Siberia and the Exile System/Volume 2/Chapter XII
CHAPTER XII
OUR LAST DAYS IN SIBERIA
MINUSÍNSK, where we made our last stop in Eastern Siberia, is a thriving little town of 5000 or 6000 inhabitants, situated in the fertile valley of the upper Yeniséi, 3200 miles from the capital of the Empire and 150 miles from the boundary-line of Mongolia. It corresponds very nearly with Liverpool in latitude and with Calcutta in longitude, and is distant from St. Petersburg, in traveling time, about twenty days. Owing to the fact that it lies far south of the main line of transcontinental communication it has not often been visited by foreign travelers, and at the time of our visit was little known even to the people of European Russia; but it had particular interest for us, partly because it contained the largest and most important museum of archeology and natural history in Siberia, and partly because it was the place of exile of a number of prominent Russian liberals and revolutionists.
We reached the little town about half-past five o'clock in the morning. The columns of smoke that were rising here and there from the chimneys of the log houses showed that some, at least, of the inhabitants were already astir; but as the close-fitting board shutters had not been taken down from the windows there were no lights visible, the wide streets were empty, and the whole town had the lonely, deserted appearance that most Siberian towns have when seen early in the morning by the faint light of a waning moon. OUK LAST DAYS IN SIBEKIA 387 "Where do you order me to go?" inquired our driver, reining in his horses and turning half around in his seat. "To a hotel," I said. " There 's a hotel here, is n't there?" "There used to be," he replied, doubtfully. "Whether there 's one now or not, God knows ; but if your high no- bility has no friends to go to, we '11 see." We were provided with letters of introduction to several well-known citizens of Minusinsk, and I had no doubt that at the house of any one of them we should be cordially and hospitably received; but it is rather awkward and embar- rassing to have to present a letter of introduction, before daylight in the morning, to a gentleman whom you have just dragged out of bed ; and I resolved that, if we should fail to find a hotel, I would have the driver take us to the Government post-station. We had no legal right to claim shelter there, because we were traveling with "free" horses and without a padarozhnaija; but experience had taught me that a Siberian post-station master, for a suitable consider- ation, will shut his eyes to the strictly legal aspect of any case and admit the justice and propriety of any claim. After turning three or four corners our driver stopped in front of a large two-story log building, near the center of the town, which he said "used to be " a hotel. He pounded and banged at an inner courtyard door until he had roused all the dogs in the neighborhood, and was then informed by a sleepy and exasperated servant that this was not a hotel but a private house, and that if we continued to bat- ter down people's doors in that way in the middle of the night we should n't need a hotel, because we would be con- ducted by the police to suitable apartments in a commodi- ous jail. This was not very encouraging, but our driver, after exchanging a few back-handed compliments with the ill-tempered servant, took us to another house in a different part of the town, where he banged and pounded at another door with undiminished vigor and resolution. The man who responded on this occasion said that he did keep "rooms for arrivers," but that, unfortunately, the full complement of "arrivers" had already arrived, and his rooms were all occupied. He suggested that we try the house of one Soldátof. As there seemed to be nothing better to do, away we went to Soldátof's, where at last, in the second story of an old weather-beaten log building, we found a large, well-lighted, and apparently clean room which was offered to us, with board for two, at seventy cents a day. We accepted the terms with joy, and ordered our driver to empty the pavóska and bring up the baggage. Our newly found room was uncarpeted, had no window-curtains, and contained neither wash-stand nor bed; but it made up for its deficiencies in these respects by offering for our contemplation an aged oleander in a green tub, two pots of geraniums, and a somewhat anemic vine of English ivy climbing feebly up a cotton string to look at itself in a small wavy mirror. Of course no reasonable traveler would complain of the absence of a bed when he could sit up all night and look at an oleander; and as for the washstand — it would have been wholly superfluous in a hotel where you could go out to the barn at any time and get one of the hostlers to come in and pour water on your hands out of a gangrened brass teapot.
As soon as our baggage had been brought in we lay down on the floor, just as we were, in fur caps, sheepskin overcoats, and felt boots, and slept soundly until after ten o'clock.
A little before noon, having changed our dress and made ourselves as presentable as possible, we went out to make a call or two and to take a look at the place. We did not think it prudent to present our letters of introduction to the political exiles until we could ascertain the nature of the relations that existed between them and the other citizens of the town, and could learn something definite with regard to the character and disposition of the isprávnik, or district chief of police. We therefore went to call first upon the well-known Siberian naturalist, Mr. N. M. Martiánof, the founder of the Minusínsk museum, to whom we had a note of introduction from the editor of the St. Petersburg Eastern Review. We found Mr. Martiánof busily engaged in compounding medicines in the little drug-store of which he was the proprietor, not far from the Soldátof hotel. He gave us a hearty welcome, and said that he had seen references to our movements occasionally in the Tomsk and
(From our window at Soldátof's.)
Irkútsk newspapers, but that he had feared we would return to St. Petersburg without paying Minusínsk a visit. We replied, of course, that we could not think of leaving Siberia until we had seen the Minusínsk museum, and made the acquaintance of the man whose name was so intimately and so honorably associated with it, and with the history of natural science in that remote part of the Empire. In Tomsk, in Krasnoyársk, in Irkútsk, and even in St. Petersburg, we had heard the most favorable accounts of the museum, and we anticipated great pleasure in going through it, and especially in examining its anthropological and archæological collections, which, we had been informed, were very rich.
Mr. Martiánof seemed gratified to know that we had heard the museum well spoken of in other parts of the Empire, but said, modestly, that it might disappoint travelers who were acquainted with the great scientific collections of America and Europe, and that he hoped we would make due allowance for the difficulties with which they had to contend and the scantiness of their pecuniary resources. It was, as yet, he said, only the kernel or nucleus of a museum, and its chief importance lay in the promise that it held out of becoming something better and more complete in the future. Still, such as it was, we should see it; and if we were at leisure he would take us to it at once. We replied that we had nothing better to do, and in five minutes we were on our way to the museum building.
