RUSSIA.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7174, 28 May 1885, Page 4

RUSSIA.

in an article conthe Nineteenth Century, description of the [j||?ie3 and suffering of exiles in the yhws/of'* Siberia. During the past ten lanflVd 'less than 165,000 human beings |*vj|peen transported to Siberia. Some r|t||Beftre, of course, criminals of the Kfk^'sVdye,' capital punishment having gfi^Qboiißhed in Russia. But a very are political exiles, and lgp}ji^ no . * n other countries would be jppTy>.(.pndemned to a fine of a few [iihings. Thus thousands upon thoui»&sjj^7are7' - Bent u PO n a ohargo of which mostly means going province without a ies^ort ; in other words, a man, whose |__Ss,ahd children may be starving, goe9 Research of work, and not having the five or ten roubles to pay for passport, he is banished to Siberia as tpolitioal malcontent. A convict never foowst until he reaches Siberia what Lorffofflife win store for him. The supposed to be the worst (flinders, and their punishment is tanf&punt to death by a slow torture, ftiffcohvoys of exiles start at the be;fSning '"of spring, just after snows have i^lfe'd and left the ground dry. Twenty r&af syago. the exiles travelled on foot all bt&di.tance (4700 miles) between Mosiil^and..the place to which they were ießpatched. jj§!'R_j*.the "Russians of To-day" the mtSSr'Bays : —"Any foreigner who haß lefn^at St. Petersburg during the iprinsfv and has chanced to come home afelirpm one of the Eastern balls, may .Sye^met one of these dismal procesJlp&sjfiling through the broad streets at j^qitick paoe. Nobody* may approach khesmen to inspect them. The Cossacks Stable 5 their whips loudly to warn loafers aWi^and scamper up and down the line withllanterns tied to their lance.points, wEiohrthey lower to the ground at every moment to see if letters have been i3|§pped. Murderers, thieves, felon Blejrgymen, mutinous soldiers, Nihilists, |ad7.patriotie Poles all tramp together iia&t ast vas they can go, and perfectly silent.., •••' Then come the women, shiverIh'g. 7. sobbing, but not daring to cry out be'c.auae of those awful whips. There afetßure to be some young girls among them— ex- students of Zurich oonvicted plJSihilism, or Polish girls accused of hatching plots— and these are mixed up elbow/ to elbow with the hardened adventuresses sentenced for bank-note (forgeries, and with flat-faced Muscovite irkbk 7 who. . have killed a husband or Dh7iJd7..nnder the influence of vodki." Eofeibe great mass of exiles the foot journey has' been reduced by onefialf^.of late years, but the honors journey on foot and hy barges are beyond description. On (he latter 800 are crammed into spaces meant only for 600. " Here you see |;H. -reign of death," wrote friends of Evince Krapotkine who have mado the R'assage.' " Diphtheria aud typhus pitilessly cut down the lives of adults and children, ■ especially of these last. (|orpsßß of children are thrown out nearly at each station. The hospital, placM-under the supervision of an ig.njqpint soldier, is always overcrowded." ( the convicts stop for a few [daysiVvThe prison of this place was built jt^ointain, 96o souls, but it never holds _tesa\ttian'l3oO or 1400, and very often ■2200;6rj more. One quarter of the prisorJerg are sick, but the infirmary can 'shelfer7pnly one-third or so of those who oe7ihneed of it, and so the sick remain iicr|the;sarae rooms, upon or beneath the !saine)'platforms, where the remainder Bro, crammed to tho amount of three men l^lßabh free place. "Tho shrieks of iSejpick, the cries of tho fever-stricken 'piptienjis, and the rattle of tho dying mix with tbe jokes and laughter of :tn7e^prißoners, with the curses of the The "families' room" is ijß^en worse. " Here you see hundreds 'oi^wCitnen and children closely packed xßgether/iu such a state of misery as no imagination could picture." The famiijies^of the convicts receive no clothes |rpm the State. Mostly peasant women, |j|Bp^s:a.rnle never have more than one pr^ss/at.bhce, mostly reduced to starvallipn^.as^soon as their husbands were taken into custody, they have buckled §>Ssn"eir sole cloth when starting, and $j_.e'r_!tneir long journeyings from one 'lj|ck?np' to the, other, only rags have regained: on their shoulders from their Ipeather-worn clothes — the naked emaJci^d^bbdy and the wounded feet appear rom beneath the tattered rags. Parties $f |500; eaoh, with, women and children, §Blptyly7move on their desolate way. li^^Thbße who have seen such a party jipsmarcfr will never forget it," saya |Vr|nce7Krap'ptkine. " A Russian painter 7(lM^ Jacoby) has tried to represent it on 7, His picture is sickening; but labile is . still worse. You see a plain, where the icy wind blows Cl^Bly)7 ; driying before it the snow that t&eginjg,.^ to cover the frozen soils ; tmofSigses with small shrubs, or crumpled |#eesj77bent down by wind, and snow |||read!aß far as the eye oan reaoh. The |next7village is 20 miles distant. Low fountains covered with thick pine iforeßts^ i mingling • with the grey snow Iplqnds, rise in the dust on the horizon, marked all along by poles to •it from the surrounding [r-pl^in, ploughed and rutted by the pasof thousands of cars, covered with break down the hardest p^ele,, runs through the naked plain." ( recently each convict wore a chain |nfe|(adV tp his ankles, its rings being ftl^i&^id 7 into rags, if he had collected. jpsnt>ngh-;of alms during his journey to s-p^yTthe blacksmith for riveting it looser i6**^_us7tfeet. .The chain went up each |^fp«ijid. was suspended to a girdle; chain closely tied both hands, 7ando;third, chain bound together sis or . This horrible custom three years ago. At B convict has his hands irately from his comrades, says Prince Krapotkine, eirig very short gives such ie arms as renders the 10 march very difficult, not c insupportable rheumatic ed in the bones by the iron rings during the hard mvspggiii frosts. This pain, I am told, Su^xeadily believe, soon becomes a real "truth," says Prince Krap-_S-kii_e_*^*' tiie transportation to Siberia asjpractised now is a real 'massacre of ipi^^eents.' " The journey between St^skvand Irkutsk takes four months. there are but five small |gUafeith, a total of 100 beds. One, 0n.",: the subjeot. in the Golos, a leading Itussian newspaper, in January, p§4|sayf pf the sick :— " They are left without any medical help. 3ffip?Bi.kropm has no bedsteads, no |l|fl§^p pn^hlons, no coverings, and, of ■■HVEhing like linen. The 48£ H^^Hper day that are allowed to the j^^Hßpn mostly in full in the hands H^Hp&Orities." It must be rememj^Bß&at! these are not tales of the literal details of the state of jjj^H^hjbhjprevail at the present day. the journey are great, HH^Efl7|pl7:the;- slow, hopeless years in the moat rigorous |HK||M*h*6st'appalling kind of servicovers about six times and Scotland, with |^^^piumber of penal settlements BB^i^a#a.^ loner : distances from one TO^||ln, <£ The Euaaians of ToH^m^learh that ■ the colonists are HS^ipi^tfiree categories —those who > expense, and are Baye their families with |^^S_oßef^Ko7 are supported by are suffered to eke by aoting as 7colbnists or work- - i-tbJidJy, thoso who

