Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/647

Rh wending free men, joyous with hope, with their families and goods, going to build up a more comfortable home than the old one in the rich fields of the Southeast. And all those who give themselves earnestly to it see their enterprise crowned with success. The false representations which are so widely spread respecting Siberia originate in the numerous maliciously colored descriptions of the country, and judgments of its condition, that flow from the pens of famous convicts. I can not exactly pronounce these reports unjust, but they should not be taken as wholly correct. It is a recognized fact that misery and wickedness pain the eye and the heart and provoke erroneous and unjust statements; particularly when, as is the case with the majority of the exiles in question, the conditions are complicated with politics. The situation of the ordinary exiles in the mines and of the settled convicts is relatively much better than that of the miners who are laboring under the despotism of capital in Germany. If one has no especial back-sets in Siberia, if he can and will work, he will be able under all ordinary circumstances to earn a most comfortable living there. When I crossed the Ural the first time, I had only the ethnographic side of my journey in view, and thought little or nothing of the ethical side, which bore no relation to the object I was then seeking. I was not concerned with the exiles, nor in general could any man who stood in open conflict with the laws, not even a political dynamiter or murderer, have aroused any interest in me. But, from the moment when I found myself in the heart of Siberia and came in contact with its exiles, I felt it my duty to examine the ethical question more closely. I have gone down into the dens of vice, and made the acquaintance of the most common criminals—of thieves, robbers, and murderers; I have associated with political exiles; I have sought information everywhere; have made inquiries of officers and private persons, have visited prisons, collected statistics, taken down numerous biographies as given by the exiles from their own mouths, or as recorded by impartial persons; in short, I have become a regular philanthropist. I am aware of one thing, that I have taken all pains to discover the truth, and, if I have not been successful in it, the want of success must not be attributed to lack of good-will, but to the defects of my sources of information.

To make possible an impartial view of the condition of the exiles and prisoners in Siberia, we must first try to learn what the free-born Siberians may attain; and it is therefore incumbent on me to describe the general conditions before proceeding to the illustration and estimation of the situation of the convicts.

It is the region of the mines of the Altai, which, like most of Siberia, is an imperial crown-land, that should more especially be brought under view, for thither are sent those offenders whose sentences to death have been commuted; and the district plays an important part in the more or less romantically tinged accounts of affairs that are