512 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



it for some of the other occupations customary in the country, 

 he can earn quite as much by the honest work of his hands as 

 he could have reaped from the soil itself. Thus do the present con- 

 ditions of life appear to one who studies them with unprejudiced 

 eyes. 



I have honestly striven to form an unbiassed judgment on the 

 present conditions of life among the inhabitants of the parts of 

 Siberia through which we travelled. I have descended into the 

 depths of misery, and have sunned myself on the heights of pros- 

 perity, I have associated with murderers, highwaymen, incendiaries, 

 thieves, swindlers, sharpers, vagabonds, scoundrels, insurgents and 

 conspirators, as well as with fishermen and huntsmen, shepherds 

 and peasants, merchants and tradesmen, officials and magistrates, 

 with masters and servants, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, 

 contented and discontented, so that I might confirm my observations, 

 widen my knowledge, test my conclusions, and correct erroneous 

 impressions; I have begged the police officers to describe the exiles' 

 lot to me, and have questioned the exiles themselves; I have sought 

 out criminals in their prisons, and have observed them outside of 

 these; I have conversed with peasants, trades-people, and colonists 

 generally, whenever and wherever it was possible, and have com- 

 pared the statements made to me by these people with the detailed 

 communications made to me by the government officials: I may 

 therefore believe that I gathered as much information as was 

 possible, taking into account the speed and shortness of our journey. 

 In any case, I have collected so much material that I may confine 

 myself solely to the results of my own investigations in attempting 

 to give a rapid sketch of the life of exiles in Siberia. My description 

 will not be free from errors, but it will certainly be a just estimate 

 of the state of affairs. 



With the exception of government officials, soldiers, and enter- 

 prising trades-people, chiefly merchants, the stream of emigrants 

 from Russia to Siberia was made up, until 1861, solely of those who 

 went under compulsion: serfs of the Czar who worked in his own 

 mines, and criminals who were sent, chiefly, to those of the state. 

 With the suppression of serfdom, which had a deeper influence on the 



