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quarters of an hour in the major's writing-room. I was, at the time, in another part of the house trying to write up my notes; but Mr. Frost was at work upon a crayon portrait of the major's children in the drawing-room, off which the writing-room opened. At the first opportunity after Captain Nikolin's departure Mr. Frost came to me in some anxiety and whispered to me that he had accidentally overheard a part of the conversation between Captain Nikolin and Major Potulof in the writing-room and that it indicated trouble. It related to my intercourse with the political convicts, and turned upon the question of searching our baggage and examining my papers and note-books. As Mr. Frost understood it, Captain Nikolin insisted that such an investigation was proper and necessary, while Major Potulof defended us, deprecated the proposed search, and tried to convince the gendarme officer that it would be injudicious to create such a scandal as an examination of our baggage would cause. The discussion closed with the significant remark from Nikolin that if the search were not made in Kara it certainly would be made somewhere else. Mr. Frost seemed to be much alarmed, and I was not a little troubled myself. I did not so much fear a search,—at least while we remained in Major Potulof's house, but what I did fear was being put upon my word of honor by Major Potulof himself as to the question whether I had any letters from the political convicts. I thought it extremely probable that he would come to me at the first opportunity and say to me good-humoredly, "George Ivanovich, Captain Nikolin has discovered your relations with the political convicts; he knows that you spent with them the greater part of one night, and he thinks that you may have letters from them. He came here this morning with a proposition to search your baggage. Of course, as you are my guests, I defended you and succeeded in putting him off; but I think under the circumstances it is only fair you should assure me, on your word of honor, that you have no such letters."

In such an exigency as that I should have to do one of two things—either lie outright, upon my word of honor, to the man in whose house I was a guest, or else betray people who had trusted me, and for whom I had already come to feel sincere sympathy and affection. Either alternative was intolerable- unthinkableand yet I must decide upon some course of action at once. The danger was imminent, and I could not bring myself to face either of the alternatives upon which I should be forced if put upon my word of honor. I might perhaps have had courage enough to run the risk, so far as my own papers were concerned, but I

knew that the letters in my possession, if discovered, would send Miss Armfeldt and all the other writers back into prison; would leave poor, feeble Mrs. Armfeldt alone in a penal settlement with a new sorrow; and would lead to a careful examination of all my papers, and thus bring misfortune upon scores of exiles and officers in other parts of Siberia who had furnished me with documentary materials. All the rest of that day I was in a fever of anxiety and irresolution. I kept, so far as possible, out of Major Potulof's way; gave him no opportunity to speak to me alone; went to bed early on plea of a headache; and spent a wretched and sleepless night trying to decide upon a course of action. I thought of about a dozen different methods of concealing the letters, but concealment would not meet the emergency. If put upon my word of honor I should have to admit that I had them, or else lie in the most cowardly and treacherous way. I did not dare to mail them, since all the mail matter from the house passed through Major Potulof's hands, and by giving them to him I might precipitate the very inquiries I wished to avoid. At last, just before daybreak, I decided to destroy them. I had no opportunity, of course, to consult the writers, but I felt sure that they would approve my action if they could know all the circumstances. It was very hard to destroy letters upon which those unfortunate people had hung so many hopes,letters that I knew would have such priceless value to fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers in Russia,- but there was nothing else to be done. The risk of keeping them had become too great to be justifiable.

As soon as I had come to a decision, I was confronted by the question, " How are the letters to be destroyed?" Since the discovery of my secret relations with the political convicts I had been more closely watched than ever. My room had no door that could be closed, but was separated from the hall, and from Major Potulof's sitting-room, merely by a light portière. Its large curtainless window was almost on a level with the ground, and an armed sentry, who stood night and day at the front entrance of the house, could see through it. If I tore the letters into small bits, they might be found and pieced together. If I burned them, the odor of the burning paper would be at once diffused through the house; and, besides that, I was likely to be caught in the act, either by the sentry, or by Major Potulof himself, who, on one pretext or another, was constantly coming into my room without knock or announcement. There happened to be in the room a large brick oven, and about half an hour after I got up that morning a soldier came in to make a fire in it. The thought at once

Our correspondent at St. Petersburg, in a dispatch we publish this morning, telegraphs the sentences passed yesterday on the prisoners charged with participation in the Nihilist conspiracy. West

occurred to me that by watching for a favorable his trial, the London "Times," in a column opportunity, when Major Potulof was talking editorial upon his case, said: with Mr. Frost in the sitting-room and the sentry was out of sight, I could throw the letters unobserved into this fire. As I walked out into the hall to see that the coast was clear there, I noiselessly unlatched the iron door of the oven and threw it ajar. Then returning and assuring myself that the sentry was not in a position to look through the window, I tossed the letters quickly into the oven upon a mass of glowing coals. Five minutes later there was not a trace of them left. I then erased or put into cipher many of the names of persons in my note-books and prepared myself, as well as I could, for a

search.

