turn of all its members to chains, leg-fetters, and prison cells. That I should be the means of adding to the miseries of these unfortunate people, instead of relieving them, was an almost insupportable thought; and I lay awake nearly all of one night balancing probabilities and trying to make up my mind whether it would be worth while to run such risks. I finally decided to adhere to my original intention and make the acquaintance of the political convicts of the free command at all hazards, provided I could escape the courteous, hospitable, but unceasing vigilance of Major Pótulof.
I lived in Kará five days without having a single opportunity to get out-of-doors unaccompanied and unwatched. At last my chance came. On the sixth day Major Pótulof was obliged to go to Ust Kará to attend a meeting of an army board, or court of inquiry, convened to investigate the recent destruction by fire of a large Government flour storehouse.[1] He had said nothing to me about the political convicts; he had apparently become convinced that we were "safe" enough to leave, and he went away commending us laughingly to the care of his wife. Before he had
- ↑ The history of this storehouse furnishes an interesting illustration of the corruption and demoralization that are characteristic of the Russian bureaucratic system everywhere, and particularly in Siberia. The building should have contained, and was supposed to contain, at the time it was burned, 20,000 puds (360 tons) of Government flour, intended for the use of the convicts at the Kará mines. Upon making an examination of the ruins after the fire it was discovered that a small quantity of flour, which belonged to a private individual and had been stored in the building temporarily as an accommodation, was only slightly charred on the outside, and that three-fourths of it could still be used. Of the 20,000 puds of Government flour, however, not the slightest trace could be found, and an investigation showed that it had all been stolen by somebody, and that the building had been burned to conceal the theft-A few months later, after our departure from Kará, and while the investigation was still in progress, Major Pótulof's house, which contained all the documents relating to the case, was destroyed by an incendiary fire in the same mysterious way. The censor has never allowed the results of the investigation to be published in the Siberian newspapers, and I do not know who, if anybody, was found to be guilty of the double crime. In most cases of this kind the relations of the criminals with the higher authorities are found to be such as to necessitate a suppression of the fact sand a hushing up of the whole matter. I presume that it was so in this case.
