SIBERIA AND THE EXILES. 627 



wending free men, joyous with hope, with their families and goods, 

 going to huild up a more comfortable home than the old one in the 

 rich fields of the Southeast. And all those who give themselves ear- 

 nestly to it see their enterprise crowned with success. The false rep- 

 resentations which are so widely spread respecting Siberia originate 

 in the numerous maliciously colored descriptions of the country, and 

 judgments of its condition, that flow from the pens of famous con- 

 victs. I can not exactly pronounce these reports unjust, but they 

 should not be taken as wholly correct. It is a recognized fact that 

 misery and wickedness pain the eye and the heart and provoke erro j 

 neous and unjust statements ; particularly when, as is the case with the 

 majority of the exiles in question, the conditions are complicated with 

 politics. The situation of the ordinary exiles in the mines and of the 

 settled convicts is relatively much better than that of the miners who 

 are laboring under the despotism of capital in Germany. If one has 

 no especial backsets in Siberia, if he can and will work, he will be 

 able under all ordinary circumstances to earn a most comfortable living 

 there. When I crossed the Ural the first time, I had only the ethno- 

 graphic side of my journey in view, and thought little or nothing of 

 the ethical side, which bore no relation to the object I was then seek- 

 ing. I was not concerned with the exiles, nor in general could any 

 man who stood in open conflict with the laws, not even a political 

 dynamiter or murderer, have aroused any interest in me. But, from 

 the moment when I found myself in the heart of Siberia and came in 

 contact with its exiles, I felt it my duty to examine the ethical ques- 

 tion more closely. I have gone down into the dens of vice, and made 

 the acquaintance of the most common criminals of thieves, robbers, 

 and murderers ; I have associated with political exiles ; I have sought 

 information everywhere ; have made inquiries of officers and private 

 persons, have visited prisons, collected statistics, taken down numer- 

 ous biographies as given by the exiles from their own mouths, or as 

 recorded by impartial persons ; in short, I have become a regular phi- 

 lanthropist. I am aware of one thing, that I have taken all pains to 

 discover the truth, and, if I have not been successful in it, the want of 

 success must not be attributed to lack of good-will, but to the defects 

 of my sources of information. 



To make possible an impartial view of the condition of the exiles 

 and prisoners in Siberia, we must first try to learn what the free-born 

 Siberians may attain ; and it is therefore incumbent on me to describe 

 the general conditions before proceeding to the illustration and esti- 

 mation of the situation of the convicts. 



It is the region of the mines of the Altai, which, like most of Sibe- 

 ria, is an imperial crown-land, that should more especially be brought 

 under view, for thither are sent those offenders whose sentences to 

 death have been commuted ; and the district plays an important part 

 in the more or less romantically tinged accounts of affairs that are 



