Identifier: siberiaexilesyst01kenn (find matches)
Title: Siberia and the exile system
Year: 1891 (1890s)
Authors: Kennan, George, 1845-1924
Subjects: Siberia (Russia) -- Description and travel Siberia (Russia) -- Exiles
Publisher: New York : Century Co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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and whether they could, by extra work, earn a little money, so as not to leave prison penniless. I replied that in most American penitentiaries they could.
“It is not so,” he said, “with us. Naked we go to the mines, and naked we come out of them; and we are flogged, while there, at the whim of every nariádchik.”²
“Oh, no!” said Captain Gudím good-naturedly, “they don't flog at the mines now.”
“Yes, they do, your Nobility,” replied the brodyág firmly but respectfully. “If you are sick or weak, and can't finish your stent, you are given twenty blows with the cat.”
I should have been glad to get further information from the brodyág with regard to his life at the mines, but just at this moment Captain Gudím asked me if I would not like to see the loading of the sick and infirm, and the conversation was interrupted.
¹ V Dali (Afar), by M. I. Oránof, p. 226. St. Petersburg, 1883.
² A petty officer who directs the work of the convicts in the razréiz or cutting, and who sets their tasks.
DEPORTATION BY ÉTAPE 375
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SICK AND INFIRM EXILES IN TELÉGAS.
376 SIBERIA
The telégas intended for prisoners physically unable to walk were small one-horse carts, without springs of any kind, and with only one seat, in front, for the driver and the guard. They looked to me like the halves of longitudinally bisected hogsheads mounted upon four low wheels, with their concave sides uppermost. More wretchedly uncomfortable vehicles to ride in were never devised. A small quantity of green grass had been put into each one to break the jolting a little, and upon this grass, in every cart, were to sit four sick or disabled convicts. All prisoners who have certificates from the doctor,step out! shouted Captain Gudím, and twenty-five or thirty incapables — some old and infirm, some pale and emaciated from sickness — separated themselves from the main body of convicts in the road. An under-officer collected and examined their certificates, and as fast as their cases were approved they climbed into the telégas.

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