The Minusínsk museum, of which all educated Siberians are now deservedly proud, is a striking illustration of the results that may be attained by unswerving devotion to a single purpose, and steady, persistent work for its accomplishment. It is, in every sense of the word, the creation of Mr. Martiánof, and it represents, almost exclusively, his own individual skill and labor. When he emigrated to Siberia, in 1874, there was not a public institution of the kind, so far as I know, in all the country, except the half-dead, half-alive mining museum in Barnaül; and the idea of promoting popular education and cultivating a taste for science by making and exhibiting classified collections of plants, minerals, and archæological relics had hardly suggested itself even to teachers by profession. Mr. Martiánof, who was a graduate of the Kazán university, and whose scientific specialty was botany, began, almost as soon as he reached Minusínsk, to make collections with a view to the ultimate establishment of a museum. He was not a man of means or leisure. On the contrary, he was wholly dependent upon his little drug-store for support, and was closely confined to it during the greater part of every day. By denying himself sleep, however, and rising very early in the morning, he managed to get a few hours every day for scientific work, and in those few hours he made a dozen or more identical collections of such plants and minerals as could be found within an hour's walk of the town. After classifying and labeling the specimens carefully, he sent one of these collections to every country school-teacher in the Minusínsk district, with a request that the scholars be asked to make similar collections in the regions accessible to them, and that the specimens thus obtained be sent to him for use in the projected museum. The teachers and scholars responded promptly and sympathetically to the appeal thus made, and in a few months collections of flowers and rocks began to pour into Mr. Martiánofs little drug-store from all parts of the district. Much of this material, of course, had been collected without adequate knowledge or discrimination, and was practically worthless; but some of it was of great value, and even the unavailable specimens were proofs of sympathetic interest and readiness to coöperate on the part not only of the scholars, but of their relatives and friends. In the mean time Mr. Martiánof had been sending similar but larger and more complete collections to the Imperial Academy of Sciences, to various Russian museums, to his own alma mater, and to the professors of natural history in several of the great Russian universities, with a proposition in every case to exchange them for such duplicates of specimens from other parts of the Empire as they might have to spare. In this way, by dint of unwearied personal industry, Mr. Martiánof gathered, in the course of two years, a collection of about 1500 objects, chiefly in the field of natural history, and a small but valuable library of 100 or more scientific books, many of which were not to be found elsewhere in Siberia. In 1876 he made a formal presentation of all this material to the Minusínsk town council for the benefit of the public. A charter was then obtained; two rooms in one of the school-buildings were set apart as a place for the exhibition of the specimens, and the museum was thrown open. From that time forth its growth was steady and rapid. The cultivated people of Minusínsk rallied to Mr. Martiánof's support, and contributions in the shape of books, anthropological material, educational appliances, and money soon began to come from all parts of the town and district, as well as from many places in the neighboring provinces.
In 1879, only three years after its foundation, the museum contained more than 6000 objects, and on the shelves of the library connected with it there were 3100 volumes. At the time of our visit it had outgrown its accommodations in the school-house, and had been removed to the building of the town council, where it occupied six or seven rooms and was still very much crowded. Its contents were classified in six departments, or sections, known respectively as the departments of natural history, ethnology, archæology, rural economy [including farm and household implements and utensils], technology, and educational appliances. The department of natural history, which comprised the plants, rocks, and animals of the district, was the largest, of course, and the most complete; but to me the department of archæology was by far the most important and interesting, for the reason that it contained a very remarkable collection of weapons and implements found in the kurgáns and burial-mounds of the Yeniséi valley, and extending in an unbroken series from the flint arrow-heads and stone celts of the prehistoric aborigines, down through the copper and bronze age, to the rusty pikeheads and chain-mail shirts of the Cossack invaders. There were nearly 4000 specimens. in this department, and the group that included the pure copper and bronze articles was extremely varied and interesting. Among the things that particularly attracted my attention, and that I still remember, were axes of pure copper made in the form of preëxisting nephrite celts, and evidently, in pattern, a development from them; axes of pure copper that had partially returned to the form of ore and that looked as if they were composed of metal blended with a substance like malachite; pure-copper knives or daggers with traces of an ornamental pattern in vitreous enamel on the handles, which showed that, in this part of Siberia, the art of enameling preceded even the early acquired art of making bronze; three-tined table-forks; hinged molds of bronze in which, apparently, axes had been cast; a bronze trolling fish-hook and spoon; a bronze pot-lid with the figure of an elephant on it for a handle; earthen jars molded in the form of earlier skin bottles; gypsum death-masks found on the skulls of skeletons in the burial-mounds; and, finally, a quantity of inscriptions, on stone slabs, in characters that seemed to me to resemble the Scandinavian runes.[1] In the department of ethnology the life of the aborigines of Siberia, on its material side, was illustrated very fully by six or eight hundred tools, implements, weapons, utensils, and articles of dress, and there was also an interesting collection of objects made and used by a wild, isolated, and almost unknown tribe known as the Soyóts, who live a nomadic life in the rugged mountainous region of the upper Yeniséi in northern Mongolia. Among these Soyót objects I was surprised to find a big rudely fashioned jewsharp — an instrument that I had never seen in Russia — a set of strange-looking chessmen in which the bishops were double-humped Bactrian camels and the pawns were dogs or wolves, and a set of wooden dice and chips used in playing a game that, as nearly as I could find out, was a Mongolian variety of backgammon. Mr. Martiánof had just been describing the Soyóts to me as the wildest, fiercest, most savage native tribe in all northern Mongolia; but after I discovered that they understood the value of doublets in backgammon, knew how to checkmate in three moves with a two-humped Bactrian camel, and could play sweet Mongolian æeolian airs on the identical jewsharp of my boyhood, I felt as if I had 
A SOYÓT. suddenly discovered a long lost tribe of Asiatic cousins. It was of no use, after that, to try to impress me with the Soyóts' wildness and ferocity. Any tribe that could throw dice, play the Mongolian jewsharp, and open a game of chess with the khan's double-humped-Bactrian-camel's dog gambit was high enough in the scale of civilization to teach social accomplishments even to the Siberians. It is true that the Soyóts last year lay in wait for and captured the distinguished Finnish archæologist Professor Aspelin, and held him for some time a prisoner; but they may have done this merely as a means of getting him to teach them some new jewsharp music, instruct them in Finnish backgammon, or show them the latest method of cornering a king with two camels and a dog. A tribe that lives strictly according to Hoyle ought not to be called savage merely because it makes game of an archæologist and acquires its science by means of an ambuscade. Noticing the interest with which I regained the objects of Soyót and Tatár origin, Mr. Martiánof said that there was a tribe of Tatárs known as the Káchintsi living within a short distance of Minusínsk, that they were believed to be ethnologically second cousins of the Soyóts, and that, if we desired it, an excursion to one of their villages might easily be arranged. I replied that we should be very glad to make such an excursion, and it was decided at once that we should go on the following day to the Akúnefski ulús, a settlement of Káchinski Tatárs about fifteen versts from Minusínsk on the river Abakán.
