Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/398

376 The telégas intended for prisoners physically unable to walk were small one-horse carts, without springs of any kind, and with only one seat, in front, for the driver and the guard. They looked to me like the halves of longitudinally bisected hogsheads mounted upon four low wheels, with their concave sides uppermost. More wretchedly uncomfortable vehicles to ride in were never devised. A small quantity of green grass had been put into each one to break the jolting a little, and upon this grass, in every cart, were to sit four sick or disabled convicts.

"All prisoners who have certificates from the doctor, step out!" shouted Captain Gudím, and twenty-five or thirty "incapables"—some old and infirm, some pale and emaciated from sickness—separated themselves from the main body of convicts in the road. An under-officer collected and examined their certificates, and as fast as their cases were approved they climbed into the telégas. One man, although apparently sick, was evidently a malingerer, since, as he took his place in a partly filled teléga, he was greeted with a storm of groans and hoots from the whole convict party.

The number of prisoners who, when they leave Tomsk, are unable to walk is sometimes very large. In the year 1884, 658 telégas were loaded there with exiles of this class, and if every teléga held four persons the aggregate number of "incapables" must have exceeded 2500. Such a state of things, of course, is the natural result of the overcrowding of the Tomsk forwarding prison.

When the sick and infirm had all taken the places assigned them in the invalid carts, Captain Gudím took off his cap, crossed himself and bowed in the direction