor, and the "noble gentlemen" who passed that way were accustomed to contribute to its support; and (removing his hat) "most of the noble gentlemen remembered also the poor gate-keeper." Of course the two noble gentlemen, with mosquito-bitten faces, rumpled hair, soiled shirt-collars and mudbespattered clothing, sitting with noble dignity on a luxurious steamer trunk in a miry tarantas, could not resist such an appeal as this to their noble sympathies. We gave the gate-keeper a few copper coins with directions to put half of them into the savings bank of the black-robed deacon, and having thus contributed to the support of two great Russian institutions, the church and the grog-shop, we rode on.

Late in the afternoon of Thursday, June 18, we came out of the forest into an extensive marshy plain, tinted a peculiar greenishyellow by swamp grass and buttercups, and our driver, pointing ahead with his whip, said, "There is Tiumen." All that we could see of the distant city was a long line of pyramidal board roofs on the horizon, broken here and there by the white stuccoed walls of a Government building, or the greendomed belfries and towers of a Russo-Greek church. As we approached it we passed in succession a square marble column marking the spot where the citizens of Tiumen bade good-bye to the Grand Duke Vladimir in 1868; a squad of soldiers engaged in target practice, stepping forward and firing volleys by ranks to the accompaniment of a flourish of bugles; a series of long, low sheds surrounded by white, tilted emigrant wagons; and finally, in the suburbs, the famous exile forwarding prison.

There were two or three hotels in the town, but upon the recommendation of our driver we went to the "Rooms for Arrivers," or furnished apartments of one Kovalski, who occupied a two-story brick house near the bank of the river in the eastern part of the city. About 6 o'clock in the evening we finally alighted from our muddy tarantas in Kovalski's court-yard, having made a journey of 204 miles in two days with eleven changes of horses, and having spent more than forty hours without sleep, sitting in a cramped and uncomfortable position on Mr. Frost's trunk. My neck and spine were so stiff and lame from incessant jolting that I could not have made a bow to the Tsar of all the Russias, and I was so tired that I could hardly climb the stairs leading to the second story of Kovalski's house. As soon as possible after dinner we went to bed, and for twelve hours slept the sleep of exhaustion.

TIUMEN.

TIUMEN, where we virtually began our Siberian journey, as well as our investigation of the exile system, is a town of 19,000 inhabitants, situated 1700 miles east of St. Petersburg, on the right bank of the river Tura, just above the junction of the latter with the Tobol. The city and the surrounding country have much more commercial importance than is generally supposed. Siberian cold and Siberian desolation have been so much talked and written about, and have been brought so forcibly to the attention of the world by the terrible experience of De Long and the survivors of the Jeannette, that nine readers out of ten, in forming a conception of the country, give undue prominence to its arctic side and its winter aspect. When, in conversation since my return, I have happened to refer to Siberian tobacco, Siberian orchids, or Siberian camels, my remarks have even been received with smiles of incredulity. I do not know any better way to overthrow the erroneous popular conception of Siberia than to assail it with facts and statistics, even at the risk of being wearisome. I will therefore say briefly, that the province of Tobolsk, which is the part of Siberia with which a traveler from Europe first becomes acquainted, extends from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the sun-scorched steppes of Semipalatinsk and Akmolinsk, and from the mountains of the Ural to the boundary line of Yeniseisk and Tomsk. It has an area of 590,000 square miles and includes 27,000,000 acres of arable land. It contains 8 towns of from 3000 to 20,000 inhabitants, and its total population exceeds 1,200,000. In the last year for which I was able to get statistics the province produced 30,044,880 bushels of grain and 3,778,230 bushels of potatoes, and contained 2,647,000 head of live stock. It sends annually to European Russia enormous quantities of raw products, such as hides, tallow, bristles, furs, bird skins, flax, and hemp; it forwards more than 2,000,000 pounds of butter to Constantinople by way of Rostoff, on the Don; and there is held within its limits, at Irbit, a commercial fair whose transactions amount annually to 35,000,000 rubles ($17,500,000). The manufacturing industries of the province, although still in their infancy, furnish employment to 6252 persons and put annually upon the market goods to the value of 8,517,000 rubles. Besides the workmen employed in the regular manu facturing establishments, the urban population includes 27,000 mechanics and skilled laborers. Cottage industries are carried on extensively throughout the province, and produce annually, among other things, 50,000 rugs

