in which the residence of persons of that class will justify the application of such a designation occupy a relatively small space in the country. It can not be denied that the transported persons, so far as they do not work in the mines, are subjected to a very strong restraint, but it is in no respect more severe than that which is imposed in the houses of correction of our highly civilized lands. Siberia is regarded by the mass of readers as a country full of discomfort and misery, and it is very hard to controvert that view. It is too much the fashion to consider the Russians as barbarians, and to accuse them of inhumanity. I feel compelled to enter a decided protest against so unjust a condemnation, and to assert as a fact that there are greater barbarians in Europe than the Russians. We shall have to apologize for the whole human race, before we can describe the Russians as the greatest barbarians. I myself formerly believed that one had only to scratch Russians to bring out their barbarism, but I have more recently had occasion to form my judgment from my own unprejudiced observations on the spot, and I consider it my duty, and the duty of every just and truthful man, to bear witness to the incontrovertible truth, and give an energetic protest against such systematic a priori depreciation of a people I have learned to respect. It is true that there are, in the great Russian Empire, as well as in other countries, men who might, should, and ought to be better, but we curiously see only the shady side of Russian conditions, and then perversely suppose that there is nothing good on the other side of the Muscovite lines. I can readily and with perfect conviction declare that, among the educated Russians of Russia, there are manifest a spirit of progress and a striving after better and higher things such as exist nowhere else, and that many of them afford rare examples of magnanimity and generosity. If we consider it from a purely geographical point of view, we shall find that Siberia is in no way, as a whole, a land of misery and terror. It is true that away up in the north are the immense ice-fields and the high moors, and the short, insignificant vegetation of the tundra does not offer an attractive picture; but there is also a larger Southern Siberia, where there is room for all kinds of enterprise, reward for every kind of work, and good living for every industrious man. Material suffering can not be spoken of in this [part of the land; but in an intellectual sense there is much lacking without which we can hardly think of life. Thus, it seems to us something to be lamented that the people are four or five weeks behind the current events of the world. But if the question is one of making a living by means of hard work and a rugged constitution, and particularly of making a new start in life, then Siberia is to be preferred to nearly every other country. Yes, a new era has dawned over Siberia, and along the highways famous for "sighs, where night and day, with the frightful clang of chains, with lamentations, groans, and agony, the prisoners were driven on by the cruel knout," are now
