Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/386

370 spare irons, and carefully examined the leg-fetters of the chained convicts as they came out; the incapables climbed into the one-horse sleighs that were awaiting them; an under-officer counted the prisoners again, to make sure that they were all there; and at the command "March!" the whole party instantly put itself in motion, the soldiers at the head of the column setting so rapid a pace that many of the convicts were forced into a run. In three minutes they were out of sight.

Marching parties of exiles leave Tomsk and Krasnoyársk every week throughout the winter, and go through to their destination without regard to weather, and with no more regard to the condition of the road than is necessary to determine whether it is passable or absolutely impassable. It would be perfectly easy, by making use of horses and vehicles, to transport the whole annual contingent of exiles from Tomsk to Irkútsk during the summer months, and thus relieve them from the suffering that they now endure as the necessary result of exposure to winter cold and winter storms; but for some unknown reason the Government has always persistently refused to take this step in the direction of humane reform. It cannot explain nor defend its refusal by pleading considerations of expense, because the cost of transporting ten thousand exiles from Tomsk to Irkútsk with horses would actually be much less than the cost of sending them on foot. Before me, as I write, lies an official report of Colonel Vinokúrof, inspector of exile transportation for Western Siberia, in which that officer shows that if all the convicts for the whole year were despatched from Moscow in the summer, and were carried from Tomsk to Áchinsk in one-horse wagons instead of being forced to walk, the expense of delivering them in the latter place would be reduced by almost 50,000 rúbles.