After making a comprehensive but rather hasty survey of the whole museum, Mr. Frost and I decided that the departments of archæology and ethnology were its most striking and interesting features, but that it was a very creditable exhibition throughout, and an honor to its founder and to the town. Its collections, at the time of our visit, filled seven rooms in the building of the town council, and were numbered up to 23,859 in the catalogue, while the number of volumes in its library was nearly 10,000. All this was the direct result of the efforts of a single individual, who had, at first, very little public sympathy or encouragement, who was almost destitute of pecuniary means, and who was confined ten or twelve hours every day in a drug-store. Since my return from Siberia the directors of the museum, with the aid of I. M. Sibíriakóf, Inokénti Kuznetsóf, and a few other wealthy and cultivated Siberians, have published an excellent descriptive catalogue of the archæological collection, with an atlas of lithographic illustrations, and have erected a spacious building for the accommodation of the museum and library at a cost of 12,000 or 15,000 rúbles. The catalogue and atlas, which have elicited flattering comments from archæological societies in the various capitals of Europe, possess an added interest for the reason that they are wholly the work of political exiles. The descriptive text, which fills nearly 200 octavo pages, is from the pen of the accomplished geologist and archæologist Dmítri Kléments, who was banished to Eastern Siberia for "political untrustworthiness" in 1881, while the illustrations for the atlas were drawn by the exiled artist A. V. Stankévich. It has been said again and again by defenders of the Russian Government that the so-called nihilists whom that Government banishes to Siberia are nothing but malchíshki [contemptible striplings], "expelled seminarists," "half-educated school-boys," "despicable Jews," and "students that have failed in their examinations." Nevertheless, when the directors of the Minusínsk museum want the services of men learned enough to discuss
the most difficult problems of archæology, and artists skilful enough to draw with minute fidelity the objects found in the burial-mounds, they have to go to these very same nihilists, these "contemptible striplings," and "half-educated school-boys" who are so scornfully referred to in the official newspapers of the capital and in the speeches of the Tsar's procureurs.
Such misrepresentation may for a time influence public opinion abroad, but it no longer deceives anybody in Siberia. Siberians are well aware that if they want integrity, capacity, and intelligence, they must look for these qualities not among the official representatives of the Crown, but among the unfortunate lawyers, doctors, naturalists, authors, newspaper men, statisticians, and political economists who have been exiled to Siberia for political untrustworthiness.
After leaving the museum we called with Mr. Martiánof upon several prominent citizens of the town, among them Mr. Látkin, the mayor or head of the town council; Dr. Malínin, an intelligent physician, who lived in rather a luxurious house filled with beautiful conservatory flowers, and a wealthy young merchant named Safiánof, who carried on a trade across the Mongolian frontier with the Soyóts, and who was to accompany us on our visit to the Káchinski Tatárs. I also called, alone, upon Mr. Známenski, the isprávnik, or district chief of police, but, failing to find him at home, left cards. About the middle of the afternoon we returned to Soldátofs, where we had dinner, and then spent most of the remainder of the day in making up sleep lost on the road.
Our excursion to the ulús of the Káchinski Tatárs was made as projected, but did not prove to be as interesting as we had anticipated. Mr. Safiánof came for us in a large comfortable sleigh about nine o'clock in the morning, and we drove up the river, partly on the ice and partly across low extensive islands, to the mouth of the Abakán, and thence over a nearly level steppe, very thinly covered with snow, to the ulús. The country generally was low and bare, and would have been perfectly uninteresting but for the immense number of burial-mounds, tumuli, and monolithic slabs that dotted the landscape as far as the eye could reach, and that were unmistakable evidences of the richness of the archæological field in which the bronze-age collections of the Minusínsk museum had been gathered. Some of the standing monoliths were twelve or fifteen feet in height and three or four feet wide, and must have been brought, with great labor, from a distance. All of these standing stones and tumuli, as well as the bronze implements and utensils found in the graves and plowed up in the fields around Minusínsk, are attributed by the Russian peasants to prehistoric people whom they call the Chúdi, and if you go into almost any farmer's house in the valley of the upper Yeniséi and inquire for "Chúdish things" the children or the housewife will bring you three or four arrow-heads, a bronze implement that looks like one half of a pair of scissors, or a queer copper knife made in the shape of a short boomerang, with the cutting edge on the inner curve like a yataghan.
We reached the Káchinski ulús about eleven o'clock. I was disappointed to find that it did not differ essentially from a Russian village or a small settlement of semi-civilized Buriáts. Most of the houses were gable-roofed log buildings of the Russian type, with chimneys, brick ovens, and double glass windows, and the inhabitants looked very much like American Indians that had abandoned their hereditary pursuits and dress, accepted the yoke of civilization, and settled down as petty farmers in the neighborhood of a frontier village or agency. Here and there one might see a yurt, whose octagon form and conical bark roof suggested a Kirghis kibítka, and indicated that the builders' ancestors had been dwellers in tents; but with this exception there was nothing in or about the settlement to distinguish it from hundreds of Russian villages of the same class and type. Under the guidance of Mr. Safiánof, who was well acquainted with all of these Tatárs, we entered and examined two or three of the low octagonal yurts and one of the gable-roofed houses, but found in them little that was of interest. Russian furniture, Russian dishes, Russian trunks, and Russian samovárs had taken the places of
the corresponding native articles, and I could find nothing that seemed to be an expression of Tatár taste, or a survival from the Tatár past, except a child's cradle shaped like a small Eskimo dog-sledge with transverse instead of longitudinal runners, and a primitive domestic still. The latter, which was used to distil an intoxicating liquor known as arrack, consisted of a large copper kettle, mounted on a tripod and furnished with a tight-fitting cover, out of the top of which projected a curving wooden tube intended to serve as a condenser, or worm. The whole apparatus was of the rudest possible construction, and the thin, acrid, unpleasant-looking, and vile-tasting liquor made in it was probably as intoxicating and deadly as the poison-toadstool cordial of the wandering Koráks. The interior of every Tatár habitation that we inspected was so cheerless, gloomy, and dirty that we decided to take our lunch out of doors on the snow; and while we ate it Mr. Safiánof persuaded some of the Tatár women to put on their holiday dresses and let Mr. Frost photograph them. It will be seen from the illustration on page 403 that the Káchinski feminine type is distinctively Indian, and there are suggestions of the Indian even in the dress. All of the Káchinski Tatárs that we saw in the Minusínsk district, if they were dressed in American fashion, would be taken in any Western State for Indians without hesitation or question. They number in all about ten thousand, and are settled, for the most part, on what is known as the Káchinski Steppe, a great rolling plain on the left or western bank of the Yeniséi above Minusínsk, where the climate is temperate and the snowfall light, and where they find excellent pasturage, both in summer and in winter, for their flocks and herds.
