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Leaving Ebelach the lakes became so numerous that the country may also be described as one vast sheet of water with intervals of land. We must have crossed over a hundred lakes of various sizes between the stancia of Khatignak and Sredni-Kolymsk, a distance of about five hundred versts. The majority were carpeted with snow, and afforded good going; but smooth black ice formed the surface of others, swept by the wind, and these worked sad havoc amongst our deer, of which four, with broken legs, had to be destroyed. Nearing Khatignak we crossed the Indigirka39 river, which rises in the Stanovoi range and flows through many hundred miles of desolation to the Arctic Ocean. The country here is more hilly, but sparse forests of stunted bushes and withered looking pine-trees were now the sole vegetation, and these were often replaced by long stretches of snowy plain. A long stage of seventy-five versts without a break brought us to Khatignak, where another reindeer dropped dead from exhaustion before the door of the stancia.

Some miles beyond Khatignak another chain of mountains was crossed, although downs would more aptly describe the Alazenski range. But the snow lay deep and we were compelled to make the ascent on foot, a hard walk of five hours in heavy furs under a blazing sun. On the summit is a wooden cross marking the boundary between the Kolyma and Verkhoyansk districts. The cross was hung with all kinds of rubbish, copper coins, scraps of iron, and shreds of coloured cloth suspended by horse-hair, which had been placed there by Yakute travellers to propitiate the gods and ensure a prosperous journey. The cross, as a Christian symbol, did not seem to occur to the worshippers of the Shaman faith, who had left these offerings. We slept on the northern side of the mountain at a povarnia renowned even amongst the natives for its revolting accommodation. In the Yakute language "Siss-Ana" signifies literally "one hundred doors," and the name was given to this sieve-like structure on account of the numberless and icy draughts which assail its occupants. The place is said to be accursed, and I could well believe it, for although a roaring fire blazed throughout the night, the walls and ceiling were thickly coated with rime in the morning, and towards midnight a bottle of "Harvey's Sauce" exploded like a dynamite shell, not ten feet from the hearth! The condiment was far too precious to waste, so it was afterwards carried in a tin drinking-cup, in a frozen state, and not poured out, but bitten off, at meals!

Between Siss-Ana and the stancia of Malofskaya the country becomes much wilder, and forests dwindle away as we near the timber line. Occasionally not a tree would be visible from sled to horizon, only a level plain of snow, which under the influence of wind, sunshine and passing clouds would present as many moods and aspects as the sea. On one day it would appear as smooth and unbroken as a village pond, on another the white expanse would be broken by ripples, solid wavelets stirred up by a light breeze, while after a storm, billows and rollers in the shape of great drifts and hillocks would obstruct our progress. As we neared the frozen ocean many storms were encountered, and approaching Sredni-Kolymsk these occurred almost daily as furious blizzards. On such occasions we always lay to, for it was impossible to travel against the overwhelming force of the wind. Frequently these tempests occurred in otherwise fine weather, and on such days the snow did not fall but was whirled up from the ground in dense clouds, and during the lulls, a momentary glance of sunshine and blue sky had a strange effect. And, as we gradually crept further and further north, a sense of unspeakable loneliness seemed to increase with every mile we covered. Let the reader try and realise that during the journey from Verkhoyansk of over one thousand miles, we had seen perhaps fifty human beings and—a dead ermine! When at Irkutsk I spoke of journeying to Sredni-Kolymsk I was regarded as a lunatic by the majority of my hearers. Yakutsk was their end of the world! And now that cold, monotony and silence were gradually telling upon the brain and nerves, I sometimes questioned, in moments of despondency, whether my Irkutsk friends were not right when they exclaimed: "You are mad to go there." There were compensations, notwithstanding, for a lover of Nature—the sapphire skies and dazzling sunshine, the marvellous sunsets under which the snowy desert would flash like a kaleidoscope of delicate colours, and last, but not least, the glorious starlit nights, when the little Pleiades would seem to glitter so near that you had but to reach out a hand and pick them out of the inky sky.