There were two things in my personal experience at the mines of Kara that I now particularly regret, and one of them is the burning of these letters. I did not see the political convicts again, I had no opportunity to explain to them the circumstances under which I acted, and explanations, even if I could make them, are now, in many cases, too late. Miss Nathalie Armfeldt died of prison consumption at the mines in less than a year after I bade her good-bye, and the letters from her that I destroyed were perhaps the last that she had an opportunity to write. I was not put upon my word of honor, I was not searched, and I might have carried those letters safely to their destination, as I afterward carried many others.

The other unfortunate thing in my Kara experience was my failure to see Dr. Edward Veimar, one of the most distinguished political convicts in the free command, who at the time of our visit was dying of prison consumption. He was a surgeon, about thirty-five years of age, and resided, before his exile, in a large house on the Nevski Prospekt near the Admiralty Place in St. Petersburg. He was a man of wealth and high social position, and was at one time a personal friend of Her Majesty, the present Tsaritsa. He was in charge of her field hospital throughout the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78; was made a cavalier of the order of St. Anne for distinguished services in that campaign; received three or four crosses of honor for gallantry on the field of battle; and was greatly beloved by General Gourko, with whom he made the passage of the Balkans. He was condemned as a revolutionist upon the flimsiest possible circumstantial evidence, and, after a year's imprisonment in one of the casemates of the Petropavlovski1 fortress, was sent to the mines of Kara. At the time of

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ern observers can see in these state trials at St. Petersburg nothing but a shameful travesty of justice. The whole of these proceedings are an example of the way in which any one can govern by the aid of a state of siege. Military justice has had, as a rule, the merit of being sharp and sudden, but the military justice of the Russian courts has been as cruel in its dilatoriness as grossly illogical in its method and terribly severe in its sentences. . . . Among the accused who were condemned yesterday, Dr. Weimar was in every way a man of whom his country seemed to have reason to be proud. He is in personal bearing a gallant gentleman. As a physician he has devoted his time and skill to the service of his suffering countrymen. He is (or was till yesterday, for to-day he is a drudge in the deadly orders, and with the medal for the Turkish war. mines) decorated with Russian and Roumanian He was with the troops who crossed the Balkans under Gourko-a splendid feat of arms. The charges against this gentleman, the way in which the case was got up and pressed, would seem exaggerated in the wildest burlesque. The humors of injustice were never carried so far, if we may trust the reports of the trial, by Bunyan's Mr. Justice Hategood or Rabelais's Grippeminaud. . . . Witnesses were brought forward to speak to the character of Dr. Weimar. Their testimony was a shower of praises, both as to his moral character and his bravery in war. This was inconvenient for the prosecution. Supposing the charges against Dr. Weimar true, it would appear that an exemplary citizen so despaired of the condition of his country that he conspired with miscreants like Solovioff and aided other dastardly assassins. It might have been surmised that the prosecution would bring evidence to damage the character of the accused, or at least to show that the praise heaped on him was undeserved. Nothing of the sort. The prosecutor said, "Gentlemen, I could have produced a series of witnesses whose testimony would have been quite the reverse. Unfortunately, all of them are absent." A military court could hardly avoid taking the word of the whole conception of testimony and justice, are only presiding general, but the whole proceeding, the to be paralleled in the burlesque trial witnessed by Alice in Mr. Carroll's fairy tale. . . . No case could bear more direct evidence to the terrible condition of Russian society and Russian justice. Either a man who seems to have been an exemplary citizen in other respects was driven by despotism into condemned and unjustly punished. In either altersecret and dastardly treason, or Dr. Weimar is falsely native, if the reports of his trial are correct, that trial was a scandal even to military law.

The Crown Princess Dagmar (now the Empress), whose hospital Dr. Veimar had managed during the Russo-Turkish war, took a deep personal interest in him, and was a firm believer in his innocence; but even she could

not save him. When she came to the throne, however, as Empress, in 1881, she sent Colonel Nord to the mines of Kara to see Dr. Veimar and offer him his freedom upon condition that he give his word of honor not to engage in any activity hostile to the Government. Dr. Veimar replied that he would not so bind himself while he was in ignorance of the state of affairs under the new Tsar (Alexander III.). If the Government would allow him to return to St. Petersburg, on parole or under guard, and see what the condition of Russia then was, he would give them a definite answer to their proposition; that is, he would accept freedom upon the terms offered, or he would go back to the mines. He would not, however, bind himself to anything until he had had an opportunity to ascertain how Russia was then being governed. Colonel Nord had a number of interviews with him, and tried in every way to shake his resolution, but without avail.

