Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/559

Rh Place. Nature of Improvement.

Trans-Baikál [territory] 4448 rúbles appropriated in 1886 for enlarging the Strétinsk étape. Rep. p. 84.

Vérkhni Údinsk New prison finished in 1886. Rep. p. 90.

Yakútsk [province] 33,000 rúbles appropriated in 1887 for the erection of étapes along the river Lena. Rep. p. 103.

Yeniséisk [province] 729 rubles appropriated for a well at the Kozúlskaya étape. Rep. p. 80.

The most important works included in the above list are the new prisons at Vérkhni Údinsk and Górni Zerentúi. Unfortunately they were both unnecessarily expensive, and both, in my judgment, were erected in places where they were least needed. The prison building's that were in most urgent need of enlargement or reconstruction, it seemed to me, were the forwarding prisons of Tiumén, Tomsk, and Áchinsk, the étapes between Tomsk and Irkútsk, and the étape lazarets of Birusínskaya, Tirétskaya, and Skeragúlskaya, which were not only shamefully overcrowded, but were literally hot-beds of virulent contagion. Nothing seems to have been done, however, since my return from Siberia, to relieve the terrible overcrowding of the prisons and étapes along the great Siberian road.