Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/409

Rh breathing the air of one of those cells when the doors were reopened in the morning, I decided not to make the experiment.

The second day's march of the convict party that left Tomsk on the 24th of Angust differed little from the first. A hasty and rather scanty breakfast in the kámeras was followed by the assembling of the convicts, the morning roll-call, and the departure; the day's journey was again broken by the privál, or halt for lunch; and early in the afternoon the party reached the first regular étape, where it was to change convoys and stop one day for rest.

The étape differs from the polu-étape only in size and in the arrangement of its buildings.

The courtyard is more spacious, and the kámeras are a little larger than in the polu-étape; but the buildings are old and in bad repair, and there is not room enough in them for half the number of prisoners now forwarded in every party. General Anúchin, the