Tt was four o'clock in the morning when ye arrived at Alexandrovski, having, With two halts of an hour each, taken Ueren hours to come from Trikutsk. There was the great forbidden building. But all was quiet except that on the corners of the wall tramped soldiers with tilles. Lights shone in a house. This was 2 club for the prison officials. The attendants, all good-conduct convicts, were alive ina minute, helped us to remove our burdensome clothes, showed us our Pedrooms clean and warm, pulled off our boots and brought slippers, and in a quarter of an hour had a meal of outlets dnd coffee on the dining-room table.
Whilst. at breakfast, five hours Inter J was called upon by the Gorernor of the prison, the Governor of the "tape" or Histributing station, the chief medical officer, and other officers. Had it not been for his uniform, epaulettes, top boots and military cap, I might have taken the Governor for the conductor of a German orchestra—a smallish, well-set. grey man, with long, iron-streaked, hair thrown straight back, and features that reminded mme of the portraits of Liszt before he became a very old man.
We set out in a group. tramping the snow to see the village, the Governor on the way telling me that all the men T saw about, except those in uniform, were convicts whose conduct had been good enough to warrant their being allowed out of prison to act as workmen or servants. Now and then, he said. a man escaped. But Siberia ix a difficult place to get out of because everybody mar be called upon by the police to show their passports. The only way a man has any chance of freedom is to waylay a peasant and murder him to get possession of his passport. Conricts do not try to escape in the winter. The climate is too terri for them to live in the wools while making a long cut across country. sometimes a thousand or twelve hundred miles, to some spot where ther are not likely to be recognised. Unless ther have got a passport arrest. is certain. In that case ther remain dumb. They will neither give their names, nor say where ther have come from. There is no direct evidences that ther are escaped prisoners, and. although all efforts are made to identify them, and often successfully, quite a Jarge number gain this liberty after, a few months; because it is impossible to keep 'a man in prisons on suspicion of being a runaway, however well founded the suspicion may be.
The Governor said that he had very little trouble with escapes. With a smile, he assured mo that the men were much better eared for and fed in prison than they would be out of it. The usual plan for convicts is to serve so many years in prison and then he obliged for so many years to live in a particular district of Siberia before they are at full liberty to return to Russia. Very few of them do 50, for by the time they have full liberty they probably have a good situation, or settled business. In the case of deserving men, the Governor himself tries to get them situations, for he recognises the evil of turning men loose with instructions to shift for themselves. All the hotel porters and many of the workmen in Irkutsk are ex-convicts.
The Russian prison authorities have reod, as T pointed out in my letter desing a vist to Irkutsh prison, that the Jem isa had one. The convicts, exeapt= he political exiles, are in many easer of the usual degraded class, who do not turn to Russia when they have the chance, Int hang round the towns. a danger to the community. The evil reputation of Irkutsk is entirely due to the fact that half of the population are liberated cut-throats, or their children. The respectable Siberians object to their country being the dumping round of the villainous riff-raff of all Rus-Sia, and xo gradually the practice of sending convicts to Siberia is being stopped Right opposite the club-house is a fine brick Greek church, entirely built by the convicts. All the carvings, decorations, even the sacred pictures. are convict works. The centre of the church is open, but the hack part. is heavily barred, and so is the mallory. It is here that the prisoners are marched to their devotions.
Then we walked down the street.o the soldier-guarded entrance of the prison, shore 1,260 men, from all part: of Russia, coven the uttermost corners of Turkestan, sere undergoing penal servitude for all the worst crimes against. society.
There is no need for me to run the risk of becoming wearisome by giving detail~ ed account of what T so thing that got wedged into my mind was, how different everything is from the popular idea in England of what " Siberian prison is sure to be.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.