AN ESCAPE FROM SIBERIA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3168, 24 August 1881, Page 4

AN ESCAPE FROM SIBERIA.

The Geneva correspondent of the Daily News sends a narrative of the escape from Siberia of M. Mokrievitch, a Russian Socialist, whose arrival in Switzerland was recently announced. M. Mokrievitch, who is about thirty-three years of age, is the son of a country gentleman, and highly educated. In January, 1879, he was at Kieff, conducting a secret, printing office, which was seized by the police, and M. Mokrievitch, being captured, was sentenced by a court-martial to fourteen years' penal servitude in Siberia. In July following, he and some other state convicts set out on their long journey for Oust Kara, where they had to undergo their sentences. They travelled part of tho way via iSijni Novgorod, by railway, steamboat, and on horseback. The remainder of the journey, 1450 miles, had to be done on foot and in chairs. The narrative continues :— " Between Krasnoyarsk and Irkoutsk, M. Mokrievitch and twe of his companions, Izbitzkey and Orloff, changed names and dresses with three ordinary convicts who were under sentence of perpetual exile. This, M. Mokrievitch assures me, is a very common expedient, and can be effected at a cost of a few roubles. His destination was that of the peasant whose name he had laken, a settlement in the province of Irkoutsk. Izbitzkey and Orloff

got away beforo reaching Irkoutsk, proba- i bly by the connivance of the guard. Orloff was soon recaptured, Izbitzkey has never been heard of since, and is supposed to have perished of hunger, or been devoured by wolves in the trackless forests of Eastern Sibera. On Nov. 13,1879, a few days after leaving Irkoutsk for Balaganask—his final destination—M. Mokrievitch also gave his escort the slip. As soon as his flight was discovered a number of Bouryats, half-savage Mongol horsemen, as keen as sleuth hounds and as cunning as Red Indians,were sent afer him, bufc he succeeded in evading their pursuit, and reaching Irkoutsk. To avoid recapture, which, bad he gone west would have been almost certain, he made off towards the Chinese frontier, and after a walk of 700 miles in the depth of a Siberian winter he doubled back in the direction of European Russia, which he reached after a journey of 4000 miles, performed mostly on foot. He underwent terrible hardships, and met with many adventures. Without the frequent aid and "enerous hospitality of the country people, who are noted for their kindness to fugitive "onvicts, he could not. possibly have made ?ood bis escape, and, lest he should expose those who helped him to the vengeance of the Russian Government, he does not desire (r> make publicly known the exact direction which he took. M. Mokrieviteli's journey Russia, though not. unattended with difficulty and risk, was child's play compared with his walk through Siberia. Furnished by his friends with false papers he succeeded in getting safely out, of the country, and a few days ago reached "-witzerlnnrl Wiotrowsky in the hist century, M. T)eha_oria Mokrievitch is the only state prisoner condemned to hard labor that ever escaped from Siberia.