THE SIBERIAN EXILES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 296, 13 December 1892, Page 6

THE SIBERIAN EXILES.

J BY COL. THOMAS W. KNOX, Attthor of «• Across America and Asia, 1' 11 She Boy Traveller!!," etc.

CHAPTER XXI. IN THE PBISON. This is the worsb we have seen yeb,1 said Pushkin, 'always excepting those family iamems ab Tomsk which I shall never try to describe to anybody for the Himple reason that all language would be inadequate.' 'This prison was builfj a long time ago and was intended only for temporary use,' Dubayeff explained. • But they have gone on using it, and the only repairs they make are when ib threatens to tumble down in the winter gales. They strengthen the outside, but leave the inaide unchanged.' Imagine a low building of logs, surrounded by a stockade, or rather, having a stockade at one side of ib, the building itself forming the other side. The only entrance is through a gate in the stockade. Into this gateway the convicts marched, and in passing they were carefully counted by toe receiving officer, who stood there note-book in hand. The heavy door closed behind the convoy, the soldiers on guard took their positions ab either side of the gate, and then the prisoners were drawn up in line to be counted again.' When the count was completed, the conTicts were permitted to enter the building and find their places in the kameras. There wa3 the customary rush for precedence, and very quickly the yard was cleared of the entire party. The prison stands on swampy ground. that is moist in summer and glazed with ice in winter—or the yard would be so glazed were it nob for the unclean condition in which it is kept. In summer the exhalations from the ground are full of malaria, and a sojourn of a week or two under its influence is enough to sap a strong constitution. Ib is iess bad in winter, but bad enough under the best circumstances. • See here !' said Pushkin, as they stepped from the yard to the corridor. • The floor is covered with filth to the depth of an inch or more. Do they ever clean tbie place ?' 1 Once a year, perhaps ; not oftener.' The answer was losb, as Pushkin slipped on the floor, one of the planks having given way beneath him. The floor was dirty throughout the entire length of the corridor—dirty, broken, decaying and giving forth smells absolutely impossible fco describe so that the reader could have a fair comprehension of them. The corridor was lighted by a few small windows in one side but very dimly lighted, so that a visitor could only grope his way. On the other side of the corridor were the heavy doors of the kameras, and it was on entering the kamera that Pushkin made the remark jusb quoted. Surely, it was the worst they had seen with the exception of the family hameras at Tomsk.

Filthy in every parb, densely crowded and abounding in the vilest odours, such was the kamera to which Pushkin and Dubayeff were assigned. Fifty men were crowded into a room which could decently accommodate -nofe^«[©re than —twenty, and there seemed to be very little endeavour on the part of any bodj to.keep the place clean. In the cefltra^of the plank floor there waß a hole into which garbage was swept or thrown. The hole looked and smelled like the entrance of a sewer; it waa so used ; but unfortunately it was simply a hole in the earth without the drainage of a sewer. And human b9in§s weire forced to live in this place ! Men of education, while with them were common feldns who had been adjudged guilty of crimeu varying from highway robbery to murder.

The prison supper was served, the roll was called, and then the prisoners were locked for the night in the Jcameras. Breakfast, and again the roJ.l-call on the following morning, and then there was a day of idleness for Pushkin a.nd his friend. They .spent as much of the time as possible out of doors, in spite of the cold wind, in order to escaoe the foul air of the /camera. .

'They used to crowd women and men into these prisons, without scruple,' said Dubayeff, ' but new the women are in the building on the other side of the stockade. They are not quite *o badly off as we are ; not that any regard ia shown for their sex, but because they have more space in proportion to their numbers.' 'We would be worse crowded than we are,' said a prisoner who overheard their conversation, 'were it not that so many have gone to the hospital and the cemetery,1 'No wonder they've gone there!' exclaimed Pushkin. ' The wonder ia that all do not go.' 'Once there were more than a thousand deaths here in a single year,' said Dubayeff, ' but the great number caused the commandant to be removed and another appointed in his place. The Government thought there must be something1 wrong, though the officer was making an unusually large return of gold for the labour of the convicts under him.' On the third mornine after their arrival the prisoners were marched out tin the direction of the diggings, which aro scattered along the banks of the Kara Rirer for some twenty or thirty miles. There are also diggings on the little tributaries of the Kara, and the engineers attached to the prisons are constantly searching for new deposits. The entire region is known to be auriferous, but it is noc always easy to find gold in paying quantities. The placer diggings of Siberia are not, in a general way, unlike those of other goldproducing' regions, and, therefore, do not merit a detailed description. The gold-bear-ing sand, or 'pay-dirt,' as the California miners call ib, lies under a bed of earth and stone varying from ten to twenty feet in thickness. This bed must be removed to get at the ' pay-dirt'; it consists of gravel, clay and stones, and often the stones are of considerable aize, so that the labour of removal is very severe. Some of the Siberian gold-mines are underground and are worked by tunnelling, as in American mining regions. Work in the underground mines is worso than in the open cuttings, for the reason chat the air is almost always bad, and the mines are very imperfectly drained. The prisoners often work in mud that is nearly if not quite knee-deep ; their clothes become wet through and through, and in this condition they come out of the mines into the piercing air, when the day is ended and march to their prisons. No wonder their health breaks down under such conditions, to which must be added the scanty and unwholesome food and the terribly vitiated air they must breathe ab night in tho over-crowded Jcameras. _ Pushkin and Dubayeff were placed in a eang at an open cutting and supplied with the tools of their occupation. Their work was to break up tho hard gravel and clay above the auriferous sands and wheel it owav Their chains wore not removed, Lard's with loaded rifles stood constantly over them, and tho overseer ordered them ?n exactly the tone of a driver of slaves. And to all intentß and purposes they were Saves, as much so as any negro who ever wore oub his existence in Cuba or Brazil. . «Leb us be thwKful that we are not Gained to our wheelbarrows,' said Dubayeff, when the? "ached the wine and stood wait-

