Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/23

Rh away; the stockade around the courtyard looked old and weather-beaten; and in almost every window one or more panes of glass had been broken out and the holes had been stopped with rags, old clothes, or pieces of coarse dirty matting. Captain Makófski, observing that I noticed these things, said in explanation of them that it had not been thought best to make extensive repairs, because there was a plan under consideration for the erection of a new building. As we entered the main corridor the officer of the day sprang hastily to the door, saluted the warden, who was with us, and in a sort of rapid, monotonous recitative said, without once taking breath, "Your-High-Nobility-I-have-the-honor-to-report-that-the-condition-of-the-Irkútsk-forwarding-prison-on-this-the-fifth-day-of-September-1885-is-blagopoluchno [prosperous or satisfactory] and-that-it-now-contains-271-prisoners." The warden nodded his head, said "All right," and we began our inspection of the prison. It seemed to me an extremely dreary, gloomy, and neglected place. Its kámeras did not differ essentially from those in the forwarding prison of Tomsk, except that they were less crowded. Most of them were fairly well lighted, they were warmed by large square brick ovens, and they contained no furniture except low plank sleeping-platforms of the usual type. The prisoners had no bedding except their overcoats, and in a few cases small thin "crazy quilts" about two feet wide and six feet long, which they had evidently made for themselves out of countless hoarded rags and scraps of cloth, and which they used to spread down upon and thus soften a little the hard planks of the nári. I did not see a blanket nor a pillow in the prison. The kámeras contained from twenty to forty men each, and the heavy foulness of the air showed that there was little or no ventilation. The floors, judged by Siberian standards, were not disgracefully dirty, but they had been freshly sprinkled with white sand