prison kameras are terribly overcrowded: it is impossible to keep them clean; the vitiation of the air in them causes a great amount of disease, and the prison hospital is already full to overflowing with the dangerously sick." "But," I said, "why do you not forward exiles eastward more rapidly and thus relieve the congestion in this prison? Why can you not increase the size of your marching parties, or send forward two parties a week instead of one ?" "It is impracticable," replied the acting governor. "The Exile Administration of Eastern Siberia says that it cannot receive and distribute prisoners faster than it does now. Its étapes are too small to accommodate larger parties, and the convoying force of soldiers is not adequate to take care of two parties a week. We tried one year the plan that you suggest, but it did not work well." "Does the Government at St. Petersburg know," I inquired, "of this state of affairs?" "Certainly," he replied. "It has been reported upon every year, and, besides writing, I have sent four urgent telegrams this summer asking if something cannot be done to relieve this prison." "And has nothing been done?" "Nothing whatever. The number of prisoners here will continue to increase steadily up to the close of river navigation, when the VOL. XXXVI.-119. convict barges will stop running, and then we shall gradually clear out the prison during the winter months. In the mean time typhus fever will prevail there constantly, and great numbers of sick will lie uncared for in their cells because there is no room for them in the hospitals. If you visit the prison, my advice to you is to breakfast heartily before starting, and to keep out of the hospital wards." I thanked him for his caution, said that I was not afraid of contagion, and asked when it would be convenient for him to go with me to the prison. A day was agreed upon, and I took my leave. On my way home I accidentally met Colonel Yagodkin, the chief military officer of the district, who had welcomed us to Tomsk with great kindness and hospitality, and had taken a friendly interest in our researches. He said he had just called at our hotel to inform us that a convict barge from Tiumen had arrived that morning at the steamer-landing two or three miles from the city, and to say that if we would like to see the reception of a convict party, he would go to the landing with us and introduce us to the chief officer of the local exile bureau. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, and in ten minutes Mr. Frost, Colonel Yagodkin, and I were driving furiously over a muddy road towards the pristan, or landing-place. Although we made all possible haste, the prisoners had disembarked before we reached our destination. We found them assembled in two dense gray throngs at the ends of a long wooden shed, which was surrounded and turned into a sort of cattlepen by a high plank wall. Here they were identified, counted, and turned over by the convoy officer to the warden of the Tomsk forwarding prison. The shed was divided transversely through the middle by a low wooden barricade, at one end of which was a fenced inclosure, about ten feet square, for the accommodation of the officers who had to take part in the reception of the party. About half the exiles had been formally "received" and were standing at the eastern end of the shed, while the other half were grouped in a dense throng at the western end, waiting for their names to be called. The women, who stood huddled together in a group by themselves, were mostly in peasant costumes, with bright-colored kerchiefs over their heads, and their faces, I thought, showed great anxiety and apprehension. The men all wore long gray overcoats over coarse linen shirts and trousers; most of them were in chains, and the bare heads of the convicts and the penal colonists had been half shaved longitudinally in such a way that one side of the scalp was smooth and blue, while the other side was hidden by long, neglected hair. Soldiers stood here and there around the shed, leaning upon their bayoneted rifles, and inside the little inclosure were the convoy officer of the party, the warden and the surgeon of the Tomsk forwarding prison, the chief of the local bureau of exile administration, and two or three other officers, all in full uniform. Colonel Yagodkin introduced us as American travelers who desired to see the reception of an exile party, and we were invited to stand inside the inclosure. The officer who was conducting the examination of the convicts drew a folded paper from a large bundle in his hand, opened and glanced at it, and then shouted, "Nikolai Koltsof!" A thin, pale man, with heavy, wearied eyes and a hopeless expression of face, who was standing in the front rank of the exile party, picked up the gray linen bag that lay beside him on the floor, and with a slow clink, clink, clink of chains walked to the inclosure. The examining officer compared his face carefully with a photograph attached to the "stateini speesok," or "identification paper," in order to make sure that the pale man had not "exchanged