A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 91 



Protyvik. The latter can be dismissed in a few words. 

 His was the poorest of the houses. It was very damp, 

 very dirty, and held nearly as many children as it held 

 cockroaches, which is saying a good deal. AntonofF 

 and Prokopchuk, however, both deserve further 

 description. 



Michael Petrovitch, and his wife likewise, came from 

 Little Russia. He was by profession a railway engineer, 

 and had a good post at Krasnoyarsk. Here, however, 

 his socialistic ideas, and his efforts to educate the work- 

 men under him, brought him under the suspicions of 

 the authorities, and he was arrested. He spent some 

 time in prison, and then considered himself fortunate to 

 be exiled to Siberia. By some oversight he was sent 

 back to the Yenesei valley, and at once set to work to 

 make a home for his wife, who had remained with him 

 all the time that he was in prison. He told us, smiling, 

 how he went down the river with a number of goods 

 for sale to the natives, and how he found that the 

 stock-in-trade with which he had provided himself was 

 useless, and that he was obliged to spend all his ready 

 money in vodka in order to do any business at all. He 

 and his wife were just beginning to make a new home 

 for themselves, when there was an outbreak of brigand- 

 age at Yenesiesk. The criminals were really a number 

 of exiles of the lower sort, idle and irresponsible youths 

 for the most part, but the authorities believed that 

 political agitation was at the bottom of it, and accord- 

 ingly a number of exiles from Turukhausk were brought 

 down to Yenesiesk for examination. It was winter- 

 time, and these unfortunates were compelled to walk the 



