CONVICT HUNTING IN SIBERIA.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4427, 13 March 1883, Page 2

CONVICT HUNTING IN SIBERIA.

A correspondent of the London Globe thus describes the lot of the convict who escapes from the Siberian mines:— "Sorry, indeed, even when death does not come to put an end to his existence, is the lot of the convict who has succeeded in escaping from the mines of Eastern Siberia. Without resources of any kind, he must beg or rob his way back to Kussia. 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 satis fying his laborer. The money is paid

without demur, but, before the qonvict can get clear, he falls dead, killed by a bullet from ' his cruel employer. This

method of payment is sometimes carried

out on a large scale. I* is adopted in the case of vagabond .laborers who, having finished their autumn work in 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. But they have no sooner gone than the farmer assembles his neighbors, and having provided them with horses and firearms, the wholeparty sallies forth in pursuit of the vagabonds. The retiring laborers are speedily overtaken : = most are killed on the spot, all are robbed, the recovered money being divided between the farmer and his confederates. The only respect shown for aatkority is, the prevailing habit, where robbery has been the motive of slaughter, of concealing the dead. The murdered convicts are usually cut up and mutilated, and the remains buried in an out of-the-way place. This hunting of the "hunch-backs," as the escaped con-

viols are often called in derision, has gone on for years, entering so deeply into the habits of the people that it has escaped the notice of a few travellers through

I Eastern Siberia. " Where are the men?" was asked of a woman left in charge of a small village adjoining the highway. "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 vagabonds in order that they may see " how the fellow will roll on his hump." In some of the Governments it is certain death for a convict escaped or still under supervision to be caught returning from the

mines. Occasionally the soldiers imitate the colonist in the exploitation of the

vagabond. The Cossack, as well as the ordinary colonist, covets cheap labor, and is in the habit of rewarding with an ounce of lead the convict who declines to pass from one 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 de*. scribed aa living solely by the robbery of vagabonds. The river B.arasan has been so filled with the bodies of murdered convicts as to become putrid. Near Fingul, open woods are known as a favorite ground for the slaughter. The whole of the district is full of the memories and traditions of Siberia man-hunting. Heroes of the sport are still alive. Bitkoy Itomanoy and Zavorata were j expert in different ways. Eomanoy, for instance, gained celebrity in the village of Fingal, 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 Bitkoy used to pick off stragglers along the banks of the river Augar. During subsequent sport along the Birvus there are individual Siberians who boasted that they brought down as many as sixty, and in one case ninety, vagabonds. Ouly upon one of these mun-hunters do the vagabonds seem to have tajcen vengeance. They selected one Paramounich, who had been all his life engaged in killing convicts. Tiie vagabonds assembled together, seized him, and brought his career to a close by plunging him alive into a cauldron of incandescent metal."