When Mr. Frost and I reached the mines of Kara, Dr. Veimar had been released from prison on a ticket of leave, but was dying of consumption brought on by the intolerable conditions of Siberian prison life. The political convicts wished and proposed to take me to see him the night that I was at Miss Armfeldt's house, but they represented him as very weak, hardly able to speak aloud, and likely at any moment to die; and after I saw the effect that my sudden appearance produced upon Miss Armfeldt and the other politicals who were comparatively well, I shrunk from inflicting upon a dying man, at midnight, such a shock of surprise and excitement. I had occasion afterward bitterly to regret my lack of resolution. Dr. Veimar died before I had another opportunity to see him, and six months afterward, when I returned to St. Petersburg on my way home from Siberia, I received a call from a cultivated and attractive young woman to whom, at the time of his banishment, he was engaged. She had heard that I was in Kara when her betrothed died, and she had come to me hoping that I had brought her a letter, or at least some farewell message from him. She was making preparations, in November of the previous year, to undertake a journey of four thousand miles alone, in order to join him at the mines and marry him, when she

1 Nearly all the statements made in the following pages have been carefully verified, and most of them rest upon unimpeachable official testimony. There may be trifling errors in some of the details, but, in the main, the story of which this is one chapter can be proved, even in a Russian court of justice. The facts with regard to Colonel Kononovich (Kon-on-o'vitch) and his connection with the Kara prisons and mines were obtained partly from political convicts and partly from officials in Kara, Chita (Chee'tah), Irkutsk, and St. Petersburg. The letter in which Kononovitch resigned

received a telegram from Captain Nikolin briefly announcing his death. Although more than six months had elapsed since that time, she had heard nothing else. Neither Dr. Veimar before his death, nor his convict friends after his death, had been permitted to write to her, and upon me she had hung her last hopes. How hard it was for me to tell her that I might have seen him-that I might have brought her, from his death-bed, one last assurance of love and remembrance, but that I had not done so, the reader can perhaps imagine. I have had some sad things to do in my life, but I think this was the saddest duty that ever was laid upon me.

I afterward spent a whole evening with her at her house. She related to me the story of Dr. Veimar's heroic and self-sacrificing life, read me letters that he had written to her from battlefields in Bulgaria, and finally, with a face streaming with tears, brought out and showed to me the most sacred and precious relic of him that she had a piece of needlework that he had made in his cell at the mines, and had succeeded in smuggling through to her as a present and token of remembrance and love. It was a strip of coarse cloth, such as that used for convict shirts, about three inches wide and nearly fifty feet in length, embroidered from end to end in tasteful geometrical patterns with the coarsest and cheapest kind of colored linen thread.

"Mr. Kennan," she said to me, trying in vain to choke down her sobs, "imagine the thoughts that have been sewn into that piece of embroidery!"

We remained at the mines of Kara four or five days after our last visit to the house of the Armfeldts, but as we were constantly under close surveillance, we could accomplish nothing. All that there is left for me to do, therefore, is to throw into systematic form the information that I obtained there, and to give, in this and the following paper, a few chapters from the long and terrible history of the Kara penal establishment. 1

The Russian Government began sending state criminals to the mines of Kara in small numbers as early as 1873, but it did not make a regular practice of so doing until 1879. Most of the politicals condemned to penal ser

his position as governor of the Kara penal establishment is still on file in the Ministry of the Interior, and all the circumstances of his retirement are known, not only to the political convicts, but to many of the officials with whom I have talked. I regret that I am restrained by prudential and other considerations from citing my authorities. I could greatly strengthen my case by showing- as I might show-that I obtained my information from persons fully competent to furnish it, and persons whose positions were a sufficient guarantee of impartiality.

vitude before the latter date were held either in the Kara prisons at that time several state in the "convict section" of the Petropavlovski criminals who, by order of the gendarmerie fortress at St. Petersburg, or in the solitary-con- and as a disciplinary punishment, had been finement cells of the Central Convict Prison chained to wheelbarrows.2 Colonel Kononoat Kharkoff. As the revolutionary movement, vich could not bear to see men of high charhowever, grew more and more serious and wide- acter and education subjected to so degrading spread, and the prisons of European Russia and humiliating a punishment; and although became more and more crowded with political he could not free them from it without authoroffenders, the Minister of the Interior began to ity from St. Petersburg, he gave directions that transfer the worst class of hard-labor state they should be released from their wheelcriminals to the mines of Kara, where they were barrows whenever he made a visit of inspection imprisoned in buildings intended originally for to the prison, so that at least he should not be common felons.1 In December, 1880, there compelled to see them in that situation. The were about fifty political convicts in the Kara humane disposition and sensitiveness to human prisons, while nine men who had finished their suffering of which this is an illustration charterm of probation were living outside the prison acterized all the dealings of Colonel Kononowalls in little huts and cabins of their own. vich with the political convicts; and so long Most of the male prisoners were forced to go as he was permitted to treat them with reasonwith the common felons to the gold placers; able kindness and consideration he did so treat but as the hours of labor were not unreasona- them, because he recognized the fact that their bly long, they regarded it as a pleasure and a life was hard enough at best. Late in the privilege, rather than a hardship, to get out of year 1880, however, the Minister of the Interior the foul atmosphere of their prison cells and began to issue a series of orders intended, apwork six or eight hours a day in the sunshine parently, to restrict the privileges of the state and the open air. criminals and render their punishment more severe. They were forbidden, in the first place, to have any written communication whatever with their relatives. To such of them as had wives, children, fathers, or mothers in European Russia this of itself was a terrible as well as an unjustifiable privation. Then they were forbidden to work in the gold placers, and were thus deprived of the only opportunity they had to see the outside world, to breathe pure, fresh air, and to strengthen and invigorate their bodies with exercise. Finally, about the middle of December, 1880, the governor received an order to abolish the free command, send all its members back into prison, half shave their heads, and put them again into chains and leg-fetters.3 Colonel Kononovich regarded this order as unneceschef, and Shchedrin. The last of them was not released until 1884. Whether or not any have been thus punished since that time I do not know.

