tain Gudeem, the nachalnik of the convoy. The column moved at the rate of about two miles an hour; and long before noon it was enveloped in a suffocating cloud of dust raised by the shuffling, fetter-incumbered feet of the prisoners. In warm, dry weather, when there is no wind, dust is a source of great misery to marching parties—particularly to the sick, the women, and the children. There is no possible way of escaping it, and when a prisoner is suffering from one of the diseases of the respiratory organs that are so common in étape life it is simply torture to sit in a cramped position for six or eight hours in an open telega, breathing the dust raised by the feet of 350 men marching in close column just ahead. I have traced the progress of an invisible exile party more than a mile away by the cloud of dust that hung over it in the air.

Five or six miles from Tomsk the party passed a "chasovnaya," or roadside shrine, consisting of an open pavilion, in which hung a ghastly wooden effigy of the crucified Christ. Here, as upon our departure from Tomsk, I noticed that two-thirds of the convicts removed their caps, crossed themselves devoutly, and inuttered brief supplications. A Russian peasant may be a highway robber or a murderer, but he continues, nevertheless, to cross himself and say his prayers.

The first halt of the party for rest was made about ten miles from Tomsk, at the entrance to a small village. Here, on a patch of greensward by the roadside, had assembled ten or twelve girls and old women with baskets of provisions, bottles of milk, and jugs of" kvass," or small beer, for sale to the prisoners. At first sight of these preparations for their refreshment, the experienced brodyags, who marched at the head of the column, raised a joyous shout of" Preeval! Preeval!"-the exile's name for the noonday halt. The welcome cry was passed along the line until it reached the last wagon of "incapables," and the whole party perceptibly quickened its pace. A walk of ten miles does not much tire a healthy and unincumbered man; but to convicts who have been in prison without exercise for months, and who are hampered by five-pound leg-fetters united by chains that clash constantly between the legs, it is a trying experience. In less than a minute after the command to halt was given, almost every man in the party was either sitting on the ground or lying upon it at full length. After a short rest, the prisoners began buying food from the provision venders, in the shape of black rye-bread, fish pies, hard-boiled eggs, milk, and kvass, and in half an hour they were all sitting on the ground, singly or in groups, eating their lunch. With the permission of Captain Gudeem, Mr. Frost took a photograph

of them, which is here reproduced, and about 2 o'clock the party resumed its journey.

The afternoon march was without noteworthy incident. The brodyags talked constantly as they walked, raising their voices so as to make themselves heard above the jingling of the chains, while the novices generally listened or asked questions. There is the same difference between a brodyag who has been to the mines half a dozen times, and a novice who is going for the first time, that there is between an experienced cowboy and a "tenderfoot." The brodyag knows the road as the tongue knows the mouth; he has an experimental acquaintance with the temper and character of every convoy officer from Tomsk to Kara; and his perilous adventures in the "taiga "— the primeval Siberian forest - have given to him a selfconfidence and a decision of character that make him the natural leader in every convict party. It is the boast of the true brodyag that the ostrog (the prison) is his father and the taiga (the wilderness) his mother; and he often spends his whole life in going from one parent to the other. He rarely escapes from Siberia altogether, although he may reach half a dozen times the valley of the Ob. Sooner or later he is almost always recaptured, or is forced by cold and starvation to give himself up. As an étape officer once said to a brodyag rearrested in Western Siberia, "The Tsar's cow-pasture is large, but you can't get out of it; we find you at last if you are not dead."

The conversation of the brodyags in the party that we accompanied related chiefly to their own exploits and adventures at the mines and in the taiga, and it did not seem to be restrained in the least by the presence of the soldiers of the convoy.

The distance from Tomsk to the first polooétape is twenty-nine versts (nearly twenty miles), and it was almost dark before the tired prisoners caught sight of the serrated palisade within which they were to spend their first night on the road.

A Siberian poloo-étape, or half-way station, is a stockaded inclosure about 100 feet long by 50 or 75 feet wide, containing two or three low, one-story log buildings. One of these buildings is occupied by the convoy officer, another by the soldiers, and the third and largest by the convicts. The prisoners' kazarm, which is generally painted a dirty yellow,1 is long and low and contains three or four large kameras, each of which is provided with a brick oven and a double row of plank nares, or sleeping-platforms. According to the last official report of the Inspector of Exile Transportation, which is confirmed by my own observation, "All of the étapes and poloo-étapes on the road between 1 Yellow is the étape color throughout Siberia.

bad weather they fill all the kameras, lie on the floors in the corridors, and even pack the garrets." The cells are not even as habitable as they might be made with a little care and attention. They are almost always dirty; their windows are so made that they cannot be opened; and notwithstanding the fact that the overcrowding, at certain seasons of the year, is almost beyond belief,1 no provision whatever has been made in them for ventilation.

