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Show LETTER FIOS TOISK. Conllletlnir Ilrrrarts toneerhln Baaslan Prisons. New Yonic, .tov. SO. Mr. De Wlndt, the English explorer, while traveling in Siberia several week ago, sent a letter to the Tall Stall Uazcltt, denying the statements made by George Kennan in his ar tides published In the Century. About the ame time the following special cable from London was received: re-ceived: "Explorer Do Windt, who is now doing Russia and Siberia, has written a letter from Tomsk, in Western Piberia, In which he declares de-clares that George JCcnnan'a pic turea of prison life under Russian rule are untrue. Tho prisons Iu Tomsk, he declarer, are clean and comfortable and their sanitary condition con-dition is perfect. Tho prisoners, he says, are well fed and are In every V "Jl treated." Mr. Kennan has sent n letter to tUn Mail and Exprctt, In which be says: ids a remarkable fart that when a badly Informed and credulous foreign traveler arrhes In Tomsk and expresses a desire to Inspect the Tomsk prison he is conducted by tho araiabio official"; not to the exile forwarding prison, hich perhaps per-haps is the thing that bo really wishes and means to see, but tn the rinremml Zanlok, or provincial prison, which Is nothing mow than a district jail. This wan the count pursued with Rev. H. Y. Land 'ell. and this seen: to have been tbe rlau adopted by tbe Tomsk officials in their dcallug with Mr.DeWindt. Mr. DeWindt declares positively that the Tomsk prison, as graphically graphical-ly described In tho pages of the Century Cen-tury magazine, does uot exist. According Ac-cording to tho Toujk Siberian Ma-tenser, Ma-tenser, a conservative paper, favored fa-vored by tbo government, and, moreover, under the strictest censorship, cen-sorship, tne number of exiles In the forwarding nriton at that time was more than four thousand, with the prospect of seven tboussnd In the near future, acd this in buildings, according to the admission of Mr. PetukofT, acting governor of the province, that were Intended to hold only fourteen hundred. "It is evident," the Tomsk newspaper news-paper says, "that the prison Is threatened with an outbreak of all sorts or diseases, which will spread to the city aud bring terrible suffering suffer-ing upon the inhabitants What is going on meanwhile In this place or confinement can be imagined only by one who has personally witnessed wit-nessed thn ntrtiiri. It nrMfnta nf overcrowding breathlcssness and literal suffocation." Tills article from the Tomsk oBctkui Messenger, mutt have been In print and known to every intelligent intelli-gent citizen of Tomsk at the very lime when Mr. De Windt was writing writ-ing In that city a letter declaring positively that the prison described by and referred to by the &ocnan Jeenjerdid not exist. |
