belief,[1] no provision whatever has been made in them for ventilation.
When our convicts, after their toilsome march of twenty-nine versts from Tomsk, reached at last the red-roofed polu-étape of Semilúzhnaya, they were marshaled in rows in front of the palisade and again carefully counted by the under-officers in order to make sure that none had escaped, and then the wooden gate of the courtyard was thrown wide open. With a wild, mad rush and a furious clashing of chains, more than three hundred men made a sudden break for the narrow gateway, struggled, fought, and crowded through it, and then burst into the kámeras, in order to secure, by preoccupation, places on the sleeping platforms. Every man knew that if he did not succeed in preëmpting a section of the nári he would have to lie on the dirty floor, in one of the cold corridors, or out-of-doors; and many prisoners who did not care particularly where they slept sought to secure good places in order to sell them afterward for a few kopéks to less fortunate but more fastidious comrades.
At last the tumult subsided, and the convicts began their preparations for supper. Hot water was furnished by the soldiers of the convoy at an average price of about a cent a teakettleful; brick" tea was made by the prisoners who were wealthy enough to afford such a luxury;[2] soup was obtained by a few from the soldiers' kitchen; and the tired exiles, sitting on the sleeping-platforms or on the floor, ate
- ↑ The well-known Russian author Maxímof cites a case in which 512 human beings were packed into one of these étapes in Western Siberia ("Siberia and Penal Servitude," by S. Maxímof, Vol. I, p. 81. St. Petersburg, 1871); and Mr. M. I. Orfánof, a Russian officer who served ten years in Siberia, reports that an East-Siberian étape (at Vérkhni Údinsk), which was intended for 140 prisoners, never contained, when he visited it, less than 500, and sometimes held more than 800. ("Afar," by M. I. Orfánof, p. 220. St. Petersburg, 1883.)
- ↑ Brick tea is made of a cheap grade of tea-leaves, mixed with stems and a little adhesive gum, and pressed into hard dry cakes about eight inches in length, five inches in width, and an inch and a half in thickness. It resembles in appearance and consistency the blackest kind of "plug" tobacco.
