File:Side-lights on Siberia (1898), page 262, At the pit-head.jpg

Identifier: sidelightsonsibe00simp (find matches)
Title: Side-lights on Siberia; some account of the great Siberian railroad, the prisons and exile system;
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Simpson, James Young, 1873-1934
Subjects: Prisons -- Soviet Union Exiles -- Russia (Federation) Siberia Siberia (Russia) -- Description and travel
Publisher: Edinburgh and London : W. Blackwood and Sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ubject—viz., that it was done on the principle of cibrutirpour ihtruirc. One or two of the latter, recalling thehunger strikes at Kara, suggested that the politicals wouldfind their level C(uicker when mixed up with the ordinarycriminals, from whom they would receive no sympathy inany attempted insubordination. There is probably as littlein the one opinion as in the other, and I would be inclinedto see in this procedure simply another example of the laxityand easy-going spirit that pervades the whole system, andthat would ask in this case, What is the use of making anydifference between four or five men and the other hundredcondemned to the same punishment in a small out-of-the-way place like Akatui ? It is a dull grey morning, and a heavy shower has justpassed off that leaves everything underfoot in a sodden con-dition, and yet does not relieve the intense humidity of theatmosphere to any appreciable extent. A thick mist over-hangs the hill across the valley, and is creeping slowly
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ALONG THE HORIZONTAL SHAFT. 263 toward us over the birches. The range that hems in ourside of the valley towers up behind the prison, and evenfrom that level one can see above a belt of wood the treelesssummit which is pierced by the vertical shaft. It is uselessto attempt to descend the latter: one might as soon thinkof going down a well, for the rains of times recent andremote have filled the pit with water. In walking to themine we first descend a little way, and then begin to climb.The track we follow is no better than a cart-road, and as itruns almost straight up the hillside, it forms a convenientconduit by which the rain of the previous night is rushingdown to swell the valley stream. At last, after a verst or so,we come to a small clearing in the belt of trees. In it standtwo wooden sheds, one built against the side of the hill, overthe mouth of a horizontal shaft, out of which protrude thelast few feet of a wooden railway for the trolley that rollsinto the darkness of the cav

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