Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/387

Rh patience and fortitude; but to be forced to live for weeks at a time in clothing infested with fleas, lice, or bedbugs from the unclean bodies of common criminal convicts not only seemed to me intolerable in itself, but gave me a humiliating

sense of physical defilement that was almost as bad as a consciousness of moral degradation. We tried in every possible way to rid ourselves of these parasitic prison insects, but without success. The older and more neglected étapes along the road were swarming with vermin of all sorts, and whenever we examined one of these places we came away from it with a small but varied entomological collection in our clothing. The insects soon secured