Late in the afternoon, when Mr. Frost had made an end of photographing the women of the settlement, all of whom were eager to put on their good clothes and "have their pictures taken," we set out on our return to Minusínsk, and before dark we were refreshing ourselves with caravan tea and discussing Káchinski Tatárs under the shadow of our own vine and oleander in Soldátof's second-story-front bower.
It must not be supposed that we had become so absorbed in museums, archæological relics, and Káchinski Tatárs that we had forgotten all about the political exiles. Such was by no means the case. To make the acquaintance of these exiles was the chief object of our visit to Minusínsk,
and we did not for a moment lose sight of it; but the situation there just at that time was a peculiarly strained and delicate one, owing to the then recent escape of a political named Máslof, and the strictness with which, as a natural consequence, all the other exiles were watched. The provincial procureur Skrínikof and a colonel of gendarmes from Krasnoyársk were there making an investigation of the circumstances of Máslof's flight; the local police, of course, were stimulated to unwonted vigilance by the result of their previous negligence and by the presence of these high officers of the Crown from the provincial capital; and it was extremely difficult for us to open communication with the politicals without the authorities' knowledge. In these circumstances it seemed to me necessary to proceed with great caution, and to make the acquaintance of the exiles in a manner that should appear to be wholly accidental. I soon learned, from Mr. Martiánof, that several of them had taken an active interest in the museum, had been of great assistance in the collection and classification of specimens, and were in the habit of frequenting both the museum and the library. I should have been very dull and slow-witted if, in the light of this information, I had failed to see that archæology and anthropology were my trump cards, and that the best possible thing for me to do was to cultivate science and take a profound interest in that museum. Fortunately I was a member of the American Geographical Society of New York and of the Anthropological Society of Washington, and had a sufficiently general smattering of natural science to discuss any branch of it with laymen and the police, even if I could not rise to the level of a professional like Martiánof. I therefore not only visited the museum at my earliest convenience, and took a deep anthropological interest in the Káchinski Tatárs, but asked Mr. Martiánof to allow us to take a Soyóte plow, a lot of copper knives and axes, and half a dozen bronze mirrors to our room, where we could study them and make drawings of them at our leisure, and where, of course, they would be seen by any suspicious official who happened to call upon us, and would be taken by him as indications of the perfectly innocent and praise-worthy nature of our aims and pursuits. The result of our
As soon as I could get my round-robin certificate of trustworthiness out of the leather money-belt under my shirt, where I carried all dangerous documents likely to be needed on the road, I handed it to Mr. Kléments with the remark that although Mr. Martiánof had given me the conventional introduction of polite society, he could not be expected, of course, as a recent acquaintance, to vouch for my moral character, and I begged leave, therefore, to submit my references. Mr. Kléments read the letter with grave attention, went with it to one corner of the room, struck a match, lighted the paper, held it by one corner between his thumb and forefinger until it was entirely consumed, and then, dropping the ash and grinding it into powder on the floor under his foot, he turned to me and said, "That's the safest thing to do with all such letters." I was of the same opinion, but I had to carry with me all the time, nevertheless, not only such epistles but documents and letters infinitely more compromising and dangerous. After half an hour's conversation Mr. Martiánof suggested that we all come to his house and drink tea. The suggestion met 
A KÁCHINSKI TATÁR. (SEE P. 398.) with general approval, and we spent with Mr. and Mrs. Martiánof the remainder of the evening.
On the following morning we had our first skirmish with the Minusínsk police. Before we were up an officer in a blue uniform forced his way into our room without card or announcement, and in rather an offensive manner demanded our passports. I told him that the passports had been sent to the police-station on the day of our arrival, and had been there ever since. "If they are there the nadzirátel [inspector] does n't know it," said the officer impudently.
"It's his business to know it," I replied, "and not to send a man around here to disturb us before we are up in the morning. We have been in the Empire long enough to know what to do with passports, and we sent ours to the police-station as soon as we arrived."
My aggressive and irritated manner apparently convinced the officer that there must be some official mistake or oversight in this matter of passports, and he retired in confusion; but in less than ten minutes, while I was still lying on the floor, virtually in bed, around came the inspector of police himself — an evil-looking miscreant with a pock-marked face, and green, shifty, feline eyes, who, without his uniform, would have been taken anywhere for a particularly bad type of common convict. He declared that our passports were not at the police-station and had not been there, and that he wanted them immediately. Furthermore, he said, he had been directed by the isprávnik to find out "what kind of people" we were, where we had come from, and what our business was in Minusínsk. "You have been making calls," he said, "upon people in the town, and yet the isprávnik has n't seen anything of you."
"Whose fault is it that he has n't seen anything of me?" I demanded hotly. "I called on him day before yesterday, did n't find him at home, and left my card. If he wants to know 'what kind of people' we are, why does n't he return my call in a civilized manner, at a proper time of day, instead of sending a police officer around here to make impertinent inquiries before we are up in the morning? As for the 'kind of people' we are — perhaps you will be able to find out from these," and I handed him my open letters from the Russian Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He glanced through them, and then, in a slightly changed tone and manner, inquired, "Will you permit me to take these to show to the isprávnik?"
"Certainly," I replied; "that's what they are for."
He bowed and withdrew, while I went down to see the proprietor of the house and to find out what he had done with the passports. It appeared that they had been taken to the police-station at once, but that the police secretary could neither read them nor make anything out of them, and had stupidly or angrily declined to receive them; whereupon the proprietor had brought them back and put them away safely in a cupboard drawer. In the course of half an hour the inspector of police returned with the open letters, which he handed me without remark. I gave him the passports with a brief statement of the fact that his secretary had declined to receive them, and we parted with a look of mutual dislike and suspicion. We were destined shortly to meet again under circumstances that would deepen his suspicion and my dislike.
