Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/99

Rh simply driven in troops, like cattle, from one provincial town to another, sometimes begging their way because no provision had been made for their subsistence, and sometimes starving to death on the road. No one knew who they were, whence they had come, what crimes they had committed, or whither they were going. Hardened murderers, who should have been sent to the mines for life, were set at liberty in Siberia as colonists; while unfortunate peasants who had merely lost their passports, or incurred the resentment of some hot-tempered land-owner, were kept at hard labor in the mines until they perished from privation and cruel treatment. The exile system, in short, was nothing but a chaos of disorder, in which accident and caprice played almost equally important parts.

Early in the nineteenth century, steps were taken by the Government to remedy some of the evils that had become apparent under this lax system of administration, and to subject the methods of exile to stricter control. In 1811 a suitable force of regular guards was organized to convoy exile parties, and all exiles were furnished with identifying documents, called statéini spíski, to show who they were and whither they were bound. In 1817 étapes, or exile station-houses, were erected along the most important routes; and in 1823, upon the initiative of the great Russian reformer Count Speránski, the present Prikáz o Silnikh, or Bureau of Exile Administration, was established in Tobólsk. It has