On March 14 a large caravan hove in sight, composed of perhaps a score of horse-sleds, which, as we neared it, halted, and a European emerged from the leading sled to greet us. This bearded giant in tattered furs proved to be the Russian naturalist, Yokelson, returning to Europe after a two years' exploration in North-Eastern Siberia—principally in the neighbourhood of Kamtchatka and the Okhotsk Sea. From Gijiga, Yokelson had struck in a north-westerly direction to Sredni-Kolymsk, and was bringing home a valuable collection for the society which had employed him in the United States. The Russian could only give us the worst of news from the Kolyma, where my expedition was expected by the ispravnik, although the latter had assured Yokelson that our projected journey to Bering Straits was out of the question. A famine was still raging, there were very few dogs, and those half starved and useless, and neither this official nor any one else in the place knew anything about the country east of Sredni-Kolymsk. Three years previously a Russian missionary had started with a driver on a dog-sled to travel from the Kolyma along the coast to the nearest Tchuktchi settlement, about 600 miles away, and the pair had never been heard of since. This was the cheerful information which, happily, the Russian traveller imparted to me in strict privacy.

Shortly after leaving Yokelson we crossed the Utchingoikel, or "Beautiful Lake," so called from its picturesque surroundings in summer time. At Andylach horses were harnessed to the sleds and we used no more deer, there being no moss between here and Sredni-Kolymsk. The change was not a desirable one, for the Yakute horse is a terrible animal. "Generally he won't move until your sled is upset, and then he runs away and it's impossible to stop him." So wrote Mr. Gilder, the American explorer, and his experience was ours. But Gilder was compelled to ride several stages and thus graphically describes his sufferings: "The Yakute horse can scarcely be called a horse, he is a domesticated wild animal. A coat or two was placed under the wooden saddle, so that the writer was perched high in the air like on a camel. The stirrups were of wood, and it was an art to mount, for they depended immediately from the pommel. When you mounted ten to one that you fell in front of the pommel, and as you could not get back over a pommel ten inches high you slid over the horse's head to the ground and tried again. Yakute horses are docile, provokingly so, for they have not enough animation to be wicked. The favourite gait is a walk so slow and deliberate that you lose all patience, and, if possible, raise a trot which is like nothing known to the outside world; your horse rises in the air and straightens out his legs and then comes down upon the end which has the foot on it, the recoil bouncing you high up from your seat just in time to meet the saddle as it is coming up for the next step. It's like constant bucking, and yet you don't go four miles an hour!"

I could sympathise with the writer of the above, for during the first day's work with these brutes I was upset five times, and felt towards evening like an invalid after a hard day with hounds.

Crossing lake after lake (this is a Siberian Finland) with intervals of forest and barren plain, we reached the last stancia of any size, Ultin. This is about two hundred miles from Sredni-Kolymsk, and the rest-house showed signs of approaching civilisation, or rather Russian humanity. For the floor was actually clean, there was a table and two chairs, and a cheap oleograph of his Majesty the Emperor pinned to the plank wall. The place seemed palatial after the miserable shelters we had shared, and I seized the opportunity of a wash in warm water before confronting the authorities at Sredni-Kolymsk.

On March 17 Atetzia was reached. This is, indeed, a land of contradictions, for, although only ten miles from Sredni-Kolymsk, the povarnia here was the filthiest we entered throughout the journey from Verkhoyansk. It contained two occupants, an old and ragged Yakute woman and a dead deer in an advanced state of decomposition. The former lay upon the mud floor groaning and apparently in great pain, with one arm around the neck of the putrid carcase beside her, and I inferred that she had been poisoned by partaking of the disgusting remains, probably in a raw condition, for there were no signs of a fire. But the medicine-chest alleviated her sufferings, and we left the poor wretch full of gratitude and in comparative comfort. The same afternoon we reached our destination, having accomplished the journey from Verkhoyansk in eighteen days, although four months had been freely predicted as its probable duration!

CHAPTER VIII
AN ARCTIC INFERNO

Note.—The information contained in the following chapter was chiefly obtained from Government officials stationed at Sredni-Kolymsk, the facts being afterwards verified, or otherwise, by political exiles at the same place by my request.

