Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/33

 Rh of exile in Siberia, but always a very long time, and the journey on foot is one of the most painful portions of the period of punishment. From Kief to Tobolsk it takes a year; to the Nertschink mines in the department of Irkutsk more than two years. One evening at a party a young man asked me to talk a little with his father who was sitting in a corner. "He is," he said, "the old man with one leg you see there." He had lost a foot in the revolt, was exiled, and had been obliged to walk the whole distance on his wooden leg; it took him two winters and one summer.

Of course those who return from exile are taken care of in Warsaw as they are always penniless, since confiscation of real and personal property is part of the punishment. Of the several surviving members of the national government of 1863, one keeps a book-shop, another has a private situation, and so on.

After the revolt about fifty thousand Poles in all were carried out of the country. They were either sentenced to hard labour in the salt works and mines or in the forts, or (for the most part) to domicile in some country village from which it would be impossible for them to escape, yet with narrowly restricted choice of occupations. Others again would be allowed to move freely within certain limits; yet even they were strictly forbidden certain occupations, as, for instance, all kinds of teaching. They were taken to their places of destination in bands of about three hundred persons, guarded by Cossacks and watch-dogs, passing the nights in large sheds, where there were pallets for the women and children, while the others slept as they could. It is estimated that there are about one thousand Poles in Siberia, but of the so-called Wodworency—that is, wandering peasants or petty nobles of Lithuania—several thousand.

Intellectually few countries would have been able to survive such a depletion as Poland has endured for the last twenty years. Only think what one-tenth of the loss of five thousand or one-hundredth of the loss of five hundred of its most advanced sons and daughters by an exile of many years would mean for Denmark!