LABOURING POPULATION. 169 



the females of the population. In Central Russia the 

 women are treated, as all uncivilised people treat women, 

 with neglect and tyranny. She is left to do the hard 

 work, and slave at field labour, while her lord and master 

 alternates the amusement of drinking and sleeping. . . . 

 Now, in Siberia, this evidence of barbarism is not so 

 prominent. There the woman takes her proper place, 

 looking after her household and her children, whilst the 

 man attends to his proper duties also.' 



' But what of the exiles?' I hear some one say. ' What 

 of the exiles of Siberia, of whose sufferings we, in the days 

 of our youth, and our fathers before us, and oar fathers' 

 fathers, have read with deep interest and sympathy and 

 tears — what of them?' To see them we must go further 

 afield. Siberia is a wide word. When a traveller from 

 Europe reaches the summit of the Urals ' there stretches 

 far before him,' says Dr Lansdell, ' a region known as 

 Russia in Asia, the dimensions of which are very hard for 

 the mind to realise. It measures 4000 miles from east to 

 west, about 2000 from north to south, and covers nearly 

 five and three-quarter millions of square miles. It is 

 larger by two millions of square miles than the whole of 

 Europe ; about twice as big as Australia, and nearly one 

 hundred times as large as England.' 



All this is Siberia; and the mines to which the exiles are 

 sent lie further to the east, and the more remote of them 

 thousands of miles away towards the rising sun. But we 

 are on the border land of Siberia, and in a position from 

 which something may be learned of them. 



Herbert Barry, formerly director of the Chapeloffsky 

 estates and iron works in the Government of Vladimir, 

 Tamboff, and Nijni Novgorod, and author of a work en- 

 titled Russian Metallurgical Works, already cited, and 

 another work entitled Russia in 1870, writes in regard in 

 exiles in Siberia : — 



'There are two distinct classes of detenus— criminal 

 prisoners and political exiles— and these again are sub- 



