out on foot for the gold placers, carrying with them bread and tea for lunch. This midday meal was eaten in the open air beside a camp-fire, regardless of weather, and sometimes in fierce winter storms. Late in the afternoon the convicts returned on foot to their cells and ate on their sleeping-platforms the first hearty and nourishing meal of the day, consisting of hot soup, meat, bread, and perhaps a little more brick tea. After the evening verification they were locked up for the night, and lay down to sleep in closely packed rows on the nári, or sleeping-benches, without removing their clothing, and without making any preparations for the night beyond bringing in the paráshas, or excrement buckets, spreading down their thin patchwork crazy-quilts, and rolling up some of their spare clothing to put under their heads. The clothing furnished to a hard-labor convict at Kará consists — or should, by law, consist — of one coarse linen shirt and one pair of linen trousers every six months; one cap, one pair of thick trousers, and one gray overcoat every year; a pólushúba, or outer coat of sheepskin, every two years; one pair of bródni, or loose leather boots, every three and a half months in winter; and one pair of káti, or low shoes, every twenty-two days in summer. The quality of the food and clothing furnished by the Government may be inferred from the fact that the cost of maintaining a hard-labor convict at the mines is about $50 a year, or a little less than fourteen cents a day.[1]
After having examined the Middle Kará prison as carefully as time and circumstances would permit, we proceeded up the valley to a point just beyond the penal settlement of Upper Kará, and, leaving our vehicles there, walked down towards the river to the mines.
The auriferous sand in the valley of the Kará lies buried under a stratum of clay, gravel, or stones, varying in thickness from ten to twenty feet. The hard labor of the con-
- ↑ This was the estimate given me by Major Pótulof.
