Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/139

Rh principle, and for an oppressed people, would have put a soul under the ribs of death.

We left Selengínsk at four o'clock on the afternoon of Friday, October 16th, and after a ride of a hundred and eight miles, which we made in less than twenty-four hours, reached the district town of Vérkhni Údinsk. The weather, particularly at night, was cold and raw, and the jolting of the springless post-vehicles was rather trying to one who had not yet rallied from the weakness and prostration of fever; but the fresh open air was full of invigoration, and I felt no worse, at least, than at the time of our departure from Tróitskosávsk, although we had made in two days and nights a distance of a hundred and seventy miles. There were two prisons in Vérkhni Údinsk that I desired to inspect; and as early as possible Sunday morning I called upon the isprávnik, introduced myself as an American traveler, exhibited my open letters, and succeeded in making an engagement with that official to meet him at the old prison about noon.

The ostróg of Vérkhni Údinsk, which serves at the same time as a local prison, a forwarding prison, and a place of temporary detention for persons awaiting trial, is an old weather-beaten, decaying log building situated on the high right bank of the Selengá River, about a mile below the town. It does not differ essentially from a log étape of the old Siberian type, except in being a little higher from foundation to roof, and in having a sort of gallery in every kámera, or cell, so arranged as to serve the purpose of a second story. This gallery, which was reached by a steep flight of steps, seemed to me to have been put in as an afterthought in order to increase the amount of floor space available for nári, or sleeping-platforms. The prison had evidently been put in as good order as possible for our inspection; half the prisoners were out in the courtyard, the doors and windows of nearly all the kámeras had been thrown open to admit the fresh air, and the floors of the corridors and cells