are employed at hard labor on publio works or in the mines. These latter may be the worst kind of murderer or the best kind of patriot. - They never see the light of day, . but work and sleep all the year round in the depths of the earth, extracting silver or quicksilver under the eyes of taskmasters who have orders not to spire them. Iron gates guarded i by sentries cloae the lodes or streets at the bottom of the shafts, and the miners are railed off from one another in gangs of 20. They sleep in recesses hewn out of the rock— very konnels ( into whioh they must creep on all fours. Prince Joseph Lubomirski, who was authorised to visit one of the mines in the distriot beyond Lake Baikal at a time when it was not suspected that he would ever publish an account of his explorations in French, has Riven an appalling account of what he saw. Convicts racked with the joint pains which quicksilver produces, men whose hair and eyebrows had dropped off, and who were gaunt as skeletons, were kept to hard labor under the lash. They havo only two holidays a year — Christmas and Easter ; all the other days, Sundays included, the men toil until exhausted nature robs them of the use of their limbs, wheu they aro hauled up to die in the infirmary. Five years in the quicksilver pits aro enough to turn a man of 30 into an apparent sexagenarian. . . Women are employed in the mine 3as sifters, and get no better treatment than the meD. Polish ladies by the dozen have been sent down to rot and die, while the St. Petersburg journals were declaring that they were living as free colonists ; and more recently ladies connected with Nihilist conspiracies have been consigned to the mines in pursuance of a sentence of hard labor. It must always be understood that a sentence of Siberian hard labor means death.