Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/465

Rh in the course of five years' residence in the Russian Empire, I have been brought in contact. In the face of difficulties and discouragements that would crush most men — in financial distress, in terrible anxiety, in prison, in exile, and in the strait-jacket of the press censorship — they not only "keep their grip," but they fairly distinguish themselves in literature, in science, and in every field of activity that is open to them. Much of the best scientific work that has been done in Siberia has been done by political exiles. Mikhaiélis in Semipalátinsk was an accomplished naturalist; Andréief in Minusínsk was a skilled botanist and made an exhaustive study of the flora of central Siberia and the Altái; Kléments in Minusínsk was a geologist and an archæologist of whom his country ought to have been proud; Alexander Kropótkin, who committed suicide in Tomsk, was an astronomer and meteorologist who made and recorded scientific observations for the Russian Meteorological Bureau almost up to the time of his death; Belokónski, in Minusínsk, continued these observations, and was a frequent contributor, moreover, to the best Russian magazines and reviews; Chudnófski, in Tomsk, was engaged for many years in active work for the West-Siberian section of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, and is the author of a dozen or more books and monographs; Leóntief and Dr. Dolgopólof, in Semipalátinsk, made valuable anthropological researches among the Kírghis, and the work of the former has recently been published by the Semipalátinsk Statistical Committee under the title "Materials for the Study of the Legal Customs of the Kírghis"; Lesévich, who was in exile in Yeniséisk, is one of the best-known writers in Russia upon philosophy, morals, and the history and influence of Buddhism; Hoúrwitch, who was in exile in Tiukalínsk, but who is now in New York City, is the author of a monograph on "Emigration to Siberia" which was published in the "Proceedings of the Imperial Geographical Society," and is also the author of the excellent