Penal Banishment.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 19, 17 October 1907, Page 4

Penal Banishment.

v A DESOLATE SETTLEMENT IN SIBERIA. The current issue of the proceeedings of the Anglo-Russian Literary Society contains fclie text of a lecture entitled "Paris -to New York Overland," given bofore the society by Mr liarry do Windt. It includes'tho following description of Srcdui-Kolymsk, one of the Russian criminal settlements in Arctic Siberia: —"We reached Sredui-Kolymsk in twenty-three days from Verkoyansk, but tho journey killed seven moro of our deer. It was a glorious morning, but the sight of that dismal settjement secemcd to darken the face of naturo like a cofiin caried by mistake into a brilliant ballroom. Imagino an avenue of dilapidated mud hovels -with ice windows. At 0110 end a woooden chapel bleached and rotating with age, at the other a police offico, the only decent building in the place. All around a desolate plain of snow, fringed by gloomy pino forest and bisected by tho frozen river Kolyma. Over all the silence of death. That is Sredni-Kolymsk as it appear.l to me, even-on that bright sunlight day —tho most cheerless, God-forsaken spot on the face of this earth. "Of tho fourteen exiles here, only two were guilty of actual crime—Madame Akimova, of an attempt,to assassinate the firesent emperor at his coronation, and Zimmerman of destroying the Lodz Government factories by dynamito in 1894. ■ Tho other exiles were absolutely innocont of active participation in the revolutionary : movement, and would have been regarded as peaceablo citizens in any other country. My experience of Russian and Siberian prisons extends over a period of twelve years, and from Moscow to tho Island of Saghalien I havo gonerally found them humanely conducted. I cannot believe that the appaling state of affairs'at Sredni-Kolymsk is known in Petersburg. * "Exiles take over three years to reach this place after indescribablo sufferings, and once lioro 30 per cont become insane from tho silence and solitude, and from the fact that they never know at tho end of their term •whether it won't be extended for an indefinite period. Within two years thero had been four cases of suicido in a colony of about twenty exiles. These poor pcoplo wero occupying huts abandoned by filthy Yakutes, living in winter on putrid fish, and, being unable to purchase furs, suffering agonies from the ferocious cold. Only n few weeks beforo my arrival, n young exile blew out his brains after being flogged by the chief of police, who was himself shot dead the next day by an exile friend of tho dead man; and these tragedies arc not uncommon." Captain Rows ton, of the steam trawler Salvia, which arrived at Grimsby recently, reported to the Board of Trade authorities that, when off Mayness. Faroo, ho picked up the derelict steam trawler Dimon, which had been struck by a whalo. Tho Dimon's engineroom and forecastle were full of water. Tho vessel hod a crow of nine, on board. Sho was towed into Nestman's Haven, Faroe.