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515 SIBEEIA 515 local offenders." Mr. Kennan concludes: " When a badly informed or credulous traveler arrives he is conducted, not to the forwarding prison, but to the gubernski," inferring, apparently, that the latter prison is the only one I saw. Allow me to suggest that it is Mr. Kennan who, to quote his own words, has " made superficial inquiries and been badly in- formed." He would otherwise be aware of the fact that there are not two but three prisons in Tomsk — the " Gubernski," the " Perisylni," and the u Arrestantski " ; all of which I visited as lately as last August. The former I have already briefly described in your journal and others. An account of the two latter would have been too voluminous for a news- paper, but will appear in my forthcoming work on the prisons of Western Siberia. I may add that I devoted three whole days to a minute inspec- tion of the " Perisylni," or exile pi'ison (which your correspondent de- scribed, and, somewhat rashly, assumes I did not enter), but entirely failed to recognize it from the ghastly descriptions in the Century Magazine. I can quite understand this gentleman's reluctance to admit any facts but his own (English travelers are unfortunately rare in Tomsk), but that such an authority on Siberia as Mr. George Kennan should have been, up till now, unaware of even the existence of one of its largest prisons seems almost incredible. It may, or may not, interest him to hear that I this year visited the famous Tiumen prison (the horrors of which he has so graphically described), and traveled for nearly a fortnight down the river Obi in a convict barge, containing over six hundred exiles, to whom I was allowed free access, unaccompanied by officials. I will not trespass further upon your valuable space, for this subject has already been discussed ad nauseam in the English press. Let me, how- ever, assure Mr. Kennan that, in so far as he and his allegations against the Russian Government are concerned, I intend, in my work, to deal with this subject in anything but a " careless or superficial" way. I am, Sir, yours faithfully, H. de Windt. Berlin, Nov. 6, 1890. — Pall Mall Gazette, Nov. 13, 1890. IV To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. Sir : I beg pardon for trespassing again upon your space and courtesy, but it seems necessary to say a few words in reply to Mr. de Windt's let- ter from Berlin concerning the Tomsk prisons. 1. If, at the time when the distinguished explorer wrote the letter that appeared in the Gazette of September 24, 1890, he was not aware of the existence of the Tomsk Forwarding Prison, his investigation, certainly, was a very careless and superficial one. If, on the other hand, he teas