When our convicts, after their toilsome march of twenty-nine versts from Tomsk, reached at last the red-roofed poloo-étape of Semiluzhnaya, they were marshaled in rows in front of the palisade and again carefully counted by the under-officers in order to make sure that none had escaped, and then the wooden gate of the court-yard was thrown wide open. With a wild, mad rush and a furious clashing of chains, more than three hundred men made a sudden break for the narrow gateway, struggled, fought, and crowded through it, and then burst into the kameras, in order to secure, by preoccupation, places on the sleeping-platforms. Every man knew

1 The well-known Russian author Maximof cites a case in which 512 human beings were packed into one of these étapes in Western Siberia ("Siberia and Penal Servitude," by S. Maximof, Vol. I., p. 81. St. Petersburg, 1871); and Mr. M. I. Orfanof, a Russian officer who served ten years in Siberia, reports that an East Siberian étape (at Verkhni Udinsk), which was intended for 140 prisoners, never contained, when he visited

that if he did not succeed in preempting a section of a nare he would have to lie on the dirty floor, in one of the cold corridors, or out-ofdoors; and many prisoners who did not care particularly where they slept sought to secure good places in order to sell them afterward for a few kopecks to less fortunate but more fastidious comrades.

At last the tumult subsided, and the convicts began their preparations for supper. Hot water was furnished by the soldiers of the convoy at an average price of about a cent a teakettleful; "brick" tea was made by the prisoners who were wealthy enough to afford such a luxury; 2 soup was obtained by a few from the soldiers' kitchen; and the tired exiles, sitting on the sleeping-platforms or on the floor, ate the black bread, the fish pies, or the cold boiled meat that they had purchased from the provision venders. The evening meal is sometimes an exceedingly scanty one, on account of the failure of the peasant women to bring to the étape for sale an adequate supply of food. They are not obliged to furnish subsistence to convicts on the road, and the exile it, less than 500, and sometimes held more than 800 ("Afar," by M. I. Orfanof, p. 220. St. Petersburg, 1883). 2 Brick tea is made of a cheap grade of tea leaves, mixed with stems and a little adhesive gum, and pressed into hard dry cakes about eight inches in length, five inches in width, and an inch and a half in thickness. It resembles in appearance and consistency the blackest kind of "plug" tobacco.

cents a day, a pound and a half of black ryebread. The étape officers complained bitterly to me of the indifference of the Government to the sufferings of the prisoners, and declared that it was unjust and cruel to give men only a pound and a half of black bread, and at the same time force them to march twenty miles a day in leg-fetters, and in bitterly cold weather.1 After supper the roll of the party was called in the court-yard; a sentry was stationed at each corner of the quadrangular stockade, and another at the gate; a cheap tallow-candle was lighted in each kamera; "parashas," or large uncovered wooden tubs for excrement, were placed in the cells and corridors; and the prisoners were locked up for the night. More

1 This was in the Verkhni Udinsk district of the Trans-Baikal. According to the statements made to me by the étape officers, black bread of the poorest quality cost from six to seven kopecks a pound, and the prisoners received only eleven kopecks a day. This state of affairs existed throughout the entire fall of 1885, growing worse and worse as winter came on. No attention whatever was paid, so far as I know, to

with the convicts in an étape kamera; but after breathing the air of one of those cells when the doors were reopened in the morning, I decided not to make the experiment.

The second day's march of the convict party that left Tomsk on the 24th of August differed little from the first. A hasty and rather scanty breakfast in the kameras was followed by the assembling of the convicts, the morning rollcall, and the departure; the day's journey was again broken by the preeval, or halt for lunch; and early in the afternoon the party reached the first regular étape, where it was to change convoys and stop one day for rest.

The étape differs from the poloo-étape only in size and in the arrangement of its buildings. the complaints and suggestions of the étape officers, notwithstanding the fact that a circular had been issued by the Prison and Exile Department providing for such an exigency, and requesting the Siberian governors to increase, in times of scarcity, the daily allowance of prisoners on the road. (Circular Letter of the Prison and Exile Department, No. 10,887, December 15, 1880.)

half the number of prisoners now forwarded in every party. I will describe the regular étapes briefly in the words of General Anutchin, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, who saw them at their best. This high officer, in a private report to the Tsar marked "Secret," of which I was fortunate enough to obtain a copy,1 says:

During my journey to Irkutsk I inspected a great number of penal institutions, including city prisons, forwarding prisons, and étapes; and I regret to have to

I have not myself said anything worse of étapes than this. If these buildings, after they had been put in the best possible condition for the Governor-General's inspection, made upon him such an impression as this, the reader can imagine what impression they made upon me, when I saw them in their every

1 This report was delivered to the Tsar in December, 1880, by Adjutant Kozello, one of General Anutchin's aides.