names" with some other exile, while a Cossack orderly examined him from head to foot and rummaged through his bag to see that he had neither lost nor surreptitiously sold the articles of clothing that he had received in Moscow or Tiumen, and that his "stateini speesok" called for. "Is everything there?" inquired the officer. "Everything," replied the Cossack. "Stoopai!" ["Pass on!"] said the lieutenant; and the pale-faced man shouldered his bag and joined the ranks of the "received" at the eastern end of the shed. "The photographs are a new thing," whispered Colonel Yagodkin to me;" and only a part of the exiles have them. They are intended to break up the practice of exchanging names and identities." "But why should they wish to exchange names?" I inquired. "If a man is sentenced to hard labor at the mines," he replied, "and has a little money, he always tries to buy secretly the name and identity of some poor devil of a colonist who longs desperately for a drink of vodka, or who wants money with which to gamble. Of course the convoy officer has no means of preventing this sort of transaction, because he cannot possibly remember the names and faces of the four or five hundred men in his party. If the convict succeeds in finding a colonist who is willing to sell his name, he takes the colonist's place and is assigned a residence in some village, while the colonist takes the convict's place and goes to the mines. Hundreds of hard-labor convicts escape in this way.' "Hassan Abdallimof!" called the examining officer. No one moved. "Hassan Abdallimof!" shouted the Cossack orderly, more loudly. "Go on, Stumpy; that's you!" said half a dozen exiles in an undertone as they pushed out of the throng a short, thickly set, bowlegged Tartar, upon whose flat, swarthy face there was an expression of uncertainty and bewilderment. "He does n't know Russian, your High Nobility," said one of the exiles respectfully, "and he is gloopovati" [dull-witted]. "Bring him here," said the officer to the Cossack orderly. When Hassan had been examined, he did not shoulder his bag and go to his place as he should have done, but began to bow and gesticulate, and to make supplications in the Tartar language, becoming more and more excited as he talked. "What does he say?" inquired the officer. “Find some soldier who knows Tartar." An interpreter was soon found and Hassan repeated his story. * I shall explain this practice of exchanging names more fully in a later article. "He says, your High Nobility," translated the interpreter, "that when he was arrested they took eight rubles from him and told him the money would be given back to him in Siberia. He wants to know if he cannot have some of it now to buy tea." "Nyettoo chai!" ["No tea!"] said the Tartar mournfully, with a gesture of utter desolation. "To the devil with him!" cried the officer furiously. "What does the blank blank mean by delaying the reception of the party with such a trifle? This is no place to talk about tea! He'll receive his money when he gets to his destination. Away with him!" And the poor Tartar was hustled into the eastern end of the shed. "Ivan Dontremember the red-headed," shouted the examining officer. "That's a brodyag" (a vagrant or tramp), whispered Colonel Yagodkin to me as a sunburned, red-headed muzhik in chains and legfetters, and with a tea-kettle hanging from his belt, approached the inclosure. "He has been arrested while wandering around in Western Siberia, and as there is something in his past history that he does n't want brought to light, he refuses to disclose his identity, and answers all questions with 'I don't remember.' The tramps all call themselves Ivan Dontremember,' and they're generally a bad lot. The penalty for belonging to the Dontremember' family is five years at the mines." The examining officer had no photograph of "Ivan Dontremember, the red-headed," and the latter's identity was established by ascertaining the number of teeth that he had lost, and by examining a scar over his right ear. One by one the exiles passed in this way before the examining officer until all had been identified, counted, and turned over, and then the warden of the Tomsk forwarding prison gave a receipt to the convoy officer of the barge for 551 prisoners, including 71 children under 15 years of age, who were accompanying their fathers or mothers into exile. At the end of the verification and reception some of the officers returned to the city; but Colonel Yagodkin, Mr. Frost, and I remained to see the surgical examination of the sick and disabled, and to inspect the convict barge. Doctor Orzheshko, the surgeon of the Tomsk prison, then took the place that had been occupied by the examining officer, laid a stethoscope and two or three other instruments upon a small table beside him, and began a rapid examination of a long line of incapacitated men, some of whom were really sick and some of whom were merely shamming. The object of the examination was to ascertain how many of the prisoners were unable to walk, in order that the requisite number of telegas might be provided for their