introduction to them from many of their comrades in other parts of Siberia, were received by them with warm-hearted hospitality and perfect trust, and spent with them many long winter evenings in the upper room of the old Decembrist house, talking of the Russian revolutionary movement, of the fortress of Petropávlovsk, of the Kharkóf central prison, and of the mines of Kará.
Owing to the absence of the governor of the territory, we could not obtain in Chíta permission to visit and inspect the Kará prisons and mines; but the governor's chief of staff, upon whom I called, did not seem to have any objection to our going there and making the attempt. He said he would telegraph the commanding officer about us, and gave me one of his visiting-cards as a substitute for a letter of introduction. It did not seem to me likely that a simple visiting-card, without even so much as a penciled line, would unlock the doors of the dread Kará prisons; but it was all that we could get, and on the 24th of October we set out for our remaining ride of three hundred miles to the mines.
