for it, and the greater the service, the more is more moving and appalling than the the consciousness of it galls him. You facts which have been revealed. Of can't expect me to be more grateful than course, with such men as Stepniak and the rest of my kind, can you? Come out for a stroll; I want to go to White's about Harkaway. He went a bit lame yesterday, and I haven't much confidence in Martin's powers of getting him right for the Vase.' After that I never spoke about the subject. Still I kept my eyes open, and I noticed that whenever they agreed to go anywhere or do anything together, it seemed to be at Morris's invitation; so he kept his word and waited to be asked, like the young ladies at a ball, as he had declared he would that evening. I remember this morning, when they went forward together to look out for Dacoits, it was at Morris's suggestion." "Did he never betray any resentment at the affair?" I asked. "He must have the temper of an angel." "Not that," said Parker. "In fact, I have often heard him say his temper is not at all his strong point, but he has a tremendous control over himself, and seldom shows anger. His rage is concentrated, not discursive. He can generally put it into two or three words that simply shrivel you up. The more angry he is, the more icily cold and polite he gets. No, he never showed any sign of remembering that evening except by the avoidance of actual overtures on his side, which I mentioned. Indeed, they were not necessary, for Morris gradually broke with his old set, and is never about with them now. Well, there was one other sign. He always used to call Morris by his Christian name, George, you know. I have never heard him do so since that night. Well, orderly, what is it? Any one wanting me?" "Mr. Hargreaves is dead, sir," said the man, saluting. "He was conscious for the last half-hour before he died, and left a note to be given to Mr. Morris, sir, after his death." SIBERIA AND ITS EXILES. TRUTH, they say, is stranger than fiction, Kropotkin there was always the possibility of political bias in any pictures they drew; while, again, as in the case of the Rev. Dr. Henry Lansdell, there was the suspicion that the more optimistic pictures were officially inspired. No one doubts the earnestness and good faith of Dr. Lansdell, who most conscientiously described what he saw; but then he was not allowed to see the worst. He was "personally conducted," even when he was not aware of it, by Government officials directed from St. Petersburg. Mr. George Kennan, whose narrative of his remarkable experiences has been enthralling American readers for the last year or two, and has just been published in complete form in this country,* managed somehow to see a great deal more than any previous outsider, or than he was expected to see. He went under a sort of official ægis, because he was supposed to be in sympathy with the Russian Government, and to regard the exile system with approval-as, indeed, he did until he began to really understand it. Then, without risking his official advantages, he set about observing and recording on his own account what he would never have been allowed to learn if his change of view had been anticipated. It was in May, 1885, that, accompanied by Mr. George Frost, an artist, he reached St. Petersburg in order to begin a tour of Siberia, in which country he had previously resided for some two years in connection with telegraph work. His credentials assured him a hearty reception in the capital, and he was provided by the Minister of the Interior with an order which opened to him all the prisons he might want to visit. The preliminaries completed, he took rail to the famous faircity of Nizhni Novgorod, whence by steamer down the Volga and up its affluent, the Kama, he reached Perm, then the terminus of the Ural Mountains Railway. As to the Volga, he takes a thoroughly practical view, and sets forth the things which struck him as illustrating the "greatness"—that is, the bigness-of the country. It will not be a revelation for * and much as romancists have concerned "Siberia and the Exile System." By George themselves with the mysteries of Asiatic Kennan. James R. Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., Russia, surely nothing they have imagined 2 vols., profusely illustrated. Americans alone to learn that this magnificent waterway is as much the creator of Eastern Russia as the Nile is the creator of Egypt. Upon it and the produce of its basin depend, directly and indirectly, the welfare and prosperity of ten millions of people. It is one of the greatest rivers of the world, measuring from source to mouth, in the Caspian Sea, some two thousand three hundred miles, washing the borders of nine provinces, and sweeping past thirty-nine cities, and more than a thousand minor towns and villages. The shipping of this mighty river centres at Nizhni Novgorod, where are six or eight miles of quayage, and a Court of Shipping, with an administrative bureau and large staff. The number of steamers plying on the Volga exceeds those on the busy Mississippi, while of vessels of all kinds some seven thousand are constantly employed bringing down about five million tons of merchandise annually. These facts and figures will cause a shock of surprise to those people who have been accustomed to think of Russia as a semi-pastoral, semi-barbarous country, with a sparsely scattered population, and a rudimentary system of commerce. The scenery, too, of this marvellous river is varied and picturesque, and, in the early summer, a steamer voyage upon its waters is a prolonged enjoyment. Perm is a city of thirty-two thousand inhabitants on the boundary line of European Russia, through which passes practically the whole of the vast mass of Siberian commerce. From Perm the railway runs to Ekaterinburg through fine