Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/546

530 THE ISHÍM ÉTAPE.

Typhus fever constituted 55.2 per cent. of all the sickness in the Ishím étape in 1886, 50 per cent. in 1887, and 16.6 per cent. in 1888.

— Rep's of CM. Pris. Adm. for years indicated, pp. 222, 317, and 292.

THE KARÁ PRISONS.

Complaints come to us from Kara of the rough and inhuman treatment of convicts by the Cossacks of the prison guard. "Not long ago," writes one correspondent, "I myself saw a soldier knock a convict down without provocation, and then trample upon and kick him." Is not this barbarous treatment of convicts the reason for the constantly recurring disorders at Kará?

— Newspaper Sibír, No. 26, p. 5. Irkútsk, June 23, 1885.

We learn from Kará that, as a result of the recently discovered abuses there, almost all of the old officials have been discharged and new ones put in their places. How much better the latter will be than the former, time will show.

— Newspaper Sibír, No. 26, p. 5, Irkútsk, June 23, 1885.

Scurvy constituted 15 per cent. of all the sickness in the Lower Kará prisons in 1884.

— Rep. of the Chf. Pris. Adm. for 1884, p. 222.

THE KÍRINSK PRISON.

The Kírinsk prison is a wooden building, surrounded by a stockade, and is everywhere supported, inside and outside, by log props, without which it would long ago have fallen down from sheer decay. At the time of my visit to the prison one of the prisoners thrust his finger out of sight into the rotten wood of one of the logs, in order to show us how old and decayed the walls were. This year the ceiling fell in one of the cells and buried the prisoner who occupied it; but he was taken out alive. The building is very cold, and can hardly be warmed on account of its old and decayed condition. ... At the time of my visit it contained eighty-six prisoners, although it was built to hold not more than fifty at the utmost. ... The warden complained that since September, 1882, the authorities in Irkútsk had sent him no clothing of any kind for the prisoners, so that the latter could not leave their cells to work, nor even go out of doors to take a walk. ... One of the prisoners — a woman named Dolgopólova — complained to me that she had lain three years in this prison, waiting for her case to be tried by the Yakútsk circuit court. The male prisoners complained most of overcrowding. Many of them had to sleep not only on the floor, but under the nári. ... There is no hospital in the prison, and sick prisoners are sent to the Kírinsk city