and carpets; 1,500,000 fathoms of fish netting; 2,140,000 yards of linen cloth; 50,000 barrels; 70,000 telegas and sleighs; leather manufactures to the value of 2,500,000 rubles; and quantities of dressed furs, stockings, mittens, belts, scarfs, laces, and ornamented towels and sheets. The quantity of fish caught annually along the Ob and its tributaries is estimated at 8000 tons, and salt to the amount of 3000 tons is used in curing it. Tiumen, which is the most important town in the province, stands on a navigable branch of the vast Ob river system, through which it has steam communication with the greater part of western Siberia, from Semipalatinsk and Tomsk to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Fifty-eight steamers ply on the Ob and its tributaries, most of them between Tomsk and Tiumen, and through the latter city is transported annually merchandise to the value of thirty or forty million rubles. Sixteen million rubles' worth of Siberian products are brought every year to the Nizhni Novgorod fair, and in exchange for this mass of raw material European Russia sends annually to Siberia nearly 300,000 tons of manufactured goods.

It cannot, I think, be contended that a country which furnishes such statistics as these is an arctic desert or an uninhabited waste.

On the next day after our arrival in Tiumen the weather furnished us with convincing evidence of the fact that the Siberian summer climate, although sometimes as mild and delightful as that of California, is fickle and untrustworthy. During the night the wind changed suddenly to the north-east, and a furious storm of cold, driving rain swept down across the tundras from the coast of the Arctic Ocean, turning the unpaved and unsewered streets of the city to lakes of liquid mud, and making it practically impossible to go out of doors. We succeeded, with the aid of a droshky, in getting to the post-office and back, and devoted the remainder of the day to reading and to writing letters. On Saturday, during lulls in the storm, we walked and rode about the city, but saw little to reward us for our trouble. The muddy, unpaved streets did not differ much in appearance from the streets of the villages through which we had passed, except that some of them had plank sidewalks, and the unpainted log-houses with high, steep, pyramidal roofs were larger and more pretentious. There was the same absence of trees, shrubbery, front yards and front doors which we had noticed in all of the Siberian villages; and but for the white-walled and green-domed churches, which gave it a certain air of picturesqueness, the town would have been commonplace and uninteresting.

The only letter of introduction we had to deliver in Tiumen was from a Russian gentleman in St. Petersburg to Mr. Slovtsof, Director of the "Realnoi Uchilishche," an institution which is known in Germany as a "real schule." Saturday afternoon, the storm having broken, we presented this letter and were received by Mr. Slovtsof with great cordiality. The educational institution over which he presides is a scientific and technical school similar in plan to the Institute of Technology in Boston. It occupies the largest and finest edifice in the city-a substantial two-story structure of white stuccoed brick, nearly twice as large as the Executive Mansion in Washington. This building was erected and equipped at a cost of $85,000 by one of Tiumen's wealthy and public-spirited merchants, and was then presented to the city as a gift. One would hardly expect to find such a school in European Russia, to say nothing of Siberia, and indeed one might look far without finding such a school even in the United States. It has a mechanical department, with a steam-engine, lathes, and tools of all kinds; a department of physics, with fine apparatus, including even the Bell, Edison, and Dolbear telephones and the phonograph; a chemical laboratory, with a more complete equipment than I have ever seen, except in the Boston Institute of Technology; a department of art and mechanical drawing; a good library, and an excellent museum the latter containing, among other things, 900 species of wild flowers collected in the vicinity of the city. It is, in short, a school which would be in the highest degree creditable to any city of similar size in the United States.

From Mr. Slovtsof we obtained the address of Mr. Jacob R. Wardropper, a Scotch gentleman who had for twenty years or more been engaged in business in Siberia; and feeling sure that Mr. Wardropper would be glad to see any one from the western world, we ventured to call upon him without the formality of an introduction. We were received by the whole family with the most warm-hearted hospitality, and their house was made almost a home to us during the remainder of our stay in the city. The chief interest which Tiumen had for us lay in the fact that it contains the most important exile forwarding prison in Siberia, and the "Prikaz o Sylnikh," or Bureau of Exile Administration. Through this prison pass, on their way southward or eastward, all criminals condemned to banishment or penal servitude, and in this administrative bureau are kept all the records and statistics of the exile system. After our arrest in Perm for merely looking at the outside of a prison, we felt some doubt as to the result of an application for leave to

