COLONISTS AND EXILES IN SIBERIA. 533 



Church as well as the Christian children, and a quiet hope of 

 winning one or another of the former to Christianity may perhaps 

 have lived in the breast of the priest; but what harm could priest 

 or catechism do compared with the advantage gained? The boys 

 learned to read Russian by means of the catechism, and they learned 

 writing and arithmetic as well; that was the main thing. In the 

 same place we visited an orphan asylum founded, built, and for the 

 most part maintained and conducted, by a wealthy lady, and destined 

 for the children of exiles who died on the journey or in the town 

 prisons. It was a model institution in the best sense of the term, 

 with happy child-faces, beautiful school-rooms and dormitories, 

 workshops and play-rooms, a little theatre with all the necessary 

 appurtenances, the whole a work of mercy whose value cannot be 

 gainsaid. But we were to learn more than this. 



In Tjumen, Omsk, Tobolsk, and not only in the towns, but 

 throughout the various governments, we lived among and had constant 

 intercourse with exiles who had for the most part been convicted of 

 lighter offences, thieves, cheats, sharpers, tramps, and vagabonds, as 

 well as with seditious Poles and other rebels. The bank director 

 who received us hospitably was a Polish rebel sentenced to twelve 

 years' banishment, and the joiner who made us some boxes had 

 robbed the post; the coachman who drove us had been guilty of a 

 serious theft ; the waiter who served us had picked the pocket of a 

 guest in an inn; the friendly man from Riga who helped us to cross 

 the Irtish had forged a document; Goldmacher, our Jewish valet, 

 had sold little Russian girls to Turkish harems; the maid who 

 cleaned our room had killed her child; the chemist in Omsk was 

 said to have dealt in poisons with no good intentions. After a time 

 we looked at every one in the light of the crime or misdemeanour 

 which he might have committed, and we had only to inquire of the 

 superintendent of police about some worthy men, among whom were 

 merchants, notaries, photographers, actors, to hear of false coining, 

 embezzlement, fraud, and so on. Yet all these people earned their 

 daily bread, and something over, and many a one who wished to 

 remain unknown would not have suffered inquiries as to his past to 

 go unpunished, because he had completely broken with it. 



