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Show CONVICTS IX S1BEKT.I. A COMPARISON OF THE SUFFERINGS KNDUHED BY TWO CLASSES. Regarded as places of punishment punish-ment tho Nerchinsk mince did not seem to me so territilo as tliey are ofu-n represented to be. It is not very pleasant, 'of course, to work eight or ten hours tTery day In a damp or ley gallery SOU feet underground: under-ground: hut even euch employment Is, I think, less prejudicial to health than unbroken confinement In a dirty, over-crowded and foul-smell-Ing convict prison. The mines are badly ventilated and the gases liber-attd liber-attd in them by the explosives used are doubtless Injurious; butthereare no deadly fumes or exhalations from poisonous ores like cinnabar cinna-bar to a fleet the health of the laborers, labor-ers, and experience seems to show that tbe death-rate Is no higher aruontj Uie convicts who go regularly regular-ly every day Into tho mines than among those who lie Idle day after day in the vitiated air of the prison katnera. If I weru permitted to make choice between complete Idleness Idle-ness in such a prison as that of Al-gachl Al-gachl or IM Kara and regular daily labor in the mines, I should, without with-out hesitation, choose the latter. So far aa I could ascertain by careful care-ful inquiry among the convicts themselves, no one has ever been compelled to live and sleep In these mines day and night, and I believe that all the stories to that effect published pub-lished from time to tirooaru wholly Imaginary and fictitious. The work -Ingforce may occasionally have been divided into da and night gangs,or shins sent into the mines alternately, alternate-ly, but tho same men have never been required to remain there continuously con-tinuously for twenty-four hours. At tbo prt sent time there is no night work and all of the convicts return to their prisons lieforc dark, or In the short days of midwinter very soon alter dark. I do not wish to be understood un-derstood as saying that the Ufo of Itussfau convicts at the Nerchinsk sliver mines is au easy one, or that they do not sufllr. I otn hardly imagi'ic a more terrible and hojielcss exl-tencu than that of a man who works all day In one of tbo damp, muddy galleries of the l'okrofskl mine, and goes back at night to a close, foul, vrrniln-Infestcd prison like that of Algaclil. It in wore than tbe life of any pariah dog.but at the same time it Ik not the sensatienally terrible life of tbe fictitious fic-titious convict described by -Sir. Grcnvlllo Murray theconvict who lives night .and day underground, .sleeps in a rocky niche, toils in hopelets misery under tbe lash of a pitiless overseer, and la slowly loi-soned loi-soned to death by the fumes oftiuick-ilver. oftiuick-ilver. Sncli things might be effective effec-tive In a sensational drama, but they are not true. Tho worst feature ef penal servitude In Siberia Is not hard labor in Hie mines lt Is the condition condi-tion of the prisons. Century. |