that he hoped to introduce silk-worm culture there the next vear, and to substitute for the coarse native tobacco some of the finer sorts from the West Indies and the United States.
After half an hour of pleasant conversation Mr. Shaitánof bade us good-night, and Mr. Gross, Mr. Frost, and I went to call on the political exiles. In anticipation of our coming, ten or fifteen of them had assembled in one of the large upper rooms of a two-story log building near the center of the town, which served as a residence for one of them and a place of rendezvous for the others. It is, of course, impracticable, as well as unnecessary, to describe and characterize all of the political exiles in the Siberian towns and villages through which we passed. The most that I aim to do is to give the reader a general idea of their appearance and behavior, and of the impression that they made upon me. The exiles in Ust Kámenogórsk did not differ essentially from those in Ulbínsk, except that, taken as a body, they furnished a greater variety of types and represented a larger number of social classes. In Ulbínsk there were only professional men and students. In Ust Kámenogórsk there was at one end of the social scale a peasant shoemaker and at the other a Caucasian princess, while between these extremes were physicians, chemists, authors, publicists, university students, and landed proprietors. Most of them were of noble birth or belonged to the privileged classes, and some of them were men and women of high cultivation and refinement. Among those with whom I became best acquainted were Mr. Kanoválof, who read English well but spoke it imperfectly;[1] Mr. Milinchúk, a dark-haired, dark-bearded Georgian from Tiflís; and Mr. Adam Bialovéski, a writer and publicist from the province of Mohílef. The last-named gentleman, who was a graduate of the university of Kíev, impressed me as a
- ↑ Mr. Kanoválof committed suicide in Ust Kámenogórsk about six months after we left there.