We reached Sredni-Kolymsk early in March on a glorious day, one of those peculiar to the Arctic regions, when the pure, crisp air exhilarates like champagne, and nature sparkles like a diamond in the sunshine. But as we neared it, the sight of that dismal drab settlement seemed to darken the smiling landscape like a coffin which has been carried by mistake into a brilliant ball-room. I once thought the acme of desolation had been reached at Verkhoyansk, but to drive into this place was like entering a cemetery. Imagine a double row of squalid log-huts, with windows of ice, some of which, detached by the warm spring sunshine, have fallen to the ground. This is the main "street," at one extremity of which stands a wooden church in the last stage of decay, at the other the house of the Chief of Police, the only decent building in the place. So low indeed are these in stature that the settlement is concealed, two or three hundred yards away, by the stunted trees around it. Only the rickety spire of a chapel is visible, and this overtops the neighbouring dwellings by only a few feet. Picture perhaps a score of other huts as squalid as the rest scattered around an area of half a mile, and you have before you the last "civilised" outpost in Northern Siberia. All around it a desolate plain, fringed by grey-green Arctic vegetation and bisected by the frozen river Kolyma; over all the silence of the grave. Such is Sredni-Kolymsk, as it appeared to me even in that brilliant sunshine—the most gloomy, God-forsaken spot on the face of this earth.

At first sight the place looked like an encampment deserted by trappers, or some village decimated by deadly sickness; anything but the abode of human beings. For a while our arrival attracted no attention, but presently skin-clad forms emerged here and there from the miserable huts, and haggard faces nodded a cheerless welcome as we drove past them towards the police office. Here a dwelling was assigned to us, and we took up our residence in quarters colder and filthier than any we had occupied since leaving Verkhoyansk. And yet our lodgings were preferable to many of those occupied by the exiles.

During our visit Sredni-Kolymsk had a population of about three hundred souls, of whom only fourteen were political offenders. The remainder were officials, criminal colonists, and natives of the Yakute, Lamute, or Tunguse races. The Cossacks here subsist chiefly by trapping and fishing, but are also nominally employed as guards—a useless precaution, as starvation would inevitably follow an attempt to escape. The criminal colonists are allotted a plot of ground in this district after a term of penal servitude, and I have never beheld, even in Sakhalin, such a band of murderous-looking ruffians as were assembled here. They were a constant terror to the exiles, and even officials rarely ventured out after dark.

The police officials here were sour, stern-visaged individuals, and our welcome was as frigid as it had been warm at Verkhoyansk. The Chief of Police had recently met his death under tragic circumstances, which I shall presently describe, and I was received by the acting ispravnik, whose grim manners and appearance were in unpleasant contrast to those of our kind old friend Katcherofsky. Although this natural prison had no bolts and bars or other evidences of a penal system, the very air seemed tainted with mystery and oppression, and the melancholy row of huts to scrawl the word "captivity" across the desolate landscape. Even the ispravnik's room, with its heavy black furniture and sombre draperies, was suggestive of the Inquisition, and I searched instinctively around me for the rack and thumbscrews. How many a poor wretch had stood in this gloomy apartment waiting patiently, after months of unspeakable suffering, for some filthy hovel wherein to lay his head. It seemed to me that crape and fetters would more fittingly have adorned those whitewashed walls than a sacred Ikon encrusted with jewels, and heavily gilt oil-paintings of their Imperial Majesties! A couple of tables littered with papers occupied the centre of the room, and at one of these sat the ispravnik, a wooden-faced peremptory person in dark green tunic and gold shoulder straps. A couple of clerks, also in uniform, were busily engaged at the other desk, sorting the mail which our Cossack had brought, and in expectation of which a group of poorly clad, shivering exiles were already waiting in the piercing cold outside. But when we left this place ten days later not a single letter had reached its destination, although the post-bag contained over a hundred addressed to the various politicals.

Even the Governor-General's all-powerful document produced little effect here, for the ispravnik appeared to regard himself as beyond the reach of even the Tsar's Viceroy, which, indeed, from an inaccessible point of view, he undoubtedly was. "You cannot possibly go," was the curt rejoinder to my request for dogs and drivers to convey us to the Bering Straits. "In the first place, a famine is raging here and you will be unable to procure provisions. Stepan tells me that you have barely enough food with you to last for two weeks, and it would take you at least twice that time to reach the nearest Tchuktchi settlement, which we know to be beyond Tchaun Bay, six hundred miles away. A year ago two of our people tried to reach it, and perished, although they left here well supplied with dogs and provisions. For all I know the Kor (which has decimated this district) may have killed off the coast natives or driven them into the interior of the country, and then where would you be, even supposing you reached Tchaun Bay, with no shelter, no food, and another month at least through an icy waste to Bering Straits. As for dogs, most of ours have perished from the scarcity of fish caught last summer; I don't think there are thirty sound dogs in the place, and you would need at least three times that number. Reindeer, even if we could get them, are out of the question, for there is not an ounce of moss on the coast. But even with dogs forthcoming I doubt whether you would find drivers to accompany you, for all our people are in deadly terror of the Tchuktchis. No, no! Take my advice and give up this mad project even if you have to remain here throughout the summer. It will at any rate be better than leaving your bones on the shores of the Arctic Ocean."

