The Great Siberian Road.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 277, 23 March 1889, Page 4

The Great Siberian Road.

A TALE OF HORROR. A Christmas number should never be withoet its tale of horror; and perhaps it is for this reason that Mr George Kennan gives in the December Century his “Life on the Great Siberian Road.” Mr Kennan is the bold American journalist, who in a series of articles in the same magazine has lifted the veil that hides Siberia from the Western world. Russian writers before him have done the same thing, but his manner of doing it reveals the harrowing spectacle to all who an familiar with the English tongue. The articles an as well illustrated as they an well written, so on the whole, the Century series on Siberia is without a rival among works of its kin. Mr Kennan has seen the whole province to almost its extreme northern verge, and ho has traversed the groat roads by which the convicts reach it Mas the furthest limits of the Empire. The wretched creatures, ** politicals ” and common malefactors, march all the way through every variety of climate and every variety of hardship incidental to travel in a half-developed country. To many their doom of exile is also a doom of death. No one minds their woe ; no one is answerable for it, not oven the Autocrat whose responsibility for all things precludes real concern in any one. The Autocrat is kindhearted; Madame de Novikoffhae written in glowing terms of his generous and noble qualities, aad she has been confirmed by witnesses less open to the suspicion of partiality. He may never know what things are done in his name unices some true friend to the dynasty and to his fellow men send him the latest volumes of the American magazine. Siberia is not all desert and not all snow and ice, as in these days even the typical school boy may be supposed to know. It has noble towns, and broad expanses of verdure, and of cultivation. But it has its mines as well, and its awful convict stations which mark the limit of each day’s weary march With these, sin due remembrance of his subject, Mr Kennan is chiefly concerned. He has journeyed from Tomsk to Irkutsk, to see convicts on the roads io all weathers, to inspect ths sheds in whijh they herd at night, and the lasareta where the sick, without proper medical attention or proper oars, so often find their Welcome passport to the grave. Much of the Buffering bo has witnessed is due to bad administration, more is duo to the system Itself, which is only to be reformed by oompiete abolition. The exile parties that leave Tomsk in the summer time are overtaken by the frosts and the cold rains of autumn long before they reach Irkutsk. They walk in fatten; they are wretchedly dad. and they often tramp barefoot through the freeslns mud. The nursing woman, the email ahildnn, and the infirm lie shivering in sodden straw in the wagfions. As they pass through the villages their “ Karoeta," or Bead man, who note as their spokesman with ths guard, asks leave in their name io raise the "begging song.” Leave is given, and the gang croak in what time or tune they may for pity aad tor food tor •• ths prisoners, the ahat-np ones. Behind walls of stone and gratings, Behind oaken doors and padlocks, Behind bars and looks of iron," with no better accompaniment than the rattle of their own chains, It would bo cheaper to shorten the Period of thsir journey by sending them all forward in proper conveyances; it would in *ay ease be mote humane Ito guard them against son and rain. But it is one thing to momwaUse Bt Petersburg for reform; it io another to get the memorial reed. Besides, the | number of evils to reform is a very embarrassment of riches. Beyond Irkutsk there Is Yakutsk is ths sub-Artic province, the ultimato circle of this Infsrno—like the other, an toy place of punielunent for the worst offenders. The worst offenders of the Russian penal code are those who may have refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Czar. For there is an oath of loyalty, as well as an oath •f allegiance, and the former, it seems, on the emweeion of ths present ruler was tendered to the convicts who were suffering for their known and avowed disaffection to his father. When they declined to forswear themselves they were sent off to Yakutsk, to live among savages who do not speak the Busssan tongue, to wallow with them in the unspeakable filth Of their huts, and to eat and drink in a mannsr that might turn the the stomach of every ' animal bat one. Mr Kennan saw Yakutsk; Mda friend of his, a Bastian journalist who U now out of harm’s way in the other world, told him ail about its manner of life. Of the seventy-nine “ politicals ” who were in exile in thia province in 1882, six had committed eaioido before 1885. Death, then, is the last resource; but there are other ways of escape. Sometimes m the long convoy winds along, some desperate wretches make a rush for it, as weU as their irons will permit. The rifles . < the guard are instantly brought to the Jtaoulder, and most of the fugitives fall. "?•? w “° contrive to reach the woods near which the attempt is generally made batter their irons with a stone, and live as best they may till they surrender through hunger, « W surprised by the next convoy, or join a band of other desperadoes of the same class who are running wild. The survivors “**! e 8W * h .° *“ Te reached their remote destination—«o long as if is some place short Of Yskntak -and who have settled down, “•comvuc men Who can know no more sorrow in this world. They have the brutish hard-

■•“'of timee who have seen the worst. They tatt quietly of the fate of old comrades and friends, of the jostles of the peace who was ■Miged at St Petersburg in 79, of the girl who went mad in the House ot Detention J£*** •yt*** l *? Vij’ °* th e student of the Women ■ Medical School who cut her throat broken glau after two years *°,tery confinement. They take these and all other horrors as matters x>f course, and denounce no one, seem angry with no fit ***** great White Czar. - be angry with him? He of this, not even by hearsay. A^*, n< * don^t > A»J his convict system *• ***• ofioclal reformers, and the cavy of the world, The reports that reach ?J“' ri **?'**y be sure, are very different from , He . kn ° ws no more than mis told, and in what ho is told the men and women who suffer this torture are but ’ m a statistical table. Besides he is verybusv. Those is Bulgaria, with Servin, ? otj wh . en the w>grateful Principality leaves him a moThere is the concentration 'rh-Z, 01 ?.**! . on „.**** Austrian frontier. M ? Aor ’ *? Ot A speak of the Tmrirish indemnity, the new loan, , the Afghanistan, the watchful eye at Scandinavia, the busy hand for the Corea. All that is known of him on the Astimooy we have already quoted, is that he abounds in “ noble and ■mctoim qualities,” and that his «• extreme „ nd *jSl dn ? *“'“““***•firnmess Of will. Meanwhile, day by day, and year by ycanthe converging columns of these wretched gfh**.Empire to the mute ot the •• begging