Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/300



THE PROVINCE AND THE CITY OF TOMSK

HE rapidity with which the season of good weather and good roads was passing, and the length and arduous nature of the journey that still lay before us, compelled us to make our stay in the city of Ust Kámenogórsk very brief. The work that we accomplished there, however, had an important bearing upon the prosecution of our researches in the field of political exile, and rendered our success in that field almost certain. I had always anticipated great difficulty in ascertaining where political exiles were to be found, and how they could be approached without the asking of too many dangerous questions. We could not expect in every town to stumble, by good luck, upon a liberal and sympathetic official who would aid us in our search, and yet experience had shown us the absolute necessity of knowing definitely in advance where to go and whom to approach. We had already passed through half a dozen towns or villages where there were colonies of interesting political exiles, and where, if we had been aware of their existence, we should have stopped; but we had no clues whatever to them, and I feared that if, in searching for clues, we made a practice of asking questions at random, we should soon attract the attention of the police and be called upon to explain what business we had with political exiles, and why we were everywhere looking them up. At Ust Kámenogórsk this source of embarrassment was finally removed. We not only obtained there a mass of