530 FROM NOETH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



While every unbiassed Russian or Siberian admits this injustice 

 frankly, officials and exiles alike deny that there is cruelty on the 

 part of the escorting soldiers, or of any other persons, whether of 

 liigh or inferior rank, who are intrusted with the guardianship and 

 government of the convicts. It does happen that mutinous exiles 

 are shot or killed in some way on the journey; but such events occur 

 very rarely, and only when all other means of quelling insubordi- 

 nation have failed. The Russian is not cruel like the Spaniard, the 

 Turk, the Greek, or the Southern Slav; on the contrary, a mistaken 

 ■compassionateness and sluggishness makes him mild and considerate 

 rather than severe and harsh; he may force men and animals to 

 exert themselves to the utmost, but he does not torture them in 

 ■order to gloat over their torments. Even the name " unfortunate ", 

 by which it is customary to describe all exiles, originates in a feeling 

 deeply rooted among the people, and this feeling of compassion is 

 shared by everyone, including soldiers and police-officers, and the 

 inspectors and warders of the prisons. That even the most long- 

 suffering and lamblike patience may now and again be excited to 

 angry rage by one or more miscreants is intelligible enough; that 

 miserable wretches at the convict stations levy tax even on mis- 

 fortune in order to gain more money than the state promises them 

 in salary, I was informed by some of the exiles; that the rebels who 

 were sentenced to exile after the last Polish rebellion were treated 

 by the accompanying soldiers more harshly than other exiles, 

 indeed with pitiless severity, was the complaint of a former gen- 

 darme who told me the story of his life through a German-Russian 

 interpreter. But to make the present government responsible for 

 .«uch excesses, to reproach them with constant barbarity, to persist 

 in talking about the knout, which was abolished years ago, and in 

 general to represent our Eastern neighbours as incorrigible bar- 

 Ibarians, is simply senseless, because in every respect untrue. 



All the laws, regulations, and arrangements in force at present 

 prove that the government, takes all possible thought for the exiles, 

 •and strives to render their lot less hard, and moreover gives to each 

 .■an opportunity of sooner or later improving his lot. To treat exiles 

 w^ith unjust severity is strictly forbidden and heavily punished ; to 



