Vlll.] 
KUSSIAN EXILES. 
387 
^esk is said to be common to high and low, Russian and native, 
settled and nomad. 
In my journey up the Yenesej in 1875 I met with only a 
few persons in these regions who had been exiled thither for 
political reasons, but on the other hand very many exiled 
criminals of the deepest dye—murderers, thieves, forgers, in¬ 
cendiaries, &c. Among them were also some few Fins and 
even a Swede, or at least one who, according to his own state¬ 
ment in broken Swedish, had formerly served in the King’s 
Guard at Stockholm. Security of person and property was in 
any case complete, and it was remarkable that there did not 
appear to be any proper distinction of caste between the 
Russian-Siberian natives and those who had been exiled for 
crime. There appeared even to be little interest in ascertaining 
the crime—or, as the customary phrase appears to be here, the 
‘'misfortune”—which caused the exile. On making inquiry on 
this point I commonly got the answer, susceptible of many 
interpretations, “for bad behaviour.” We found a peculiar sort 
of criminal colony at Selivaninskoj, a very large village situated 
on the eastern bank of the Yenesej in about the latitude of 
Aavasaksa. My journal of the expedition of 1875 contains the 
following notes of my visit to this colony. 
The orthodox Russian church, as is well known, is tolerant 
towards the professors of foreign religions—Lutherans, Catholics, 
Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Shamans, &c. ; but, on the 
other hand, in complete correspondence with what took place 
in former times within the Protestant world, persecutes sectaries 
within its own pale, with temporal punishments here upon earth 
and with threatenings of eternal in another world. Especially 
in former times a great many sectaries have been sent to Siberia, 
and therefore there are sometimes to be found there peculiar 
colonies enjoying great prosperity, exclusively inhabited by the 
members of a certain sect. Such is the Skopt colony at Selivan¬ 
inskoj, in connection with which, however, it may be remarked 
c c 2 
