Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/402

380 on a patch of greensward by the roadside, had assembled ten or twelve girls and old women with baskets of provisions, bottles of milk, and jugs of kvas, or small beer, for sale to the prisoners. At first sight of these preparations for their refreshment, the experienced brodyágs, who marched at the head of the column, raised a joyous shout of ''Privál! Privál!''—the exiles' name for the noonday halt. The welcome cry was passed along the line until it reached the last wagon of "incapables," and the whole party perceptibly quickened its pace. A walk of ten miles does not much tire a healthy and unincumbered man; but to convicts who have been in prison without exercise for months, and who are hampered by five-pound leg-fetters united by chains that clash constantly between the legs, it is a trying experience. In less than a minute after the command to halt was given, almost every man in the party was either sitting on the ground or lying upon it at full length. After a short rest, the prisoners began buying food from the provision venders, in the shape of black rye-bread, fish-pies, hardboiled eggs, milk, and kvas, and in half an hour they were all sitting on the ground, singly or in groups, eating their lunch. With the permission of Captain Gudím, Mr. Frost took a photograph of them, which is here reproduced, and about two o'clock the party resumed its journey.

The afternoon march was without noteworthy incident. The brodyágs talked constantly as they walked, raising their voices so as to make themselves heard above the jingling of the chains, while the novices generally listened or asked questions. There is the same difference between a brodyág who has been to the mines half a dozen times and a novice who is going for the first time, that there is between an experienced cowboy and a "tenderfoot." The brodyág knows the road as the tongue knows the mouth; he has an experimental acquaintance with the temper and character of every convoy officer from Tomsk to Kará; and his perilous adventures in the taigá—the primeval Siberian