My experience of Russian ispravniks is varied and extensive, and I therefore realised that argument was useless with this adamantine official, whose petty tyranny was evidently not confined to his dealing with his exiles. I therefore returned to our cheerless quarters in anything but a pleasant frame of mind, and almost convinced that our overland expedition was now finally wrecked. The outlook was not a cheerful one, for the homeward journey would in itself be miserable enough, without the addition of floods and a possible detention through a sultry, mosquito-infested summer at Verkhoyansk. It has seldom been my lot to pass such a depressing evening as that which followed my interview with the ispravnik, but the prospect of an entire summer's imprisonment in Arctic wilds affected us far less than the failure of the expedition. Harding probably echoed the feelings of all when he exclaimed with a gesture of despair: "When we set out on this job the devil must have taken the tickets!"

Stepan alone was silent and taciturn. When I awoke next morning at daybreak he had disappeared, presumably to procure reindeer for the return journey. But the season was now so far advanced that the ispravnik called during the day to beg me not to risk a spring journey to Yakutsk. It was far better, he averred, to remain here and travel back in safety and comparative comfort in the late fall. It would even be preferable to attempt the summer journey down the Kolyma River and over the Stanovoi Mountains to Ola on the Okhotsk Sea. The trip had certainly never been made, but then no more had our projected one to America, and how infinitely preferable to arrive at Ola, where we might only have to wait a few days for a steamer, than to start off on a wild goose chase to Bering Straits which we should probably never reach at all. "Besides," continued the ispravnik, "the Ola trip would be so easy by comparison with the other. No drivers and dog-sleds to be procured, merely a flat-bottomed boat which could be put together in a few days." From my friend's eagerness to avoid trouble of any kind I now strongly suspected that laziness was the chief cause of our present dilemma, although this official's demeanour was so much more conciliatory than on the previous day, that I fancied that a night's reflection had revealed the unpleasant results that might follow my unfavourable report of his conduct at Irkutsk. Although we sat for hours that day consuming tea and innumerable cigarettes, I was no nearer the solution of the problem at sunset than at dawn. And had I but known it, all the time I was vainly urging this stolid boor to reconsider his decision, help was arriving from a totally unexpected quarter. I discussed a cheerless and silent meal with my companions, and we were turning in that night when Stepan strolled in, cool and imperturbable as usual. He even divested himself of furs and helped himself to food before making an announcement which sent the blood tingling through my veins with excitement and renewed hope.

"I have got the dogs," said the Cossack quietly, with his mouth full of fish and black bread. "Sixty-four of them; we can go on now!" The news seemed too good to be true, until Stepan explained that he had travelled thirty miles down the river that day to obtain the animals from a friend. The dogs were poor, weakly brutes, and the price asked an exorbitant one, but I would gladly have paid it thrice over, or pushed on towards our goal, if need be, with a team of tortoises. Even now I anticipated some difficulty with the ispravnik, and was relieved when, the next morning, he consented without demur to our departure. Indeed, I rather fancy he was grateful to the Cossack for ridding him so easily of his troublesome guests. The indefatigable Stepan had also procured three drivers, so that I had no further anxiety on that score. But several days must elapse before sufficiently strong sleds for our purpose could be constructed. I therefore resolved to utilise the time by making the acquaintance of the exiles and studying the conditions of their existence in this out-of-the-way corner of creation. This was at first no easy matter, for if the officials here were suspicious the politicals were a thousand times more so, of one who had invariably written in favour of Russian prisons. Most of these "politicals" were familiar with Mr. Kennan's indictment and my subsequent defence of the Russian exile system, but the fact that my party was the first to visit this place for a period of over thirty years imbued an investigation of its penal system with such intense interest that, notwithstanding many rebuffs, I finally gained the confidence of all those who had been banished to this Arctic inferno. And the information which I now place before the reader is the more valuable in that it was derived, in the first place, from an official source.

