Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/126

 90 murder (i.e. two per cent, on the whole). The condition of public morality in Central Siberia, therefore, is very much what one would expect in a country inhabited mainly by peaceful peasants ; the inhabitants are no less law-abiding than those of the average European country.

Before he left, the governor asked me if I would like to see the local gaol, and on expressing my desire to do so I was taken, a day or two later, to the "Tyumerny Zamok," a large, one-storeyed building, whitewashed and covered with red sheet-iron and surrounded by a high mud wall. Inside the building were large rooms, like dormitories in a private school, where the prisoners lived and slept, and which they all shared together. Men and women were kept in separate parts of the building, but they frequently saw each other in the course of the day in the large courtyard, where there was an open space for an exercise-ground and for the gymnastics in which the prisoners indulged. Inside the rooms were very clean, and it was almost difficult to believe that you really were in a prison. The place seemed to be pervaded by an air of informality and much resembled an ordinary boarding-house. There were about 200 prisoners in the gaol, and there appeared to be ample room for that number. Unfortunately I had not much time for further conversation with the governor, as he had business elsewhere, but one of his subordinates gave me some idea of the methods which the Russian authorities pursue in dealing with prisoners. The system in Siberia is just the same as that in any other part of the Empire. In the common gaols nothing is provided but bread and tea and a place to sleep in. The prisoners are,