mountainous scenery. Leaving Perm, the traveller quits Europe, but does not yet enter Siberia. There is an intervening district which seems neither Europe nor Asia. Even at Ekaterinburg, which is in Asia, there is a distance of about one hundred miles to be traversed before Siberia proper is reached. Ekaterinburg is the centre of a great mining district-of gold, platinum, copper, and precious stones, besides iron, coal, and salt-and is a busy and enterprising place. The railway from Ekaterinburg, eastwards, is now completed to Tiumen, the Siberian town with the first forwardingprison, but when Mr. Kennan went he had to traverse the distance of two hundred miles in the large heavy carriages of the country, called "tarantas." Immediately after leaving Ekaterinburg the traveller enters upon the Great Siberian Road, which stretches right across Asia from the Ural Mountains to the Amur River, a distance of over three thousand miles. But that Siberia is not a land of desolation is quickly learned. Within two hours the eastward-bound travellers passed five hundred and thirty-eight heavily laden waggons, piled high with Siberian products for the European markets, and in the first day no fewer than one thousand four hundred and forty-five waggons were counted. On the second day after leaving Ekaterinburg is reached the Siberian boundary-post, a square pillar ten or twelve feet high, of stuccoed brick, bearing on one side the coat-of-arms of the European province of Perm, and on the other that of the Asiatic province of Tobolsk. "No other post between St. Petersburg and the Pacific," writes Mr. Kennan, "is more full of painful suggestions, and none has for the traveller a more melancholy interest than the little opening in the forest where stands this grief-consecrated pillar. Here hundreds of thousands of exiled human beings-men, women, and children, princes, nobles, and peasants-have bidden good-bye for ever to friends, country, and home. Here, standing beside the square white boundary-post, they have, for the last time, looked backward with love and grief at their native land, and then, with tear-blurred eyes and heavy hearts, they have marched away into Siberia, to meet the unknown hardships and privations of a new life. No other boundary-post in the world has witnessed so much human suffering, or been passed by such a multitude of heart-broken people. More than one hundred and seventy thousand exiles have travelled this road since 1878, and more than half a million since the beginning of the present century. In former years, when exiles were compelled to walk from the places of their arrest to the places of their banishment, they reached the Siberian boundary-post only after months of toilsome marching along muddy or dusty roads, over forest-clad mountains, through rain-storms or snow-storms, or in bitter cold. As the boundary-post is situated about half-way between the last European and the first Siberian "étape," it has always been customary to allow exile parties to stop here for rest and for a last good-bye to home and country. The Russian peasant, even when a criminal, is deeply attached to his native land, and heart-rending scenes have been witnessed around the boundary-pillar, when such a party, overtaken perhaps by frost and snow in the early autumn, stopped here for a last farewell. Some gave way to unrestrained grief; some comforted the weeping; some knelt and pressed their faces to the loved soil of their native country, and collected a little earth to take with them into exile; and a few pressed their lips to the European side of the cold brick pillar, as if bidding good-bye for ever to all that it symbolised." Siberia is not the semi-arctic, barren province which it has usually appeared to the popular imagination, nor is its popu. lation composed only of exiles, soldiers, officials, and some half-wild aborigines. It is really a continent in itself, with many diversities of climate, scenery, and vegetation. It is a continent stretching over thirtyseven degrees or two thousand five hundred miles of latitude, and one hundred and thirty degrees or five thousand miles of longitude. It could take in the whole area of the United States from Maine to California, and from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico, and still have room for the greater part of Europe besides. Of course a land of such extent must have great diversity of climate as well as of scenery and physical characteristics. There is, for instance, the great northern belt of tundras, or frozen steppes, extending along the Arctic sea-coast from Novaya Zemlaya to Behring's Straits. Then there is the forest region, a belt which stretches across the middle of the continent from the Ural Mountains to the Sea of Okhotsk. And then there is the fertile region, which extends from Ekaterinburg to the Pacific along the frontiers of the Central Asian Khanates and of Mongolia. The first is undoubtedly one of the most barren and inhospitable regions in the world—a land of desolate steppes, which in summer are trackless wastes of brown wet moss, and in winter are trackless deserts of snow, which, driven before the wind, packs into long, hard waves. Beneath the summer moss is a thick stratum of eternal frost, extending in places to a depth of hundreds of feet. Besides the spongy moss there is hardly any vegetation, and the climate is probably the most severe in the world. In the forest belt to the south, however, you may travel for weeks together through a continuous forest. The climate ranges from a tolerably severe one along the northern boundary to a mild and genial one towards the south, where the poplar takes the place of the fir, and the elm that of the larch. The third section, the fertile belt, is a beautiful and picturesque country, with a soil as fertile as that of an English garden, where