With the coöperation of Mr. Martiánof and Mr. Kléments we made the acquaintance in the course of the next three or four days of nearly all the political exiles in the place, and found among them some of the most interesting and attractive people we as yet had met in Siberia. Among those with whom we became best acquainted were Mr. Ivánchin-Písaref, a landed proprietor from the province of Yároslav; Dr. Martínof, a surgeon from Stávropol; Iván Petróvich Belokónski, a young author and newspaper man from Kiev; Leonídas Zhebunóf, formerly a student in the Kiev university; Miss Zenaïd Zatsépina, and Dmítri Kléments. The wives of Dr. Martínof and Mr. Ivánchin-Písaref were in exile with them; both spoke English, and in their hospitable houses we were so cordially welcomed and were made to feel so perfectly at home that we visited them as often as we dared. Dr. Martínof was a man of wealth and culture, and at the time of his arrest was the owner of a large estate near Stávropol in the Caucasus. When he was banished his property was put into the hands of an administrator appointed by the Minister of the Interior, and he was allowed for his maintenance a mere pittance of fifty dollars a month. He had never had a judicial trial, and had never been deprived legally of any of his civil rights; and yet by order of the Tsar his estate had been taken away from him and he had been banished by administrative process, with his wife and child, to this remote part of Eastern Siberia. He was not allowed at first even to practise his profession; but this the Minister of the Interior finally gave him permission to do. Some time in December, 1885, a few weeks before we reached Minusínsk, a man knocked at Dr. Martínof's door late one night and said that a peasant who lived in a village not far from the town had been attacked in the forest by a bear, and so terribly mangled and lacerated that it was doubtful whether he could recover. There was no other surgeon in the town, and the messenger begged Dr. Martínof to come to the wounded peasant's assistance. At that late hour of the night it was not practicable to get permission from the police to go outside the limits of the town, and Dr Martínof, thinking that he would return before morning, and that the urgency of the case would excuse a mere technical violation of the rule concerning absence without leave, went with the messenger to the suburban village, set the peasant's broken bones, sewed up his wounds, and saved his life. Early in the morning he returned to Minusínsk, thinking that no one in the town except his wife would be aware of his temporary absence. The isprávnik, Známenski, however, heard in some way of the incident, and like the stupid and brutal formalist that he was, made a report to General Pedashénko, the governor of the province, stating that the political exile Martínof had left the town without permission, and asking for instructions. The governor directed that the offender be arrested and imprisoned. Dr. Martínof thereupon wrote to the governor a letter, of which the following is a copy.
To His Excellency the Governor of the Province of Yeniséisk: On this 3d day of December, 1885, I have been notified of the receipt of an order from your Excellency directing that I be arrested and imprisoned for temporarily leaving the town of Minusínsk without permission. It seems to me to be my duty to explain to your Excellency that I went outside the limits of Minusínsk for the purpose of rendering urgently needed medical assistance to a patient who had been attacked by a bear, and whose life was in extreme danger as the result of deep wounds and broken bones. There is no surgeon in the town except myself to whom application for help in such a case could be made. My services were required immediately, and, in view of the oath taken by me as a surgeon, I regarded it as my sacred duty to go, the same night I was called, to the place where the injured man lay. I had neither time nor opportunity, therefore, to give the police notice of my contemplated absence. Besides that, in the permission to practise given me by the Minister of the Interior there is nothing to prohibit my going outside the limits of the town to render medical assistance. If, notwithstanding this explanation, your Excellency finds it necessary to hold me to accountability, I beg your Excellency to issue such orders as may be requisite to have me dealt with, not by administrative process, which would be inconsistent with section thirty-two of the Imperially confirmed "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance," but by the method indicated in the "Remark" which follows that section, and which provides that a person guilty of unauthorized absence from his assigned place of residence shall be duly tried. In order that such misunderstandings may not occur in future, I beg your Excellency to grant me, upon the basis of section eight of the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance," permission to go temporarily outside the limits of the town to render medical assistance.
Serge V. Martínof, M. D.
Governor Pedashénko did not condescend to make any direct reply to this letter, but merely sent the letter itself to the isprávnik Známenski with the laconic indorsement, "Let him be tried." Of course an offender in Russia cannot expect to be tried in less than a year after the accusation is made; and up to the time of our departure from Minusínsk the accused in this case was still waiting for arraignment. Since my return to the United States I have been informed by letters from Siberia that five years more have been added to Dr. Martínof's term of exile. Whether this supplementary punishment was inflicted upon him because he dared to save a poor peasant's life without the permission of the isprávnik, or merely because his behavior generally was that of a self-respecting Russian nobleman, and not that of a cringing slave, I do not know. When the end of an exile's term of banishment draws near, the local authorities are called upon for a report with regard to his behavior. If the report be unfavorable, an addition of from one to five years is made to his period of exile. Perhaps the isprávnik Známenski reported that Dr. Martínof was "insubordinate"; and very likely he was insubordinate. He certainly had grievances enough to make him so. One peculiarly exasperating thing happened to him almost in my presence. There is an administrative regulation in force in most Siberian penal settlements, requiring political exiles to appear at the police-station daily, semi-weekly, or weekly, and sign their names in a register. The intention, apparently, is to render escapes more difficult by forcing the exile to come, at short intervals, to the local authorities, and say, "I am still here; I have n't escaped." And as a proof that he has n't escaped they make him sign his name in a book. It is a stupid regulation; it affords no security whatever against escapes; it is intensely humiliating to the personal pride of the exile, especially if the authorities happen to be brutal, drunken, or depraved men; and it causes more heartburning and exasperation than any other regulation in the whole exile code.
One morning about a week after our arrival in Minusínsk I was sitting in the house of Ivánchin-Písaref, when the door opened and Dr. Martínof came in. For a moment I hardly recognized him. His eyes had a strained expression, his face was colorless, his lips trembled, and he was evidently struggling with deep and strong emotion.
"What has happened?" cried Mrs. Ivánchin-Písaref, rising as if to go to him.
"The isprávnik has ordered Márya [his wife] to come to the police-station," he replied.
