COLONISTS AND EXILES IN SIBERIA. 511 



to the lot of the inmates of our prisons and houses of correction. 

 Wide tracts of the vast territory which is governed by the Russian 

 sceptre, great countries according to our ideas, have never been used 

 as penal colonies at all, and will probably always remain free of 

 those forced immigrants, who cause the settled population much 

 more disagreeableness, not to say suffering, than they have to 

 endure themselves. And along the same paths, which formerly 

 were never trodden save in sorrow, there now pass many free 

 human beings, hoping and striving to better their lot in the distant 

 East. Voluntary colonists join the compulsory ones even in such 

 districts and tracts of country as were formerly dreaded and 

 shunned as the most inhospitable regions on earth. A new era is 

 opening for Siberia; for blinding fear is gradually being replaced by 

 illuminating knowledge even among those classes of society which 

 are more prone to fear than desirous of knowledge. 



The descriptions of Siberia with which we are familiar come, for 

 the most party from the mouth or the pen of educated exiles, that is 

 to say, from people whom the settled inhabitants call " unfortunate ", 

 and treat as such. Probably only a very small proportion of 

 the descriptions in question are untrue, but they are, nevertheless, 

 inaccurate in most cases. For misfortune clouds the eyes and the 

 soul, and destroys that impartiality which is the only possible basis 

 of a correct estimate of the conditions of life. These conditions are 

 much better than we are accustomed to believe, much better, indeed, 

 than they are in more than one of the mountainous districts of our 

 Fatherland; for the struggle for existence in Siberia is an easy one 

 as far as man is concerned. Want in the usual sense of the word, 

 lack of the ordinary necessaries of life, is here almost unknown, or 

 at least, only aifects those whose power of work has been weakened 

 by illness or other misfortune. Compared with the hardships 

 against which many a poor German dwelling among the mountains 

 has to contend during his whole life, without ever emerging victori- 

 ous from the struggle, the lot of even the convict in Siberia appears 

 in many cases enviable. Privation oppresses only the mental, not 

 the bodily life of the residents in Siberia, for whoever is faithful to 

 the soil receives from it more than he needs, and if any one forsakes 