flowers grow everywhere in the greatest profusion, and where there is a fine mingling of plain and mountain. The winter there is cold, but the summer is magnificent-warmer and more genial than that of Central Europe. Here tobacco is grown; melons are a profitable crop, and the wheat harvests average fifty million bushels per annum. The summer temperature of this country averages six degrees more than the mean summer temperature of Europe. Nothing surprises the traveller more than the fervent heat of Siberian sunshine, and the beauty and profusion of Siberian flowers. Through such a country the exiles pass from Ekaterinburg to the forwarding-prison of Tiumen. For miles the road runs beneath an avenue of silver birches, planted by order of the Empress Catherine the Second, and to this day known "Catherine's Alley." Many a hot and weary traveller has blessed her memory as he found shelter from the fierce rays of the summer sun. There are no fences and no farmhouses. The land belongs to the Crown, and the village commune have only the usufruct of it. They cultivate in common or by periodical division of allotments among themselves. Thus the population gathers in villages, and the country is unbroken by farmsteads. The villages, too, are shabby in appearanc dirty. Before reaching Tiumen, the road leaves the beautiful farm country, and passes through a swampy tract of forest. The town itself is built upon a marshy plain. It is a place of some one thousand nine hundred inhabitants, about one thousand seven hundred miles east from St. Petersburg, and has often enough been described by travellers. The interest in the present case is that it contains the most important exile forwarding-prison in Siberia, and also the Chief Bureau of Exile Administration. Through Tiumen must pass all persons condemned to banishment, colonisation, or penal servitude, and at Tiumen are kept all the records and statistics of the exile system. These records go back to 1648. When will they end? From these records it is seen that between 1823 and 1887, seven hundred and seventy-two thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine exiles were sent to Siberia in four distinct classes. These are: (1) hard labour convicts; (2) penal colonists; (3) persons simply banished, whether by sentence of court, order of the village communes to which they belonged, or edict of the Minister of the Interior; and (4) women and children who were exiled voluntarily with their husbands or parents. " are not ranked apart, but are distributed among all the classes, for reasons which, perhaps, need not be explained. Mr. Kennan, however, gathered that from 1879 to 1884, seven hundred and forty-nine undoubtedly political offenders were banished by "administrative process. That is an average of one hundred and twenty-five per annum, and it is assumed that at least twenty-five per annum may be added from The first two classes comprise criminals, among those sent as penal colonists, so who are deprived of all civil rights, and that the number of political exiles is prowho must remain in Siberia for life. bably about one per cent. of the whole. Those in the third class are not necessarily This does not include the Poles, about one criminals, and may return to Russia at hundred thousand of whom, besides thouthe expiration of their term of banish-sands of "political conspirators," ment. These "simple exiles" wear no banished prior to 1879. fetters and are not branded; but the convicts and penal colonists have their heads half-shaved, and must march from the railway terminus to their places of destination shackled with leg-fetters weighing five pounds. An analysis of the figures for 1885, the year in which Mr. Kennan was in Siberia, is very interesting. In that year fifteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-six exiles passed through the Tiumen bureau, namely, eleven thousand six hundred and eighty-seven males, and four thousand and seventy-nine females. No fewer than five thousand five hundred and thirty-six, that is to say, about one-third, were voluntary exiles, accompanying or following their relatives. The next highest proportion was that coming under the category "exiled by village communes," the number being three thousand seven hundred and fiftyeight. It is to be explained that each village commune in Russia has the right to banish any of its members who render themselves objectionable to the rest; no trial is required, but merely a resolution of the commune. Indeed, of all the ten thousand two hundred and thirty involuntary exiles, it was seen that only four thousand three hundred and ninety-two had any trial or form of trial, and were banished by sentence of court. No fewer than five thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight were exiled by what is called "administrative process," that is to say, an order from the Minister of the Interior; but of these, three thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight were sent, not by the Government initiative-for, of course, the Minister has to sign all the decrees-but by village communes. It is difficult to say what proportion of the exiles are political offenders. They All exiles are now taken by train to Tiumen, where they remain about a fortnight before being forwarded to their ultimate destinations. The prison at Tiumen is chronically overcrowded, and, as seen by Mr. Kennan, in a frightfully insanitary condition. It is a rectangular, three-storeyed building, within a large yard completely commanded by the sentryboxes along the enclosing wall. It was built to accommodate eight hundred and fifty prisoners; there were one thousand seven hundred and forty-one in its cells when visited by our travellers. The exiles are all clothed alike in a costume of grey, and the air resounds with the clanking of chains. Mr. Kennan