inspect the forwarding prison of Tiumen; but Mr. Wardropper thought we would have no trouble in gaining admittance, and on the following day (Sunday) he went with us to call upon Mr. Krassin, the ispravnik, or chief police officer of the district. I presented to the latter my open letters from the Russian Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and was at once received with a cordiality which was as pleasant as it was unexpected. Mr. Krassin invited us to lunch, said that he had already been informed by private and official letters from St. Petersburg of our projected journey through Siberia, and that he would gladly be of service to us in any way possible. He granted without hesitation my request to be allowed to visit the forwarding prison, and promised to go thither with us on the following day. We would find the prison, he said, greatly overcrowded and in bad sanitary condition; but, such as it was, we should see it.

THE FORWARDING PRISON.

MR. KRASSIN was unfortunately taken sick Monday, but, mindful of his promise, he sent us on Tuesday a note of introduction to the warden which he said would admit us to the prison; and about 10 o'clock Wednesday morning, accompanied by Mr. Wardropper, and Mr. Ignatof, a former member of the prison committee, we presented ourselves at the gate. The Tiumen forwarding prison is a rectangular three-story brick building, 75 feet in length by 40 or 50 in width, covered with white stucco and roofed with painted tin. It is situated in a large yard formed by a whitewashed brick wall 12 or 15 feet in height, at each corner of which stands a black and white zigzag-barred sentry-box, and along each face of which paces a sentry carrying a loaded Berdan rifle with fixed bayonet. Against this wall, on the right-hand side of the gate, is a small building used as a prison office, and in front of it stands a post surmounted by a small A-shaped roof under which hangs a bell. A dozen or more girls and old women were sitting on the ground in front of the prison with baskets full of black rye bread, cold meat, boiled eggs, milk, and fish pies for sale to the imprisoned exiles. The Tiumen prison was originally built to hold 500 prisoners, but was subsequently enlarged by means of detached barracks so that it could accommodate 800. On the day of our visit, as we were informed by a small blackboard hanging beside the office door, it contained 1741. As we approached the entrance we were stopped by an armed sentry, who, upon being informed that we desired

admittance, shouted through a square port-hole in the heavy gate, "Star-she-e-e!" (the usual call for the officer of the day). A corporal or sergeant, with a saber at his side and a Colt's revolver in a holster on his hip, answered the summons, carried our note to the warden, and in a moment we were admitted to the prison yard. Fifty or sixty exiles and convicts were walking aimlessly back and forth in front of the main prison building, or sitting idly in groups here and there on the ground. They were all dressed from head to foot in a costume of gray, consisting of a visorless Scotch cap, a shirt and trousers of coarse homespun linen, and a long gray overcoat with one or two diamond-shaped patches of black or yellow cloth sewn upon the back between the shoulders. Nearly all of them wore leg-fetters, and the air was filled with a peculiar clinking of chains which suggested the continuous jingling of innumerable bunches of keys.

The first "kamera" or cell that we entered was situated in a one-story log barrack standing against the wall on the left of the gate, and built evidently to receive the overflow from the crowded main building. The room was about 35 feet in length by 25 in width and 12 feet high; its walls of hewn logs were covered with dirty whitewash; its rough plank floor was black with dried mud and hard-trodden filth; and it was lighted by three grated windows looking out into the prison yard. Down the center of the room, and occupying about half its width, ran the sleeping-bench- a wooden platform 12 feet wide and 30 feet long, supported, at a height of 2 feet from the floor, by stout posts. Each longitudinal half of this low platform sloped a little, roofwise, from the center, so that when the prisoners slept upon it in two closely packed transverse rows, their heads in the middle were a few inches higher than their feet at the edges. These sleeping-platforms are known as "nares," and a Siberian prison cell contains no other furniture except a large wooden tub for excrement. The prisoners have neither pillows, blankets, nor bedclothing, and must fie on these hard plank nares with no covering but their overcoats. As we entered the cell, the convicts, with a sudden jingling of chains, sprang to their feet, removed their caps, and stood silently in a dense throng around the nares. "Zdrastvuitui rebiata!" ["How do you do, boys!" said the warden. "Zdravie zhelaiem vasha vwisoki blagarodie" ["We wish you health, your high nobility"], shouted a hundred voices in a hoarse chorus, "The prison," said the warden, "is terribly overcrowded. This cell, for example, is only 35 feet long by 25 wide, and has air space for 35,

or at most 40 men. How many men slept here last night?" he inquired, turning to the prisoners.

