Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/336

314 bodies, was fifteen or twenty degrees above that of the air outside. Two double rows of sleeping-benches ran across the kámera, but there evidently was not room enough on them for half the inmates of the cell, and the remainder were forced to sleep under them, or on the floor in the gangways between them, without pillows, blankets, or bed-clothing of any kind. The floor had been washed in anticipation of our visit, but the warden said that in rainy weather it was always covered with mud and filth brought in from the yard by the feet of the prisoners, and that in this mud and filth scores of men had to lie down at night to sleep. Many of the convicts, thinking that we were officers or inspectors from St. Petersburg, violated the first rule of prison discipline, despite the presence of the warden, by complaining to us of the heat, foulness, and oppressiveness of the prison air, and the terrible overcrowding, which made it difficult to move about the kámera in the daytime, and almost impossible to get any rest at night. I pitied the poor wretches, but could only tell them that we were not officials, and had no power to do anything for them.

For nearly an hour we went from kazárm to kazárm and from cell to cell, finding everywhere the same overcrowding, the same inconceivably foul air, the same sickening odors, and the same throngs of gray-coated convicts. At last Mr. Pépeláief, who seemed disposed to hurry us through the prison, said that there was nothing more to see except the kitchen and the hospital, and that he presumed we would not care to inspect the hospital wards, inasmuch as they contained seventy or eighty patients sick with malignant typhus fever. The young convoy officer of the barge, who seconded all of Colonel Yágodkin's efforts to make us thoroughly acquainted with the prison, asked the warden if he was not going to show us the "family kámeras" and the "balagáns."

"Certainly," said the warden; "I will show them anything that they wish to see."