Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/331

Rh Amoor River and cross to the island of Saghalin. The southern half of the island was then in possession of the Japanese, and he lived among them for several months. Then he got on board an American whaling-ship, and worked his passage to San Francisco, where he found some countrymen, who helped him on his way to Paris.



"I know another man, a Russian nobleman, who escaped from Siberia and went back over the route by which he had come. For convenience I will call him Ivanoff, though that was not his name. He accomplished it in this way:

"He had concealed quite a sum of money about his person, which the guards failed to find after searching him repeatedly. His offence was political, and he was sentenced to twenty years' exile. While his convoy was on the road between Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, he arranged to change names with Petrovitch, a criminal who had been sentenced to three years' banishment, and was to remain near Irkutsk. Ivanoff was to go beyond Lake Baikal, whence escape is much more diflicult. For one hundred roubles the criminal consented to the change, and to take his chances for the result.

"The substitution was made at the depot in Irkutsk, where the names