The officer in command of the Kara penal establishment at that time was Colonel Kononovich, a highly educated, humane, and sympathetic man, who is still remembered by many a state criminal in Eastern Siberia with gratitude and respect. He was not a revolutionist, nor was he in sympathy with revolution; but he recognized the fact that many of the political convicts were refined and cultivated men and women, who had been exasperated and frenzied by injustice and oppression, and that although their methods might be ill-judged and mistaken, their motives, at least, were disinterested and patriotic. He treated them, therefore, with kindness and consideration, and lightened so far as possible for every one of them the heavy burden of life. There were 1 The political prison was not in existence at that time, and the state criminals were distributed among the common-criminal prisons, where they occupied what were called the "secret" or solitary-confinement cells. At a somewhat later period an old detached building in Middle Kara was set apart for their accommodation, and most of them lived together there in a single large kamera. They were treated in general like common convicts, were required to work every day in the gold placers, and at the expiration of their term of probation were released from confinement and enrolled in the free command.

2 This is a punishment still authorized by law, and one still inflicted upon convicts who are serving out life sentences. The prisoner is fastened to a small miner's wheelbarrow by a chain, attached generally to the middle link of his leg-fetter. This chain is long enough to give him some freedom of movement, but he cannot walk for exercise, nor cross his cell, without trundling his wheelbarrow before him. Even when he lies down to sleep, the wheelbarrow remains attached to his feet. Four politicals have been chained to wheelbarrows at Kara, namely: Popeko, Berezniuk, Fomi

3 All of these orders were issued while the liberal Loris Melikof was Minister of the Interior, and I have never been able to get any explanation of the inconsistency between his general policy towards the Liberal party and his treatment of condemned state criminals. Some of the officials whom I questioned in Siberia said without hesitation it was the minister's intention to make the life of the political convicts harder ; while others thought that he acted without full information and upon the assumption that modern politicals were no more deserving of sympathy than were the Decembrists of 1825. The Decembrist conspiratorsalthough high nobles - were harshly treated, therefore Nihilists should be harshly treated. Many of the political exiles whom I met in Siberia regarded Melikof's professions of sympathy with the liberal and reforming party as insincere and hypocritical; but my own impression is that he acted in this case upon somebody's advice, without giving the matter much thought or consideration.

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sarily and even brutally severe, and tried in every way to have it rescinded or modified. His efforts, however, were unavailing, and on the 28th of December he called the members of the free command together, read the order to them, told them that he had failed to obtain any modification of it, and said that he would, on his own personal responsibility, allow them three days more of freedom in which to settle up their domestic affairs. On the morning of January 1, 1881, they must report at the prison. To all the members of the free command this order was a terrible blow. For two years they had been living in comparative freedom in their own little cabins, many of them with their wives and children, who had made a journey of five thousand miles across Siberia in order to join them. At three days' warning they were to be separated from their families, sent back into prison, and put again into chains and leg-fetters. Some of them were VOL. XXXVIII.-69.

leaving their wives and children alone and unprotected in a penal settlement, some of them were broken in health and could not expect to live long in the close confinement of a prison kamera, and all of them looked forward with dread to the chains, leg-fetters, foul air, vermin, and miseries innumerable of prison life.

In the free command was living at this time a young lawyer, thirty-three years of age, named Eugene Semyonofski (Sem-yon'ofskee). He was the son of a well-known surgeon in Kiev, and had been condemned to penal servitude for having been connected in some way with the "underground" revolutionary journal "Onward." He was a man of high character and unusual ability, had had a university training, and at the time of his arrest was practicing law in St. Petersburg. After four or five years of penal servitude at the mines his health gave way, and in 1879 he was

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