For an instant I did not catch the significance of this fact, nor understand why it should so excite him. A few words of explanation, however, made the matter clear. Mrs. Martínof was in hourly expectation of her confinement. I remembered, when I thought of it, that only the night before I had had an engagement to spend the evening at Dr. Martínof's house, and that he had sent me word not to come because his wife was ill. As it happened to be the day that all of the political exiles were required to sign their names in the police register, Dr. Martínof had gone to the isprávnik, explained his wife's condition, said that she was unable to go out, and asked that she be excused. The isprávnik made a coarse remark about her, which must have been hard for a husband to bear, but which Dr. Martínof dared not resent, and said that if the woman was not able to walk of course she could not come to the police-station. This was Friday afternoon, and it was on the evening of that day that Dr. Martínof sent word to me not to come to his house on account of his wife's illness. It turned out, however, that her suffering was not decisive, and early the next morning, by her husband's advice, she took a walk of a few moments back and forth in front of the house. The isprávnik happened to drive past, and saw her. He went at once to the police-station, and from there sent an officer to her with a curt note, in which he said that if she was able to walk out she was able to come to the police-station, and that if she did not make her appearance within a certain short specified time, he should be compelled to treat her "with all the rigor of the law." The poor woman, therefore, had to choose between the risk, on the one hand, of having her child born at the police-station in the presence of the isprávnik and his green-eyed assistant, and the certainty, on the other, of having it born in one of the cells of the Minusínsk prison. If her husband should attempt to defend her, or to resist the officers sent to take her into custody, he would simply be knocked down and thrown into a solitary-confinement cell, and then, perhaps, be separated from her altogether by a sentence of banishment to the arctic region of Yakútsk on the general and elastic charge of "resisting the authorities." The stupid brutality of the isprávnik's action in this case was made the more conspicuous by the circumstance that Mrs. Martínof's term of exile would expire by limitation in about two weeks, and she would then be a free woman. Not only, therefore, was her condition such as to render escape at that time utterly impossible, but there was no imaginable motive for escape. Long before she would recover from her confinement sufficiently to travel she would be free to go where she liked. This made no difference, however, to the isprávnik. A certain administrative regulation gave him power to drag to the police-station a delicate, refined, and cultivated woman at the moment when she was about to undergo the great trial of maternity; and drag her to the police-station he did. I think that his action was the result rather of stupidity and senseless formalism than of deliberate malignity. The rules and regulations which control the actions of a petty Russian bureaucrat — as contradistinguished from a human being — require the periodical appearance of every political exile at the police-station. No exception is made by the law in favor of women in childbirth, or women whose term of banishment is about to expire; and the isprávnik Známenski acted in the case of the wife just as he had previously acted in the case of the husband — that is, obeyed the rules with a stupid and brutish disregard of all the circumstances.
The two weeks that we spent in Minusínsk were full of interest and adventurous excitement. The isprávnik was evidently suspicious of us, notwithstanding our open letters, and did not return our call. The green-eyed inspector of police surprised me one day in the house of the political exile Mr. Ivánchin-Písaref, and doubtless made a report thereupon to his superior officer, and it seemed sometimes as if even science would not save us. I succeeded, however, in establishing pleasant personal relations with the colonel of gendarmes and the Government procureur from Krasnoyársk, told them frankly all about our acquaintance with Kléments, Ivánchin-Písaref, and the other political exiles, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for us to meet them on account of our common interest in archæology, anthropology, and the museum, and behaved, generally, as if it afforded me the greatest pleasure to tell them — the colonel of gendarmes and the procureur — all that I was doing in Minusínsk, and to share with them all my experiences. What reports were made to St. Petersburg with regard to us I do not know; but they had no evil results. We were not searched and we were not arrested.
Upon the advice of some of my friends in Minusínsk, I decided to get rid of all my note-books, documents, letters from political convicts, and other dangerous and incriminating papers, by sending them through the mails to a friend in St. Petersburg. To intrust such material to the Russian postal department seemed a very hazardous thing to do, but my friends assured me that the postal authorities in Minusínsk were honorable men, who would not betray to the police the fact that I had sent such a package, and that there was little probability of its being opened or examined in St. Petersburg. They thought that the danger of losing my notes and papers in the mails was not nearly so great as the danger of having them taken from me as the result of a police search. The material in question amounted in weight to about forty pounds, but as packages of all sizes are commonly sent by mail in Russia, mere bulk in itself was not a suspicious circumstance. I had a box made by an exiled Polish carpenter, took it to my room at night, put into it the entire results of my Siberian experience, — most of the dangerous papers being already concealed in the covers of books and the hollow sides of small boxes, — sewed it up carefully in strong canvas, sealed it with more than twenty seals, and addressed it to a friend in St. Petersburg whose political trustworthiness was beyond suspicion and whose mail, I believed, would not be tampered with. Thursday morning about half an hour before the semi-weekly post was to leave Minusínsk for St, Petersburg, I carried the box down into the courtyard under the cover of an overcoat, put it into a sleigh, threw a robe over it, and
went with it myself to the post-office. The officials asked no question, but weighed the package, gave me a written receipt for it, and tossed it carelessly upon a pile of other mail matter that a clerk was putting into large leather pouches. I gave one last look at it, and left the post-office with a heavy heart. From that time forward I was never free from anxiety about it. That package contained all the results of my Siberian work, and its loss would have been simply irreparable. As week after week passed, and I heard nothing about it, I was strongly tempted to telegraph my friend and find out whether it had reached him; but I knew that such a telegram might increase the risk, and I refrained.
On many accounts we were more reluctant to leave Minusínsk than any other town at which we had stopped on our homeward way, but as a distance of 3000 miles still lay between us and St. Petersburg, and as we were anxious to reach European Russia, if possible, before the breaking up of the winter roads, it was time for us to resume our journey. Thursday, February 4th, we made farewell calls upon the political exiles, as well as upon Mr. Martiánof, Mr. Safiánof, and Dr. Malínin, who had been particularly kind to us, and set out with a tróika of "free" horses for the city of Tomsk, distant 475 miles. Instead of following the Yeniséi River back to Krasnoyársk, which would have been going far out of our wav, we decided to leave it a short distance below Minusínsk and proceed directly to Tomsk by a short cut across the steppes, keeping the great Siberian road on our right all the way. Nothing of interest happened to us until late in the evening, when, just as we were turning up from the river into a small peasant village, the name of which I have now forgotten, both we and our horses were startled by the sudden appearance of a wild-looking man in a long, tattered sheepskin coat, who, from the shelter of a projecting cliff, sprang into the road ahead of us, shouting a hoarse but unintelligible warning, and brandishing in the air an armful of blazing birch-bark and straw.
"What 's the matter?" I said to our driver, as our horses recoiled in affright.
"It 's the plague-guard," he replied. "He says we must be smoked."
The cattle-plague was then prevailing extensively in the valley of the upper Yeniséi, and it appeared that round this village the peasants had established a sanitary cordon with the hope of protecting their own live stock from contagion. They had heard of the virtues of fumigation, and were subjecting to that process every vehicle that crossed the village limits. The "plague-guard" burned straw, birch-bark, and other inflammable and smoke-producing substances around and under our pavóska until we were half strangled and our horses were frantic with fear, and then he told us gravely that we were "purified" and might proceed.