ing to begin iLoir work. 'Look at thai poor fellow at the obher end of the cutting.' Pushkin looked in the direction indicated, and urn a man who was fastened to J Yu eelb*rrow J & <*»"» extended from it to the middle link of his leg-fetters, and no matter ab what work he waa employed or where he went, ho was obliged to take the barrow with him. •Ib is taken off ab night when his day'B ; work is over, I suppose,' Pushkin remarked aa he ceased looking ab the ' unfortunate.' 'No/replied Dubayeff; «he must have it with him day and night, month in and month oub, in prison or ab work in the mine, tie cannot take more than a single step without ib, cannot even crost from one side to the other of a prison cell, and if he is ordered from this place to one a hundred or a thousand miles away he mußb trundle the barrow before him.' Pushkin stood speechless as Dubayeff continued: One prisoner named Shedrin, who had been » school-teacher in Russia and was sent to Siberia as a dangerous revolutionist, was chained to a wheelbarrow here in the mines, Orders came one day that he and some other politicals Bhould be sent to St. Petersburg to be shut up for life in one of the fortresses. He was thrown into a waggon with the wheelbarrow still chained to him and was compelled to carry it all the way to the imper-a! capital.' _ •Is such a thing possible V said Pushkin, m astonishment. 'Not only possible but actual,' was the reply. • When the roads were rough and the prisoners were riding instead of marching, the officers found that the wheelbarrow caused great inconvenience to the occupants of the vehicle. Ib was consequently removed and fastened behind the telyega bub ib was chained again to Shedrin ab every halb ab the etapes and in the trains and steamboats that completed the long journey. 1

♦What had tho man done thab caused such brutality?' 1 He struck an officer,' was the reply. Occasionally there are humane officers in charge of these prisons, and the men and women are treated as well as the severe rules of the discipline will allow. Bub for one who is humane there are five or more even who are brutes; some are cruel but honesb; some are cruel and ab the same time are thieves, and still others, are cruel, dishoneßb, and confirmed drunkards, or libertines. When all the bad qualities are combined what can we expect. •Yes, you may well say that,' Pushkin remarked as his friend paused. 'What can we expect?' 'There was one commandant of Kara who destroyed the letters sent to the prisoners and stole all the money thab was intended for them. Ib was nob being sent surreptitiously bub in the manner provided by the government, to be retained by the commandant and expended for the benefit of the prisouers in any lawful manner they may designate. He destroyed the letters which notified them of remittances and then gambled away the money as soon as ib reached bis hands.'

•Bub was he allowed to remain here after his conduct became known ?'

'It took some time to remove him, longer than ib did to cause one of the most humane officers ever known here to resign, for the reason thab his conscience would nob allow him to carry out some of the orders that he received from St. Petersburg or from the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia. He considered these orders brutal and wholly unnecessary, and endeavoured to have them recalled ; when he found it impossible to do so, he tendered Mb resignation and subsequently left the service altogether. He tried to have some of the conspirators who were robbing the Government brought to jusbice ; in revenge, his house was burned, and he escaped in his night-clotheß, and with difficulty saved his life. Some of the guilty officers made false charges against him, and cams very near having him sent into the mines as a hardlabour convict. And all this, because he was honesb and humane !'

This conversation occurred while the prisoners were awaiting directions to begin work; and it was brought to an end by an order from the overseer, and thus began Pushkin's first day at the mines. The days followed one after another, there being no respite excepb on the first and fifteenth day of each month and also on the principal saint's days of the Russian calendar. Every morning ab seven the prisoners were marched out to their toil, I and at five in the afternoon the work was Btopped, and they returned to the prison. This was the winter schedule; in summer the time of work was much longer, beginning ab five in the morning and ending ab seven in the evening. When the deep snows fell, mining operations were altogether suspended, and then the prisoners had nothing to do but sit in the pestilential kameras or walk in the prison-yard. Spring approached, and some of the prisoners laid plans for escaping as Boon as the weather was mild enough for them to lire in the open air. Dubayeff and Pushkin eagerly considered the various schemes thab were proposed, and through the advice of the latter, the one that bad the greatest promise of success was adopbed. Its result was certainly highly creditable to our friend's sagacity. {To he Continued.)