and when his face was in repose there seemed to be an expression of profound melancholy in his dark brown eyes. I became intimately acquainted with him and very warmly attached to him; and when I bade him good-bye for the last time on my return from Eastern Siberia in 1886, he put his arms around me and kissed me, and said, "George Ivanovitch, please don't forget us! In bidding you goodbye, I feel as if something were going out of my life that would never again come into it." Since my return to America I have heard from Mr. Volkhofski only once. He wrote me last winter a profoundly sad and touching letter, in which he informed me of the death of his wife by suicide. He himself had been thrown out of employment by the suppression of the liberal Tomsk newspaper, the "Siberian Gazette"; and his wife, whom I remember as a pale, delicate, sad-faced woman, twentyfive or thirty years of age, had tried to help him support their family of young children by giving private lessons and by taking in sewing. Anxiety and overwork had finally broken down her health; she had become an invalid, and in a morbid state of mind, brought on by unhappiness and disease, she reasoned herself into the belief that she was an incumbrance, rather than a help, to her husband and her children, and that they would ultimately be better off if she were dead. A little more than a year ago she put an end to her unhappy life by shooting herself through the head with a pistol. Her husband was devotedly attached to her; and her death, under such circumstances and in such a way, was a terrible blow to him. In his letter to me he referred to a copy of James Russell Lowell's poems that I had caused to be sent to him, and said that in reading "After the Burial" he vividly realized for the first time that grief is of no nationality: the lines, although written by a bereaved American, expressed the deepest thoughts and feelings of a bereaved Russian. He sent me with his letter a small, worn, leather matchbox, which had been given by Prince Pierre Krapotkin to his exiled brother Alexander; which the latter had left to Volkhofski; and which Volkhofski had in turn presented to his wife a short time before her death. He hoped, he said, that it would have some value to me, on account of its association with the lives of four political offenders, all of whom I had known. One of them was a refugee in London, another was an exile in Tomsk, and two had escaped the jurisdiction of the Russian Government by taking their own lives.

I tried to read Volkhofski's letter aloud to my wife; but as I recalled the high character and lovable personality of the writer, and imagined what this last blow of fate must have

been to such a man,-in exile, in broken health, and with a family of helpless children dependent upon him,-the written lines vanished in a mist of tears, and with a choking in my throat I put the letter and the little match-box away. The Tsar may whiten the hair of such men as Felix Volkhofski in the silent bomb-proof casemates of the fortress, and he may send them in gray convict overcoats to Siberia; but a time will come, in the providence of God, when their names will stand higher than his on the roll of history, and when the record of their lives and sufferings will be a source of heroic inspiration to all Russians who love liberty and their country.

In the city of Tomsk we began to feel for the first time the nervous strain caused by the sight of remediless human misery. Our journey through South-western Siberia and the Altai had been off the great exile route; the politicals whose acquaintance we had made in Semipalatinsk, Ulbinsk, and Ust Kamenogorsk were fairly well treated and did not seem to be suffering; and it was not until we reached Tomsk that we were brought face to face with the tragedies of exile life. From that time, however, until we recrossed the Siberian frontier on our way back to St. Petersburg, we were subjected to a nervous and emotional strain that was sometimes harder to bear than cold, hunger, or fatigue. One cannot witness unmoved such suffering as we saw in the "bologans" and the hospital of the Tomsk forwarding prison, nor can one listen without the deepest emotion to such stories as we heard from political exiles in Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, and the Trans-Baikal. One pale, sad, delicate woman, who had been banished to Eastern Siberia and who had there gone down into the valley of the shadow of death, undertook one night, I remember, to relate to me her experience. I could see that it was agony for her to live over in narration the sufferings and bereavements of her tragic past, and I would gladly have spared her the self-imposed torture; but she was so determined that the world should know through me what Russians endure before they become terrorists, that she nerved herself to bear it, and between fits of halfcontrolled sobbing, during which I could only pace the floor, she told me the story of her life. It was the saddest story I had ever heard. After such an interview as this with a heartbroken woman - and I had many such — I could neither sleep nor sit still; and to the nervous strain of such experiences, quite as much as to hardship and privation, was attributable the final breaking down of my health and strength in the Trans-Baikal. Before I left the city of Tomsk for Eastern Siberia, most of my long-cherished opinions

with regard to nihilists and the working of the exile system had been completely overthrown. I could not, by any process of readjustment or modification, make my preconceived ideas fit the facts as I found them. In a letter written from Tomsk to the President of The Century Company on the 26th of August, 1885, I indicated the change that had taken place in my views as follows:

The exile system is much worse than I supposed. Mr. -'s examination of prisons and study of the exile system were extremely superficial. I cannot understand how, if he really went through the Tiumen and Tomsk forwarding prisons, he could have failed to see that their condition and the condition of their wretched inmates were in many respects shocking. Nobody here has tried to conceal it from me. The acting governor of this province said to me very frankly yesterday that the condition of the Tomsk prison is "oozhasnoi" (awful), but that he cannot help it. What I have previously written and said about the treatment of the political exiles seems to be substantially true and accurate, at least so far as Western Siberia is concerned, but my preconceived ideas as to their character have been rudely shaken. The Russian liberals and revolutionists whom I have met here are by no means half-educated enthusiasts, crazy fanatics, or men whose mental processes it is difficult to understand. On the contrary, they are simple, natural, perfectly comprehensible, and often singularly interesting and attractive. One sees at once that they are educated, reasonable, self-controlled gentlemen, not different in any essential respect from one's self. When I write up this country for THE CENTURY, I shall have to take back some of the things that I have said. The exile system is worse than I believed it to be, and worse than I have described it. It is n't pleasant, of course, to have to admit that one has written upon a subject without fully understanding it; but even that is better than trying, for the sake of consistency, to maintain a position after one sees that it is utterly untenable.

In Tomsk, and during our journey from that city to Irkutsk, we had for the first time a satisfactory opportunity to study the life of Siberian exiles on the road. Marching parties of convicts three or four hundred strong leave Tomsk for Irkutsk weekly throughout the whole year, and make the journey of 1040 miles in about three months. Etapes, or exile station-houses, stand along the road at intervals of from 25 to 40 miles; and at every étape there is a "convoy command" consisting of a commissioned officer known as the "nachalnik of the convoy," two or three under-officers, and about forty soldiers. As the distance from one étape to another is too great to be walked in a single day by prisoners in leg-fetters, buildings known as "poloo-étapes," or "half-étapes," have been constructed midway between the true étapes for the shelter of the

1 At one time politicals were sent to Siberia sep. arately in post vehicles under guard of gendarmes, and were carried to their destinations almost as quickly as if they had been private travelers. That practice, however, has been abandoned on account of its inconven

convicts at night. These half-way houses are generally smaller than the regular étapes, as well as somewhat different from the latter in architectural plan, and they have no "convoy commands." Marching parties are expected to make about 500 versts, or 330 miles, a month, with 24 hours of rest every third day. If a party leaves Tomsk Monday morning, it reaches a poloo-étape Monday night, arrives at the first regular étape Tuesday night, and rests in the latter all day Wednesday. Thursday morning it resumes its journey with another convoy, Thursday night it spends in the second poloo-étape, Friday night it reaches the second regular étape, and Saturday it again rests and changes convoy. In this way the party proceeds slowly for months, resting one day out of every three, and changing convoys at every other station. Each prisoner receives five cents a day in money for his subsistence, and buys food for himself from peasants along the road who make a business of furnishing it. The dress of the exiles in summer consists of a shirt, and a pair of trousers of coarse gray linen; square foot-wrappers of the same material in lieu of stockings; low shoes or slippers called "kottee"; leather ankle-guards to prevent the leg-fetters from chafing; a visorless Glengarry cap; and a long gray overcoat. The dress of female convicts is the same, except that a petticoat takes the place of the trousers. Women and children who voluntarily accompany relatives to Siberia are permitted to wear their own clothing, and to carry severally as much baggage as can be put into a two-bushel bag. No distinction is made between common convicts and political convicts, except that the latter, if they are nobles or belong to one of the privileged classes, receive seven and a half cents a day for their subsistence instead of five, and are carried in telegas instead of being forced to walk.1

Up to the year 1883 there was no separation of the sexes in marching parties; but since that time an attempt has been made to forward unmarried male prisoners apart from "family parties," and to include in the latter all children and unmarried women. This reform has lessened somewhat the demoralization resulting from the promiscuous association of men, women, and children for months in overcrowded étapes ; but the state of affairs is still very bad, since even "family parties" contain large numbers of depraved men and boys.