On Friday, the day after our departure from Minusínsk, the weather became cold and blustering. The road after we left the Yeniséi was very bad, and late in the afternoon we were overtaken by a howling arctic gale on a great desolate plain, thirty or forty versts west of the Yeniséi and about one hundred and fifty versts from Minusínsk. The road was soon hidden by drifts of snow, there were no fences or telegraph-poles to mark its location, we could not proceed faster than a walk, and every three or four hundred yards we had to get out and push, pull, or lift our heavy pavoska from a deep soft drift. An hour or two after dark we lost the road altogether, and became involved in a labyrinth of snowdrifts and shallow ravines where we could make little or no progress, and where our tired and dispirited horses finally balked and refused to move. In vain our driver changed them about, harnessed them tandem, coaxed, cursed, and savagely whipped them. They were perfectly well aware that they were off the road, and that nothing was to be gained by floundering about aimlessly the rest of the night on that desert of drifted snow. The driver ejaculated, "Akh Bozhemoi! Bozhemoi!" [O my God! my God!] besought his patron saint to inform him what he had done to deserve such punishment, and finally whimpered and cried like a school-boy in his wrath and discouragement. I suggested at last that he had better leave us there, mount one of the horses, find the road, if possible, go to the nearest settlement, and then come back after us with lanterns, fresh horses, and men. He acted upon the suggestion, and Frost and I were left alone on
the steppe in our half-capsized pavóska, hungry, exhausted, and chilled to the bone, with nothing to do but listen to the howling of the wind and wonder whether our driver in the darkness and in such weather would be able to find a settlement. The long, dismal night wore away at last, the storm abated a little towards morning, and soon after daybreak our driver made his appearance with ropes, crowbars, three fresh horses, and a stalwart peasant from a neighboring village. They soon extricated us from our difficulties, and early in the forenoon we drove into the little settlement of Ribálskaya, and alighted from our paróska after fourteen hours' exposure to a winter gale on a desolate steppe without sleep, food, or drink. When we had warmed and refreshed ourselves with hot tea in a peasant's cabin, we ate what breakfast we could get, slept two or three hours on a plank bench, and then with fresh horses and a new driver went on our way.
The overland journey in winter from the boundary line of Eastern Siberia to St. Petersburg has often been made and described by English and American travelers, and it does not seem to me necessary to dwell upon its hardships, privations, and petty adventures. We reached Tomsk in a temperature of thirty-five degrees below zero on the fifth day after our departure from Minusínsk, renewed our acquaintance with the Tomsk colony of exiles, gave them the latest news from their friends in the Trans-Baikál and at the mines of Kará, and then continued our journey homeward. On the 22d of February — Washington's birthday — we reached Omsk, stopped there twenty-four hours to rest and celebrate, and then went on by what is known as the "merchants' short cut" to Tobólsk. We were again surprised in the vicinity of Omsk by the appearance of camels. We had of course reconciled our preconceived ideas with the existence of camels in Siberia during the summer, but we had never stopped to think what became of them in the winter, and were very much astonished one frosty moonlight night to see three or four of them drawing Kírghis sledges.
Beyond Omsk we began to meet enormous freight-sledges of a new type drawn by six or eight horses and loaded with goods from the Irbít fair. Some of them were as big as a
cottage gable-roof with a little trough-shaped box perched on the summit for the driver, the merchant, and his clerk. The great annual fair at Irbít in Western Siberia is second in importance only to the world-renowned fair of Nízhni Nóvgorod, and is visited by merchants and traders from the remotest parts of northern Asia. The freight-sledges that go to it and come from it in immense numbers in the latter part of the winter cut up the roads in the vicinity of Tiumén and Tobólsk so that they become almost impassable on account of deep ruts, hollows, and long, dangerous side-hill slides. We capsized twice in this part of the route notwithstanding the wide spread of our outriggers, and once we were dragged in our overturned pavóska down a long, steep hill and badly shaken and bruised before we could extricate ourselves from our sheepskin bag and crawl out. Rest and sleep on such a road were of course almost out of the question, and I soon had reason to feel very anxious about Mr. Frost's health. He was quiet and patient, bore suffering and privation with extraordinary fortitude, and never made the least complaint of anything; but it was evident, nevertheless, that he was slowly breaking down under the combined nervous and physical strain of sleeplessness, jolting, and constant fear of arrest. When we reached Tobólsk on the last day of February, and took off our heavy furs in the little log hotel under the bluff to which we had been recommended, I was shocked at his appearance. How serious his condition was may be inferred from the fact that about midnight that night he crept noiselessly over to the place where I was lying asleep on the floor, pressed his lips closely to my ear, and in a hoarse whisper said, "They are going to murder us!" I was so taken by surprise, and so startled, that I snatched my revolver from under my pillow and had it cocked before I waked sufficiently to grasp the situation, and to realize that Mr. Frost was in a high nervous fever, due chiefly to prolonged sleeplessness, and that the contemplated murder was nothing but an hallucination.
In the course of the next day I made, under the guidance of the chief of police, a very superficial examination of two convict prisons, but did not find much in them that was of interest. I also visited the belfry where now hangs the first exile to Siberia—the famous bell of Uglích, which was banished to Tobólsk in 1593 by order of the Tsar Bóris Gúdenof for having rung the signal for the insurrection
in Uglích at the time of the assassination of the Crown Prince Dmítri. The exiled bell has been purged of its iniquity, has received ecclesiastical consecration, and now calls the orthodox people of Tobólsk to prayers. The inhabitants of Uglích have recently been trying to recover their bell upon the plea that it has been sufficiently punished by three centuries of exile for its political untrustworthiness in 1593, and that it ought now to be allowed to return to its home. The mayor of Tobólsk, however, argues that the bell was exiled for life, and that, consequently, its term of banishment has not yet expired. He contends, furthermore, that even admitting the original title of the Uglích people three centuries of adverse possession by the city of Tobólsk have divested the claimants of all their rights, and that the bell should be allowed to remain where it is. The question, it is said, will be carried into the Russian courts.
Late in the afternoon I walked over to the little plateau east of the city where stands the monument erected in honor of Yermák, the conqueror of Siberia, and then, returning to the hotel, paid our bill, ordered post-horses, and proceeded to Tiumén, reaching the latter place on the following day.
A week's rest at Tiumén, with plenty of sleep and good food, and the inspiriting companionship of English-speaking people, so restored Mr. Frost's strength that we were able to start for St. Petersburg by rail Tuesday, March 9th. How delightful it was to move swiftly out of Tiumén in a luxurious railroad car only those can conceive who have traveled eight thousand miles in springless vehicles over Siberian roads.