transportation to the city. The first man who presented himself was thin, pale, and haggard, and in reply to a question from the surgeon said, with a sepulchral cough, that his breast hurt him and that he could not breathe easily. Dr. Orzheshko felt his pulse, put a stethoscope to his lungs, listened for a moment to the respiratory murmur, and then said briefly, " Pass on; you can walk." The next man had a badly swollen ankle, upon which his leg-fetter pressed heavily, evidently causing him great pain. He looked imploringly at the doctor while the latter examined the swollen limb, as if he would beseech him to have mercy; but he said not a word, and when his case was approved and a wagon was ordered for him, he crossed himself devoutly three times, and his lips moved noiselessly, as if he were saying softly under his breath, "I thank thee, O God!" reau, who supervised the reception and the forwarding of exile parties, the equipment of the convicts with clothing, and the examination and verification of their papers. Mr. Papelaief, a rather tall, thin man, with a hard, cold face, greeted us politely, but did not seem pleased to see us there, and was not disposed to permit an inspection of the convict barge. "What do they want to go on board the barge for?" he inquired rather curtly of Colonel Yagodkin. "There is nothing to see there, and besides it is inconvenient; the women are now cleaning it." Colonel Yagodkin, however, knew that I was particularly anxious to see in what condition the floating prison was when the convicts left it, and, a few moments later, he introduced us to the convoy officer, and again suggested a visit to the barge. This time he was successful. The convoy officer evidently did not see any reason why Colonel Yagodkin should not go on board the barge with his friends if he wished to do so, and he at once cheerfully offered to accompany us. The barge was, ap in Tiumen two months before. Then it was scrupulously clean, and the air in its cabins was fresh and pure; but now it suggested a recently vacated wild-beast cage in a menagerie. It was no more dirty, perhaps, than might have been expected; but its atmosphere was heavy with a strong animal odor; its floors were covered with dried mud, into which had been trodden refuse scraps of food; its nares, or sleeping-benches, were black and greasy, and strewn with bits of dirty paper; and in the gray light of a cloudy day its dark kameras, with their small grated port-holes, muddy floors, and polluted ammoniacal atmosphere, chilled and depressed me with suggestions of human misery. There were forty or fifty men in the line of prisoners awaiting examination, and the surgeon disposed of them at the rate of about one a minute. Some had fever, some were suffering from rheumatism; some were mani-parently, the same one that I had inspected festly in an advanced stage of prison consumption, and all seemed to me sick, wretched, or weak enough to deserve wagons; but the experienced senses of the surgeon quickly detected the malingerers and the men who were only slightly indisposed, and quietly bade them "Pass on!" At the end of the examination Dr. Orzheshko reported to the prison warden that there were twenty-five persons in the party who were not able to walk to the city, and who, therefore, would have to be carried. The necessary wagons were ordered, the sick and the women with infants were placed in them, and at the order "Stroisa!" ["Form ranks!"] the convicts, with a confused clinking of chains, took positions outside the shed in a somewhat ragged column; the soldiers, with shouldered rifles, went to their stations in front, beside and behind the party; and Mr. Papelaief, the chief of the local exile bureau, stepping upon a chair, cried, "Noo rebatta" ["Well, boys"], "have you anything to say or any complaints to make?" "No; nothing, your Nobility," replied seventy-five or a hundred voices. "Well, then, S'Bogem "["Go with God"]. The soldiers threw open the wooden gate of the yard or pen; the under officer shouted "Ready-March!" and with a renewed jingling of multitudinous chains, the gray column moved slowly out into the muddy road. As soon as an opportunity presented itself, Colonel Yagodkin introduced us to Mr. Papelaief, the chief officer of the local exile bu VOL. XXXVI.— 120. * The Rev. Henry Lansdell, in a recently published magazine article, says, "I have seen some strong statements, alleging the extreme unhealthiness of these barges, and I do not suppose that they are as healthy as a first-class sanatorium." If Mr. Lansdell made a careful examination of a convict barge immediately after the departure from it of a convict party, the idea of a "sanatorium" certainly could not have been suggested to him by anything that he saw, touched, or smelled. It suggested to me nothing so much as a recently vacated den in a zoological garden. It was, as I have said, no more dirty and foul than might have been expected after ten days of such tenancy; but it could have been connected in one's mind "Russian Convicts in the Salt Mines of Iletsk "; Harper's Magazine, May, 1888, pp. 894-910. |