On Monday, August 24, Mr. Frost and I, by invitation of Captain Gudeem, the nachalnik

ience and expense, and all politicals are now forwarded with common criminal parties. The result of the change is to prolong by many months the miseries of étape life, and to increase enormously the chances of sickness and death.

of the Tomsk convoy command, drove to the forwarding prison at 7 A. M. to see the departure of a marching party. The morning was cool, but a clear sky gave promise of a warm, sunshiny day. As we drew up before the prison we saw that the party had not yet made its appearance; and presuming that Captain Gudeem was busy, we did not send for him, but sat in our droshky watching the scenes at the gate. On each side of the lead-colored portal was a long wooden bench, on which half a dozen soldiers, in dark green uniforms, were sitting in lazy attitudes, waiting for the party to come out, and amusing themselves meanwhile by exchanging coarse witticisms with three or four female provision venders, squatted near them on the ground. An occasional highpitched jingle of chains could be heard from within the inclosure, and now and then half of the double gate was thrown open to admit a couple of fettered convicts carrying water in a large wooden bucket slung between them on a shoulder-pole. Every person who entered the prison yard was hastily searched from head to foot by one of the two sentries at the gate, in order to prevent the smuggling in of prohibited articles, and especially of vodka.

About 8 o'clock telegas for the transportation of the weak and infirm began to gather in the street in front of the prison; a shabby under-officer who had been lounging with the soldiers on one of the benches rose, yawned, and went discontentedly into the prison court-yard; the soldiers put on their blanket-rolls and picked up their Berdan rifles; and a louder and more continuous jingling of chains from the other side of the palisade announced that the convict party was assembling. At last the prison blacksmith came out, bringing a small portable forge, a lap anvil, a hammer or two, and an armful of chains and leg-fetters, which he threw carelessly on the ground beside him; the soldiers shouldered their guns and took positions in a semicircle so as to form a cordon; an under-officer with the muster-roll of the party in his hand, and another with a leather bag of copper coins slung over his shoulder, stationed themselves near the gate; and at the word "Gatova!" ("Ready!") the convicts, in single file, began to make their appearance. The officer with the muster-roll checked off the prisoners as they answered to their names; the blacksmith, with the aid of a soldier, examined their leg-fetters to see that the rivets were fast and that the bands could not be slipped over the heel; and finally, the second under-officer gave to every man ten cents in copper coin for two days' subsistence between étapes. When all of the "katorzhniki," or hard-labor convicts, had come out of the prison yard, they arranged themselves in two parallel lines so that they

could be conveniently counted, and removed their caps so that the under-officer could see that their heads had been half shaved as required by law. They were then dismissed, and the "poselentse," or penal colonists, went through the same routine - the soldiers of the convoy stepping backward and extending the limits of their cordon as the number of prisoners outside the palisade gradually increased.

At length the whole party, numbering 350 or 400 men, was assembled in the street. Every prisoner had a gray linen bag in which were stored his scanty personal effects; many of them were provided with copper kettles which dangled from the leather belts that supported their leg-fetter chains; and one convict was carrying to the mines in his arms a small brown dog.

When the whole party had again been counted, and while the gray bags were being put into telegas, I availed myself of what seemed to be a favorable opportunity to talk with the prisoners. In a moment, to my great surprise, I was addressed by one of them in good English.

"Who are you?" I inquired in astonish

ment.

"I am a vagabond," he said quietly and seriously.

"What is your name?"

"Ivan Dontremember," he replied; and then glancing around and seeing that none of the convoy officers were near, he added in a low tone, "My real name is John Anderson, and I am from Riga."

"How do you happen to know English?" I asked.

"I am of English descent; and, besides that, I was once a sailor, and I have been in English ports."

At this point the approach of Captain Gudeem put a stop to our colloquy. The number of " brodyags," or vagabonds, in this party was very large, and nearly all of them were runaway convicts of the "Dontremember " family, who had been recaptured in Western Siberia, or had surrendered themselves during the previous winter in order to escape starvation.

"I have no doubt," said Captain Gudeem to me, "that there are brodyags in this very party who have escaped and been sent back to the mines half a dozen times.”

"Boys!" he shouted suddenly, "how many of you are now going to the mines for the sixth time?"

"Mnogo yest "["There are lots of them "], replied several voices; and finally one graybearded convict in leg-fetters came forward and admitted that he had made four escapes from the mines, and that he was going into

penal servitude for the fifth time. In other words, this man had traversed eight times on foot the distance of nearly 2000 miles between Tomsk and the mines of Kara.

