Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/360

344 as low as thirty and thirty-five degrees below zero; but the Angará River was still open in the middle, and as there was no bridge, and the ferry-boats had ceased running, we could not get across. For more than three weeks we waited impatiently for the rapid stream to close; but as it then showed no disposition to do so, we resolved to descend its right, or eastern, bank to a point about a hundred miles nearer the arctic ocean, where, according to the reports of the peasants, a gorge had occurred and an ice bridge had formed. On Friday, January 8th, having sold our old tárantás and purchased with the proceeds a comfortable pavóska, or winter traveling-sleigh, like that shown in the illustration on this page, we sent to the post-station for a tróika of horses and set out by way of the Alexandrófski central prison for the ice bridge across the Angará.

The Alexandrófski central prison, which at the time of our visit had the reputation of being one of the best as well as one of the largest institutions of its kind in Eastern Siberia, is situated on the right bank of the Angará River about forty miles below Irkútsk, and was built and occupied for a time as a distillery. It was remodeled and turned into a prison in 1874, and since then has been used as a place of confinement and of nominal hard labor for about a thousand convicts. I was particularly anxious to see it, because Acting-governor Petróf in Irkútsk had described it tome as "almost a model prison," and I had not thus far seen any prisons in Siberia to which such a description