I had not before heard of the balagáns, and Mr. Pépeláief, who had to some extent taken upon himself the guidance of the party, seemed as anxious to prevent us from seeing them as he had been to prevent us from seeing the convict barge.
The balagáns we found to be long, low sheds, hastily built of rough pine boards, and inclosed with sides of thin, white cotton-sheeting. They were three in number, and were occupied exclusively by family parties, women, and children. The first one to which we came was surrounded by a foul ditch half full of filth, into which water or urine was dripping here and there from the floor under the cotton-sheeting wall. The balagán had no windows, and all the light that it received came through the thin cloth which formed the sides.
A scene of more pitiable human misery than that which was presented to us as we entered the low, wretched shed can hardly be imagined. It was literally packed with hundreds of weary-eyed men, haggard women, and wailing children, sitting or lying in all conceivable attitudes upon two long lines of rough plank sleeping-benches, which ran through it from end to end, leaving gangways about four feet in width in the middle and at the sides. I could see the sky through cracks in the roof; the floor of unmatched boards had given way here and there, and the inmates had used the holes as places into which to throw refuse and pour slops and excrement; the air was insufferably fetid on account of the presence of a great number of infants and the impossibility of giving them proper physical care; wet underclothing, which had been washed in camp-kettles, was hanging from all the cross-beams; the gangways were obstructed by piles of gray bags, bundles, bedding, and domestic utensils; and in this chaos of disorder and misery hundreds of human beings, packed together so closely that they could not move without touching one another, were trying to exist, and to perform the necessary duties of
