MAN HUNTING IN SIBERIA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3612, 8 February 1883, Page 4

MAN HUNTING IN SIBERIA.

(St. Petersburg Letter to the London

Globe.) Sorry, indeed, even -when death does not come to put an end to its existence, is the lot of the convict who has succeeded in escaping from the mines of Eastern Siberia. Without resources of any kind, lie must beg or rob his way to Russia. The alternative of seeking employment is one which often has disastrous consequences. The convict of the lowest type regards the Siberian

colonist as an inferior, and has a saying which describes him as "blind for three days after birth." But the colonist has his revenge. He works the supercilious convict like a beast of burden, and gives him as little rest and as little food as possible. When wages are demanded the colonist has an original way of satisfying his laborer. The money is paid without demur, but before the convict can get clear he falls dead, killed by a bullet from the gun of his cruel employer. This method of payment is sometimes carried out on a large scale. It is adopted in the case of vagabond laborers who, having finished their autumn work m the fields, return to the neighboring village to be paid off. The wages are forthcoming, and the laborers allowed to depart with their hardly earned money. They are no sooner gone than the peasant farmer assembles his neighbors, and, having provided them with horses and firearms, the whole party sallies forth in pursuit of the vagabonds. The retiring vagabonds are speedily overtaken ; most arc killed on the spot, all are robbed, the recovered money being divided between the farmer and his confederates. The only respect shown for authority is the prevalent habit where robbery has been the motive of slaughter, of concealing the dead. The murdered convicts arc usually cut up and mutilated, and the remains buried in out of the way places. This hunting of the ''hunchbacks," as the escaped convicts are often called in derision, has gone on for years, cnterinu , so deeply into the habits of the people "that it has escaped the attention of few travellers through Eastern Siberia, "Where are the men?" was asked of a woman left in charge of a small village adjoiuintr the Irighway. "Gone after the hunchbacks," "was the reply. _ Such is the prevailing demoralisation in this respect that boys have been heard to ask their fathers "to kill the vagabonds in order that they may see " how the fellow will roll on hishumy." In some of the Governments it is certain death for a convict escaped, or still under supervision, to be caught returning from the mine. Occasionally the soldiers imitate the colonists in their expoliation of the vagabond. The Cossack, as well as the ordinary colonist, covets cheap labour, and is in the habit of rewarding with an ounce or two of lead the convict who declines to pass from condition of bond ■slavery to another. During the colonisation of the Transbaikal region the hunting of vagabonds was one of the common diversions of the newly arrived settlers. From Tomsk to Chiti there is a locality that has rendered itself notorious for the pursuit, on a large scale of escaped convicts. In the Tomsk government itself whole villages are described as living solely by the robbery of vagabonds. The '"river Karasan has been so filled with the bodies of murdered convicts as to become putrid. Near Fingue open woods are known as a favourite ground for the slaughter. The whole of the district is full of the memories and traditions of Siberian man-hunting. Heroes of the sport are still alive. Bitkoff, Romanov, and Zavarota were each expert in different ways. Romanov, for instance, gained celebrity in the village of Fiugul, where he was in the habit of lying in ambush close to the highway, and shooting down every vagabond who passed. In the autumn evenings Bitkoff used to pick off stragglers along the banks of the river Augar. During subsequent sport along the Biryus there were individual Siberians who boasted that they had brought down as many as sixty and in some cases ninety vagabonds. Only upon one of these hunters o. men do the vagabonds seem to have taken vengeance. They selected one Paramoutch, who had been all his life engaged in killing convicts. The vagabonds assembled together, seized him and brought his career to a close by plunging him alive into a cauldron of incandescent metal.