Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/257

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TWO COLONIES OF POLITICAL EXILES
235

they were fully abreast of the Semipalátinsk exiles, and that I should have to look for the wild, fanatical nihilists of my imagination in some part of Siberia more remote than Ulbínsk.

We talked in the post station until about nine o'clock, and then, at Mr. Blok's suggestion, made a round of calls

THE VALLEY OF ULBÍNSK.

upon the other political exiles in the village. They were all living in wretchedly furnished log houses rented from the Ulbínsk Cossacks, and were surrounded by unmistakable evidences of hardship, privation, and straitened circumstances; but they seemed to be trying to make the best of their situation, and I cannot remember to have heard anywhere that night a bitter complaint or a single reference to