I should perhaps state that my experience of Russian prisons dates from the year 1890. Mr. Kennan's report on the conditions of the penal establishments throughout Siberia was then arousing indignation throughout civilised Europe, and his heart-rending accounts of the sufferings endured by political and criminal offenders obviously called for some sort of an explanation from the Tsar's Government. A mere official denial of the charges would have been useless; a disinterested person was needed to report upon the prisons and étapes which had been described as hells upon earth, and to either confirm or gainsay the statements made by the American traveller. The evidence of a Russian subject would, for obvious reasons, have met with incredulity, and it came to pass, therefore, that through the agency of Madame de Novikoff, herself a prison Directress, I was selected for a task, which although extremely interesting, subjected me to much unfavourable criticism on my return to England. Some yellow journals even went so far as to suggest that I had received payment from the Russian Government for "whitewashing" its penal system, but I fancy the following pages should conclusively disprove the existence of any monetary transactions, past or present, between the Tsar's officials and myself, to say nothing of the fact that my favourable account of the prisons of Western Siberia has been endorsed by such reliable and well-known English travellers as Dr. Lansdell and Mr. J. Y. Simpson. In fairness, however, to Mr. Kennan, I should state that my inspection of the Tomsk forwarding prison and similar establishments was made fully five years after his visit.

In 1894 I again proceeded to Siberia (under similar conditions) to report upon the penal settlement on the Island of Sakhalin, the political prison of Akatui, and the mines, where only convict labour is employed, of Eastern Siberia. On this occasion I travelled from Japan to the Island of Sakhalin on board a Russian convict ship, a voyage which convinced me that the Russian criminal convict is as humanely treated and well cared for at sea as he is on land, which says a great deal. I have always maintained that were I sentenced to a term of penal servitude I would infinitely sooner serve it in (some parts of) Siberia than in England. It is not now my intention, however, to deal with the criminal question, but to describe, as accurately as I can, the life led by a handful of political exiles.

There are now only two prisons throughout the Russian Empire where political prisoners are actually incarcerated,40 one is the fortress of Schlüsselburg on Lake Ladoga within a short journey of St. Petersburg, the other the prison of Akatui, in the trans-Baikal province, about three hundred miles east of Irkutsk. Schlüsselburg I have never visited, but I inspected the prison of Akatui, and conversed freely with the politicals within its walls. The majority were men of education, but dangerous conspirators, condemned to long terms of penal servitude. The strictest prison discipline, the wearing of fetters, hard labour in the silver mines, and association at night in public cells with the vilest criminals was the lot of those whom I saw at Akatui, and yet I doubt if any of these men would willingly have changed places with their exiled comrades "domiciled" in comparative liberty at Sredni-Kolymsk. For the stupendous distance of the latter place from civilisation surrounds it with even more gloom and mystery than the Russian Bastille on Lake Ladoga, which is the most dreaded prison of all.

At the time of our visit, the exiles here numbered twelve men and two women, only two of whom had been banished for actual crime. One of these was Madame Akimova, who was found with explosives concealed about her person at the coronation of Nicholas II., and the other, Zimmermann, convicted of complicity in the destruction of the public workshops at Lodz by dynamite a few years ago. With these two exceptions the Sredni-Kolymsk exiles were absolutely guiltless of active participation in the revolutionary movement, indeed, most of them appeared to be quiet, intelligent men, of moderate political views who would probably have contributed to the welfare and prosperity of any country but their own. Only one or two openly professed what may be called anarchistic views, and these were young students, recent arrivals, who looked more like robbing an orchard than threatening a throne. So far as I could see, however, most of these so-called political offenders had been consigned to this living tomb merely for openly expressing opinions in favour of a constitution and freedom of speech. And strange as it may seem, some of them were occasionally almost cheerful under circumstances that would utterly annihilate the health and spirits of an average Englishman. But even European Russia is an unutterably dreary land in a stranger's eyes, which perhaps accounts for this remarkable fact.

