Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/40

24 my own personal observation. I have myself slept in sod-covered Yakút yurts side by side with cattle; I have borne some of the hardships of life in these wretched habitations, and I know how intolerable it must be for a refined and educated human being — and especially for a woman — to spend months or years in the midst of such an environment. It must be said, however, in fairness, that some administrative exiles, who are allowed to receive money from their friends, buy or build houses for themselves, and have a somewhat more endurable existence. The Russian novelist Korolénko occupied a house of his own, apart from the Yakúts, and a number of the returned ulús exiles whose acquaintance I made in Tomsk and Irkútsk told me that, with the aid of friends, they bought, built, or hired log houses in the ulúses to which they had been banished, and thus escaped the filth and disorder of the Yakút yurts. Some of them, too, had a few books, and received letters from their relatives once or twice a year, through the police. They suffered, nevertheless, great hardships and privations. Mr. Linóf, a cultivated gentleman who had resided several years in the United States and who spoke English well, told me that after his banishment to the province of Yakútsk he sometimes lived for months at a time without bread, subsisting for the most part upon fish and meat. His health was broken down by his experience, and he died at an East Siberian étape in May, 1886, less than six months after I made his acquaintance. That the life of ulús exiles, even under the most favorable circumstances, is almost an unendurable one sufficiently appears from the frequency with which they escape from it by self-destruction. Of the seventy-nine politicals who were in exile in the province of Yakútsk in 1882, six had committed suicide previous to 1885. How many have died in that way since then I do not know, but of the six to whom I refer I have the names.

Since my return from Siberia the Russian Government has been sending political suspects by administrative