Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/134

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118
SIBERIA

haps lie in leg-fetters upon a hard plank sleeping-bench. Mr. Charúshin, a political convict whose acquaintance I made in Nérchinsk, MAP OF ROUTE FROM TRÓITSKOSÁVSK TO KARÁ. was not released from his leg-fetters even when prostrated by typhus fever.

On the 15th of October Mr. Frost and I left Tróitskosávsk for Selengínsk. I felt very weak and dizzy that morning, and feared that I was about to have a relapse; but I thought that even a jolting teléga in the open air could hardly be a worse place in which to be sick than the vermin-infested room that I had so long occupied, and I determined that if I had strength enough to walk out to a vehicle I would make a start. We rode about sixty miles that day, spent the night in the post-station of Povorótnaya, and reached Selengínsk early the next forenoon. In this wretched little Buriát village there were three interesting political exiles whom I desired to see, and we stopped there