The most pitiable characteristic about Sredni-Kolymsk is perhaps the morbid influence of the place and its surroundings on the mental powers. The first thing noticeable amongst those who had passed some years here was the utter vacancy of mind, even of men who in Europe had shone in the various professions. Amongst them was a well-known Polish author,41 who, upon his arrival here, only three years ago, set to work upon an historical novel to lighten the leaden hours of exile. But it must be more than disheartening to realise that your work, however good it may be, will never reach the printer's hands. In six months the book was thrown aside in disgust, and in less than a year afterwards the writer's mind had become so unhinged by the maddening monotony of life, that he would, in civilisation, have been placed under restraint. I met also a once famous professor of anatomy (who had been here for seven years), and who, although completely indifferent to the latest discoveries of surgical science, displayed an eager interest as to what was going on at the Paris music-halls. Indeed, I can safely state that, with three exceptions, there was not a perfectly sane man or woman amongst all the exiles I saw here.

"A couple of years usually makes them shaky," said an official, "and the strongest-minded generally become childish when they have been here for five or six."

"But why is it?" I asked.

My friend walked to the window and pointed to the mournful street, the dismal hovels, and frozen river darkening in the dusk.

"That," he said, "and the awful silence. Day after day, year after year, not a sound. I have stood in that street at mid-day and heard a watch tick in my pocket. Think of it, Mr. de Windt. I myself arrived here only a few months ago, but even I shall soon have to get away for a change, or–" and he tapped his forehead significantly.

The insanity which I found so prevalent amongst the exiles here is no doubt largely due to physical privation. When a man is banished for political reasons to Siberia, his property is confiscated to the uttermost farthing by the Russian Government, which provides a fixed monthly allowance for his maintenance in exile. At Sredni-Kolymsk it is nineteen roubles a month, or about £1 16s., an absurdly inadequate allowance in a place where the necessaries of life are always at famine prices. During our stay here flour was selling at a rouble a pound, and an abominable kind of brick tea at two roubles a pound, while candles, sugar, and salt cost exactly five times as much as at Yakutsk, where European prices are already trebled. The price of deer-meat was, therefore, prohibitive, and the exiles were living throughout the winter upon fish caught the preceding summer, unsalted, and therefore quite unfit for human consumption. And this at mid-day was their sole nourishment, breakfast and supper consisting of one glass of weak tea and a small piece of gritty black bread! Sugar was such a luxury that a lump was held in the teeth while the liquid was swallowed, one piece thus serving for several days in succession. Were a house and clothing provided, even the miserable pittance provided by the Government might suffice to keep body and soul together, but this is not the case. Some of the exiles were accordingly occupying almost roofless sheds that had been vacated by the Yakutes, while many were so poorly clad that in winter time they were unable to leave their miserable huts.

The house occupied by Monsieur Strajevsky, a Polish gentleman, whose personality I shall always recall with sincere regard and sympathy, will serve as a type of the better class of dwelling occupied by these exiles. It consisted of a low, mud-plastered log hut about 6 ft. in height, 14 ft. by 10 ft. was the measurement of the one room it contained, with a floor of beaten earth, glistening with the filth of years. A yellow light filtered dimly, even on the brightest day, through the slab of ice which formed the solitary window, but it revealed only too clearly the dirt and squalor of the room. Some planks on trestles formed my friend's sleeping-place, and more planks strewn with books and writing materials, his table. An old kerosene tin was the only chair, and as I seated myself my friend went to the mud hearth and kindled a few sticks, which burned brightly for a few moments and then flickered out. He then left the hut, climbed on to the roof, and closed the chimney with a bundle of rags. This is the Yakute mode of warming an apartment, and it is practised for economy, for Sredni-Kolymsk is near the tree line, and firewood, like everything else, is an expensive article. Even timber is so costly here that towards sunset every inhabitant of Sredni-Kolymsk fired up preparatory to blocking up his chimney for the night. The outlook from our hut was at this hour a weird and unique one, as an avenue of fires rose from the mud hovels and ascended in sheets of flame to the starlit sky. But this illumination was stifled in a few seconds by dense clouds of smoke. This method of obtaining warmth is scarcely a success, for I sat during my visit to Strajevsky in an atmosphere minus 47° Fahrenheit by my thermometer. And in this miserable den my Polish friend, once a prosperous barrister in Warsaw, had passed eight of the best years of his life, and is still, if alive, dragging out a hopeless existence.

39.The now obsolete town of Zashiversk was situated on the right bank of this river.
40.Political prisoners are no longer confined in the fortress of SS. Peter and Paul. Short terms of imprisonment previous to banishment to Siberia are served in the citadels of Warsaw and other cities, but Schlüsselburg and Akatui are the only establishments now used as political prisons in the real sense of the word.
41.I was requested to suppress the name.
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