176 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. 



Lansdell shows, that the despatch of prisoners by the sea 

 passage, instead of the overland route, was a humane 

 measure of improvement, and that the large merchant 

 steamer conveying the party in question arrived at 

 Yladivostock a week or two before himself, the prisoners 

 being all in excellent health, and not one death having 

 occurred on the passage. He travelled by the "' convict 

 route " across Asia, and his companion returned by the 

 same road, at the very time that the roads were said to be 

 blocked with convoys of exiles ; yet the whole number 

 they met with, or definitely heard of, both in going and 

 returning, did not, he thinks, amount to fifty. The fact 

 is, that Siberian convicts are not, as a class, more deser- 

 ving of sympathy than the occupants of any penal estab- 

 lishment at home; and it is generally the most desperate 

 criminals that are sent to the far eastern settlements. 

 Political prisoners are seldom to be seen in confinement. 

 Mr Lansdell's impression is, that " the greater number of 

 them go to prison only for a short time, or not at all, and 

 are then placed in villages and towns, where they are 

 expected to get their living. Looking at the political 

 prisoners I saw in the separate rooms of the various 

 prisons, at those with whom I came into personal contact, 

 and those of whom mention was made as living in the 

 towns through which I passed, I think, if I had been 

 commissioned to give a soverign to each, fifty coins would 

 have sufiiced for the purpose." The statistics obtained 

 seem to show that, of those banished, only one seventh 

 are condemned to hard labour; and their educational 

 status may be gathered from the fact that, at the prison 

 of Tiumen, where the exiles are brought from Europe 

 and distributed over Asia, out of 470 prisoners, only 42 

 could read and write well, and 386 were wholly illiterate. 

 Summing up his experiences, Mr Lansdell says: — 



' " I have met with deep and almost universal conviction 

 that the prisons of Siberia, compared with those of other 

 countries, are intolerably bad. This I cannot endorse. A 

 proper comparison would be between the Russian sent to 



