Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/109

Rh "You see how it is," said the warden, again addressing me. "This cell contains more than four times the number of prisoners that it was intended to hold, and the same condition of things exists throughout the prison." I looked around the cell. There was practically no ventilation whatever, and the air was so poisoned and foul that I could hardly force myself to breathe it. We visited successively in the yard six kámeras or cells essentially like the first, and found in every one of them three or four times the number of prisoners for which it was intended, and five or six times the number for which it had adequate air space. In most of the cells there was not room enough on the sleeping-platforms for all of the convicts, and scores of men slept every night on the foul, muddy floors, under the nári, and in the gangways between them and the walls. Three or four pale, dejected, and apparently sick prisoners crawled out from under the sleeping-platform in one of the cells as we entered.

From the log barracks in the prison yard we went into the main building, which contained the kitchen, the prison workshops, and the hospital, as well as a large number of kámeras, and which was in much worse sanitary condition than the barracks. It was, in fact, a building through which Mr. Ignátof—a former member of the prison committee—declined to accompany us. On each side of the dark, damp, and dirty corridors were heavy wooden doors, opening into cells which varied in size from 8 feet by 10 to 10 by 15, and contained from half a dozen to thirty prisoners. They were furnished with nári, like those in the cells that we had already inspected; their windows were small and heavily grated, and no provision whatever had been made for ventilation. In one of these cells were eight or ten dvoryáne, or "nobles," who seemed to be educated men, and in whose presence the warden removed his hat. Whether any of them were "politicals" or not I do not know; but in this part of the prison the politicals were usually confined. The air in