We reached the Russian capital on the 19th of March, and as soon as I had left Mr. Frost at a hotel with our baggage, I called a dróshky, drove to the house of the friend to whom I had sent my precious box of note-books and papers, and, with a fast-beating heart, rang the bell and gave the servant my card. Before my friend made his appearance I was in a perfect fever of excitement and anxiety. Suppose the box had been opened by the post-office or police officials, and its contents seized. What should I have to show for almost a year of work and suffering? How much could I remember of all that I had seen and heard? What should I do without the written record of names, dates, and all the multitudinous and minute details that give verisimilitude to a story?
My friend entered the room with as calm and unruffled a countenance as if he had never heard of a box of papers, and my heart sank. I had half expected to be able to see that box in his face. I cannot remember whether I expressed any pleasure at meeting him, or made any inquiries with regard to his health. For one breathless moment he was to me merely the possible custodian of a box. I think he asked me when I arrived, and remarked that he had some letters for me; but all that I am certain of is that, after struggling with myself for a moment, until I thought I could speak without any manifestation of excitement, I inquired simply, "Did you receive a box from me?"
"A box?" he repeated interrogatively. Again my heart sank; evidently he had not received it. "Oh, yes," he continued, as if with a sudden flash of comprehension; "the big square box sewed up in canvas. Yes; that 's here."
I was told afterward that there was no perceptible change in the gloomy March weather of St. Petersburg at that moment, but I am confident, nevertheless, that at least four suns, of the largest size known to astronomy, began immediately to shine into my friend's front windows, and that I could hear robins and meadowlarks singing all up and down the Névski Prospékt.
I forwarded the precious notes and papers to London by a special messenger, in order to avoid the danger of a possible search of my own baggage at the frontier, and then sent our passports to the municipal police with the usual notification that we desired to leave the Empire. The documents were promptly returned to us with a curt verbal message to the effect that we could not leave the Empire "without the permission of the governor-general of Eastern Siberia." As that official was about four thousand miles away, and we could not possibly get the necessary permission from him in less than three months, there was obviously nothing left for us to do but make complaint at the United States legation. I called upon Mr. Wurts, who was then acting as chargé d'affaires, and told him that the police would not allow us to leave the Empire.
"Why not?" he inquired.
"I don't know," I replied. "They say that we must have permission from the governor-general of Eastern Siberia,
and of course we can't get that in three months — perhaps not in six months."
Mr. Wurts wrote a polite note to the chief of the bureau of passports in the Foreign Office, asking for information with regard to the alleged refusal of the police to allow two American citizens to leave the Empire. I delivered the note in person, in order that I might take the bull by the horns and find out definitely what the matter was. The chief of the passport bureau, an Italian whose name I have now forgotten, read the communication attentively, looked scrutinizingly at me, crossed the room and held a whispered consultation with a subordinate, and then returning said: "Mr. Kennan, have you ever had a permit to reside in the Russian Empire before this time?"[2]
"I have," I replied.
"Do you remember when?"
"Yes, in 1868."
"Will you be kind enough to tell me at about what season of the year?"
"It was some time in the spring, and I think in March."
He touched a bell to summon a clerk, and said to the latter, "Find the permit to reside that Mr. George Kennan, an American citizen, took out in March, 1868."
The clerk bowed and withdrew. In three or four minutes he returned bringing the original permit to reside that I had taken out eighteen years before, and a printed schedule of twenty or thirty questions concerning myself and my life which I had then answered in writing. The chief examined carefully my earlier record as an officer of the Russian-American Telegraph Company, held another whispered consultation with a subordinate, and then, coming back to me, said, "There are certain informalities, Mr. Kennan, in your present papers that would justify us in keeping you here until we could communicate with the governor-general of Eastern Siberia; but if you will bring me a formal letter from the American Minister, asking that you be allowed to leave the Empire without regard to such informalities, I will give you the necessary permission."
I could not see how a formal letter from the diplomatic
representative of the United States could cure the defects in a Russian document duly issued by authority of the Tsar, and properly stamped, signed, and sealed by the East-Siberian authorities; but I was not in the habit of raising unnecessary questions in my dealings with the Russian police, and I had good reason, moreover, to say as little as possible about Siberia. I obtained the "formal letter" from Mr. Wurts, brought it to the passport bureau, declared that I was not a Jew, signed my name at the bottom of sundry blanks, disbursed various small sums for stamps, sealing-wax, and paper, paid an official for showing me what to do, received a document which I was directed to take to the police-station of the precinct in which I resided, brought back from there another document addressed to the passport bureau, and finally, after four days of going back and forth from one circumlocution office to another, received a little book, about as big as a religious tract, which certified that there was no objection, on the part of anybody, to my leaving the Empire. Three days later I was in London.
It was my intention merely to write a full report from there to the editor of The Century Magazine, and then return to European Russia and continue my investigation; but my companion, Mr. Frost, was taken dangerously ill as a result of the tremendous mental and physical strain of our Siberian experience, and I could not leave him for almost a month. He had borne the extraordinary hardships and privations of our eight-thousand-mile ride through Siberia with heroic fortitude and without a single murmur of complaint; but his strength had given way at last, chiefly as the result of nervous excitement and prolonged insomnia. He recovered slowly, but on the 13th of April he was strong enough to sail for the United States, and on the 16th I took out a new passport and returned with my wife to St. Petersburg. I spent four months in making the acquaintance of Russian liberals, revolutionists, and officials in St. Petersburg, Tver, Moscow, Nízhni Nóvgorod, and Kazán; visited the friends and acquaintances of many of the political exiles whom I had met in Siberia and delivered the letters that I had for them; called upon Mr. Vlangálli, assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, General Órzhefski, the chief of gendarmes, and Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy, the chief of the prison administration;
inspected two of the large St. Petersburg prisons—the Litófski Zámok, and the House of Preliminary Detention—completed my investigation, so far as it seemed possible to do so, and finally returned to New York in August, 1886, after an absence of about sixteen months.
- ↑ According to Professor Aspelin, the state archæologist of Finland, who since my return from Siberia has visited Minusínsk, these inscriptions are in the earliest known form of the Finno-Ugrian language, and date back to a period very remote — as remote, probably, as 2000 B.C. In his opinion the people of the Minusínsk bronze age were of the Finno-Ugrian stock.
- ↑ A foreigner is permitted to live six months in Russia upon his own national passport, but after that time he is required to take out a Russian permit to reside. Both Mr. Frost and I had such permits and neither of them had expired.