describes minutely the first cell visited, and adds: "There was practically no ventilation whatever, and the air was so poisoned and foul that I could hardly force myself to breathe it. We visited successively in the yard six "kameras," or cells, essentially like the first, and found in every one of them three or four times the number of prisoners for which it was intended, and five or six times the number for which it had adequate air space. In most of the cells there was not room enough on the sleeping-platforms for all of the convicts, and scores of men slept every night on the foul, muddy floors under the "nari"-sleeping-platform-and in the gangways between it and the walls. Three or four pale, dejected, and apparently sick prisoners, crawled from under the sleeping-platform in one of the cells as we entered." In one of the cells "were eight or ten dvoryane' or nobles, who seemed to be educated men, and in whose presence the warden removed his hat. Whether any of them were 'politicals' or not I do not know, but in this part of the prison the politicals were usually confined. The air in the corridors and cells, particularly in the second storey, was indescribably and unimaginably foul. Every cubic foot of it had apparently been respired over and over again until it did not contain an atom of oxygen; it was laden with fever germs from the unventilated hospital wards, fetid odours from diseased human lungs and unclean human bodies, and the stench arising from unemptied excrement buckets at the ends of the corridors. I breathed as little as I possibly could, but every respiration seemed to pollute me to the very soul, and I became faint from nausea and lack of oxygen. It was like trying to breathe in an underground hospital drain." Bad as was the condition at Tiumen, it was even worse at Tomsk, the forwarding-prison of which was visited later. Here were found three thousand prisoners crammed into a space designed for one thousand one hundred, and the number of arrivals ranged from five hundred to eight hundred per week, while the arrangements for despatch eastward could not forward more than four hundred per week. The medical officer in charge said that he had recommended that the buildings should be razed to the ground, as saturated with contagious diseases, but that nothing had been done beyond calling for plans and reports. From Tiumen the prisoners are for warded to Tomsk in convict barges-at least, those intended for Eastern Siberia. The voyage occupies from seven to ten days, and over ten thousand exiles are transported in these vessels every year. The barges are large vessels of two hundred and twenty feet or so in length, with all the space between the deck-houses roofed over and enclosed in a sort of iron cage, which is divided into compartments for the men and women respectively. The sleeping cabins are below, and are on the plan of the cells in the Tiumen prison, but, of course, are not so overcrowded. The vessel also is cleaned and disinfected after every voyage. It is a huge floating prison, but must afford a pleasant change to the poor wretches from the horrors of Tiumen. Mr. Kennan first met with genuine "political" exiles at Semipalatinsk, a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants, on the River Irtish, about nine hundred miles from Tiumen, and a place of considerable commercial importance, as being the only caravan route to Central Asia. He says: "I find it extremely difficult now, after a whole year of intimate association with political exiles, to recall the impressions that I had of them before I made the acquaintance of the exile colony in Semipalatinsk. I know that I was prejudiced against them, and that I expected them to be wholly unlike the rational, cultivated men and women one meets in civilised society; but I cannot by any exercise of will bring back the unreal and fantastic conception of them that I had when I crossed the Siberian frontier. As nearly as I can now remember, I regarded the people, whom I called Nihilists, as sullen and more or less incomprehensible cranks,' with some education, a great deal of fanatical courage, and a limitless capacity for self-sacrifice, but with the most visionary ideas of government and social organisation, and only the faintest trace of what an American would call hard common-sense. I did not expect to have more ideas in common with them than I should have with an anarchist like Louis Lingg; and although I intended to give their case against the Government a fair hearing, I believed that the result would be a confirmation of the judgement I had already formed." If, And what was his experience? "I found them to be bright, intelligent, well-informed men and women, with warm affections, quick sympathies, generous impulses, and high standards of honour and duty. They are men and women who, under other circumstances, might render valuable services to their country. instead of thus serving their country they are living in exile, it is not because they are lacking in the virtue and patriotism that are essential to good citizenship, but because the Government, assumes the right to think and act for the Russian people, is out of harmony with the spirit of the times." which The political exiles, so long as they conform to the police regulations, and do not exhibit a spirit of insubordination, are allowed a considerable amount of personal liberty. They are restricted to certain towns or districts, but may follow their own occupations and have their families about them. If they incur the resentment of any official, however, they are liable to be deported, as refractory, to some of the dreary death-in-life settlements of the frozen region. Some extremely interesting reminiscences of famous political exiles are given by Mr. Kennan, as well as stories of some remarkable escapes, which, |