“ .

"A hundred and sixty, your high nobility," shouted half a dozen hoarse voices.

"You see how it is," said the warden, again addressing me. "This cell contains more than four times the number of prisoners that it was intended to hold, and the same condition of things exists throughout the prison." I looked around the cell. There was practically no ventilation whatever, and the air was so poisoned and foul that I could hardly force myself to breathe it. We visited successively in the yard six kameras or cells essentially like the first, and found in every one of them three or four times the number of prisoners for which it was intended, and five or six times the number for which it had adequate air space. In most of the cells there was not room enough on the sleeping-platforms for all of the convicts, and scores of men slept every night on the foul, muddy floors, under the nares, and in the gangways between them and the walls. Three or four pale, dejected, and apparently sick prisoners crawled out from under the sleeping-platform in one of the cells as we entered.

From the log barracks in the prison yard we went into the main building, which contained the kitchen, the prison workshops, and the hospital, as well as a large number of kameras, and which was in much worse sanitary condition than the barracks. It was, in fact, a building through which Mr. Ignatofa former member of the prison committee-declined to accompany us. On each side of the dark, damp, and dirty corridors were heavy wooden doors, opening into cells which varied in size from 8 feet by 10 to 10 by 15, and contained from half a dozen to thirty prisoners. They were furnished with nares, like those in the cells that we had already inspected; their windows were small and heavily grated, and no provision whatever had been made for ventilation. In one of these cells were eight or ten "dvoryane," or "nobles," who seemed to be educated men, and in whose presence the warden removed his hat. Whether any of them were “politicals" or not I do not know; but in this part of the prison the politicals were usually confined. The air in the corridors and cells. particularly in the second story, was indescribably and unimaginably foul. Every cubic foot of it had apparently been respired over and over again until it did not contain an atem of oxygen; it was laden with fever germs from the unventilated hospital wards, fetid odors from diseased human lungs and unclean human bodies, and the stench arising from unemptied excrement

buckets at the ends of the corridors. I breathed as little as I possibly could, but every respiration seemed to pollute me to the very soul, and I became faint from nausea and lack of oxygen. It was like trying to breathe in an underground hospital-drain. The "smatritel," or warden, noticing perhaps that my face had grown suddenly pale, offered me his cigarette case, and said: "You are not accustomed to prison air. Light a cigarette: it will afford some relief, and we will get some wine or "vodki" presently in the dispensary." I acted upon this suggestion and we continued our investigations. The prison workshops, to which we were next taken, consisted of two small cells in the second story, neither of them more than eight feet square, and neither of them designed for the use to which it had been put. In one, three or four convicts were engaged in cobbling shoes, and in the other an attempt was being made to do a small amount of carpenter's work. The workmen, however, had neither proper tools nor suitable appliances, and it seemed preposterous to call the small cells which they occupied "workshops."

According to the report of the Inspector of Exile Transportation for 1884, the cost to the Government for the food furnished each prisoner in the Tiumen forwarding prison is 32 cents a day (7 kopeks). PrisVOL. XXXVI.-25.

We then went to the prison kitchen, a dark, dirty room in the basement of the main building, where three or four half-naked men were baking black rye-bread in loaves about as large as milk-pans, and boiling soup in huge iron kettles on a sort of brick range. I tasted some of the soup in a greasy wooden bowl which a convict hastily cleaned for me with a wad of dirty flax, and found it nutritious and good. The bread was rather sour and heavy, but not worse than that prepared and eaten by Russian peasants generally. The daily ration of the prisoners consisted of two and a half pounds of this black bread, about six ounces of boiled meat, and two or three ounces of coarsely ground barley or oats, with a bowl of "kvas" morning and evening for drink.*

THE HOSPITAL WARDS.

AFTER We had examined the workshops, the kitchen, and most of the kameras in the first and second stories, the smatritel turned to me and said, "Do you wish to go through the hospital wards?" "Certainly," I replied; "we wish to see everything that there is to be seen oners belonging to the privileged classes (including politicals) receive food which costs the Government 5 cents a day per man. Of course the quality of a daily ration which costs only 31⁄2 cents cannot be very high.