File:From Pekin to Calais by land (1889) (14779543275).jpg

Identifier: frompekintocalai00dewi (find matches)
Title: From Pekin to Calais by land
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: De Windt, Harry, 1856-1933
Subjects:
Publisher: London Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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ounged slowlyalong, picking berries and smoking cigarettes, whilethe convicts in the road-way chatted, laughed andjoked among themselves (and sometimes with theirguards) in a very different frame of mind from thatdescribed by the author I have mentioned. Thewomen, it is true, marched with the men, but thebare idea of nihilist conspirators being mixedup and tramping together with the criminals isas absurd as it is incorrect. Political prisonersare allowed in Siberia to mix up with no one,but sent alone in charge of two gendarmes towhatever town or village they are destined. Notonly are they kept apart in the prisons, whereseparate cells are provided for them, but alsoon the road. ISTor are they sent with gangsof criminals, or in the prison barges, but takenby passenger-steamer to Tomsk, and thence in afour-wheeled cart or telega, to their destination.Should ifc be indispensable to send them witha gang, they travel in carts at an interval ofone or two miles from the main body. The t/^4^
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/^\ V;- IRKOUTSK. 409 gendarmes never let them out of sight, andallow them to speak to no one, though they mayretain and wear their own clothes till they arrive atthe mines, if condemned there. Many are simplysent to reside at some town or village till theirterm of punishment is over. Convicts were formerly sent to Saghalien byroad, via Irkoutsk and the Amur, but are nowtransported direct from Odessa. I was told atMoscow, that a few years lience all criminals andpolitical offenders will be sent to Saghalien by seadirect, aud banishment to Siberia become a thingof the past. For the truth of this assertion, how-ever, I cannot vouch. The usual marching is two days work to onedays rest, travelling, on an average, about eighteento twenty miles a day. There are about four hun-dred prisons in all in Siberia, in fact every villagewe passed on the road from Irkoutsk to Tomsk hadits ostrog. All, from the shores of the sea ofOkhotzk to the Oural mountains, are built exactlyalike of wood painted

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