"I know brodyags," said Captain Gudeem, "who have been over this road sixteen times in leg-fetters, and who have come back sixteen times across the steppes and through the woods. God only knows how they live through it!"

When one considers that crossing Eastern Siberia thirty-two times on foot is about equivalent to walking twice the circumference of the globe at the equator, one can appreciate the indomitable resolution of these men, and the strength of the influence that draws them towards home and freedom. In the year 1884, 1360 such brodyags were recaptured in Western Siberia and sent back to the mines of the Trans-Baikal, and hundreds more perished from cold and starvation in the forests. M. I. Orfanof, a Russian officer who served many years in Eastern Siberia, says that he once found 200 "Ivan Dontremembers" in a single prison the prison of Kaidalova, between Chita and Nerchinsk.1

Some of the brodyags with whom I talked were men of intelligence and education. One of them, who was greatly interested in our photographic apparatus, and who seemed to know all about "dry plates," "drop shutters," and "Dallmeyer lenses," asked me how convicts were treated in the United States, and whether they could, by extra work, earn a little money, so as not to leave prison penniless. I replied that in most American penitentiaries they could.

"It is not so," he said, "with us. Naked we go to the mines, and naked we come out of them; and we are flogged, while there, at the whim of every nariadchik." 2

"Oh, no!" said Captain Gudeem goodnaturedly, "they don't flog at the mines now." "Yes, they do, your Nobility," replied the brodyag firmly but respectfully. "If you are sick or weak, and can't finish your stent, you are given twenty blows with the cat."

I should have been glad to get further information from the brodyag with regard to his life at the mines, but just at this moment Captain Gudeem asked me if I would not like to see the loading of the sick and infirm, and the conversation was interrupted.

The telegas intended for prisoners physically 1 "Afar " (V' Dalee), by M. I. Orfanof, p. 226. St. Petersburg, 1883.

2 A petty officer who directs the work of the convicts in the "razreiz," or cutting, and who sets their tasks.

3 Some convicts are extremely skillful in counterfeiting the symptoms of disease, and will now and then succeed in deceiving even an experienced prison

unable to walk were small one-horse carts, without springs of any kind, and with only one seat, in front, for the driver and the guard. They looked to me like the halves of longitudinally bisected hogsheads mounted upon four low wheels, with their concave sides uppermost. More wretchedly uncomfortable vehicles to ride in were never devised. A small quantity of green grass had been put into each one, to break the jolting a little, and upon this grass, in every cart, were to sit four sick or disabled convicts.

"All prisoners who have certificates from the doctor, step out!" shouted Captain Gudeem, and twenty-five or thirty "incapables"

some old and infirm, some pale and emaciated from sickness-separated themselves from the main body of convicts in the road. An under-officer collected and examined their certificates, and as fast as their cases were approved they climbed into the telegas. One man, although apparently sick, was evidently a malingerer, since, as he took his place in a partly filled telega, he was greeted with a storm of groans and hoots from the whole convict party.3

The number of prisoners who, when they leave Tomsk, are unable to walk is sometimes very large. In the year 1884, 658 telegas were loaded there with exiles of this class, and if every telega held four persons, the aggregate number of "incapables" must have exceeded 2500. Such a state of things is, of course, the natural result of the overcrowding of the Tomsk forwarding prison.

When the sick and infirm had all taken the places assigned them in the invalid carts, Captain Gudeem took off his cap, crossed himself, and bowed in the direction of the prison church, and then, turning to the convicts, cried, "Well, boys! Go ahead! A safe journey to you!"

Party-to the right! Party-march!" shouted one of the under-officers, and with a clinking of chains which sounded like the jingling of innumerable bunches of keys the gray throng, hemmed in by a cordon of soldiers, began its long journey of 1800 miles to the mines of the Trans-Baikal. The marching convicts, who took the lead, were closely followed by the telegas with the sick and the infirm; next came three or four carts loaded with gray linen bags; and finally, in a tarantas behind the rear-guard of soldiers, rode Capsurgeon. If necessary for the accomplishment of their purpose, they do not hesitate to create artificial swellings by applying irritating decoctions to a slight selfinflicted wound, and they even poison themselves with tobacco and other noxious herbs.

4 Report of the Inspector of Exile Transportation for 1884, p. 31 of the MS.