Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/412

390 who have died, broken jail, or been recaptured; and items of news, of all sorts, from the mines and the forwarding prisons. For the convicts, therefore, the étape walls are equivalent to so many pages of a daily newspaper, containing an exile directory, open letters, obituary notices, a puzzle department of brodyág ciphers, and a personal intelligence column of the highest interest to all "travelers on Government account." One of the first things that an experienced convict does, after his arrival at an étape, is to search the walls for news; and his fortunes not infrequently turn upon the direction or the warning contained in a message that he finds there from a comrade who has preceded him. Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy, chief of the prison administration, has come at last to appreciate the significance and importance of these mural inscriptions, and has recently ordered étape officers to see that they are carefully erased. I doubt, however, whether the order will secure the desired results. The prison authorities are constantly outwitted by convicts, and the latter will soon learn to write their messages in places where an étape officer would never think of looking for them, but where an experienced convict will discover them at once.

Soon after leaving Tomsk, usually at the first regular étape, every exile party organizes itself into an artél, or "union," elects a chief or head man known as the stárosta, and lays the foundation of an artél fund by levying an assessment upon each of its members, and by selling at auction to the highest bidder the privilege of keeping an exile sutler's store or maidán, where the prisoners can openly buy tea, sugar, or white bread, and where they can secretly obtain tobacco, playing-cards, and intoxicating liquor. The organization of the party into an artél has for its primary object concerted and combined action against the common enemy—the Government. A single convict, regarded as an individual, has neither rights nor means of self-defense. He is completely at the mercy, not only of the higher authorities in