A STRANGE LAND. 225 



"horsey," and on receiving my discharge from the army I 

 gave bent to my inclinations and engaged in the business. 

 I owned several horses with some speed with which I 

 won a considerable amount of money by trotting at the 

 fairs each fall, investing it in horseflesh, until in Decem- 

 ber, 1 88 1, having heard of the interest in the American 

 trotter in foreign countries, I decided on taking my stable 

 to England. I there found a ready market for the horses, 

 selling them all at fair prices. Thinking there might be 

 money in buying a few Russian trotters and taking them 

 to my country, I determined on going there. Arriving in 

 St. Petersburg in June following, I was the day after ar- 

 rested, charged with a political conspiracy. Having no 

 friends, knowing nothing of their language, and relying 

 upon my innocence, I did not realize any danger until I 

 was convicted and sentenced. A few days subsequent I 

 was bundled into a railway car with a lot of other pris- 

 oners and started for Siberia. 



"Oh, the unutterable horror of that journey. God 

 spare any living being, no matter what his crime, from 

 that awful misery. I tried, by remembering I was an 

 American, to be game, but my heart failed me, and I 

 look back on the terrors of that dreadful journey with a 

 shudder. 



"After many months of traveling through a desolate 

 waste of country, from one exile station to another, we at 

 last arrived at our destination, the mines of Siberia. 



"The one ruling, never absent thought of the Siberian 

 exile, is escape. He thinks of it by day, and dreams of it 

 by night. There were three Russians who understood 

 and spoke English, with whom I formed acquaintances, 

 and we were not long in planning our escape. Day by 

 day we accumulated things that would net be missed by 



