Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/384

368 the air in some of the cells was heavy and lifeless, and had the peculiar characteristic prison odor, it could be breathed without much discomfort, and without any of the repulsion and disgust that we had felt in the overcrowded cells of the prisons in Tiumén, Tomsk, Irkútsk, and at the mines. The exile forwarding prison, which stood near the city prison in a stockaded yard, consisted of three large one-story log buildings of the Tomsk type, and presented to the eye nothing that was particularly interesting or new. It did not contain more than half the number of prisoners that, apparently, could be accommodated in it; some of the kámeras were entirely empty, and the air everywhere was fresh and good.

By a fortunate chance we reached this prison just in time to see the departure of a marching party of two hundred and seventy male convicts destined for the province of Yakútsk and the mines and prisons of the Trans-Baikál. It was a bitterly cold morning, and two-thirds of the mustered party were walking back and forth in the prison yard, trying, by means of physical exercise, to keep themselves warm while waiting for the medical examination of the other third. After watching them for a moment we entered a large new log building standing a little apart from the prison proper, where we found the prison surgeon, an intelligent, kindly looking man, engaged in making a physical examination of seventy-five or eighty convicts who had declared themselves unable to march. To my inexperienced eye all of them looked thin, pallid, and miserable enough to be excused from a march of twenty miles in such weather and over such a road; but the doctor, after a brief examination by means of scrutiny, touch, and the stethoscope, dismissed as imaginary or frivolous the complaints of nine men out of every ten, and ordered sleighs for the rest. In less than half an hour all was in readiness for a start. The soldiers of the convoy, with shouldered rifles, formed a cordon outside the gate to receive the party; the prison blacksmith made his appearance with hammers, rivets, and