bare, snow-covered mountains in the distance. The convict prison, to which we were conducted by the warden, Mr. Fomin, proved to be nothing more than a bogadiélnia, or infirmary, to which were sent hopelessly disabled and broken-down convicts from other parts of the Nérchinsk mining district. The main building, which is shown on the right of the bridge in the illustration, on page 284, is a one-story log structure of the usual Kará type, and contained, at the time of our visit, 137 prisoners. It had been standing, the warden said, about half a century, and its sanitary condition, as might have been expected, was bad. The floors were dirty, the air in the cells was heavy and vitiated, and the corridors were filled with the stench of privies and neglected paráshas. In two of the kámeras we found lunatics living with their sane comrades. The hos- pital attached to the prison is small, but it was not overcrowded, and it seemed to me to be clean and in fairly good condition. The coarse linen on the cot beds was dirty, but the feldsher, or hospital-steward, said that this was not his fault. The supply of bed-linen was scanty, and he did the best he could with what was furnished him. He seemed to be very much gratified when I told him that his hospital, although small, impressed me as being the cleanest and best-managed institution of the kind that I had seen in the Trans-Baikál.
After having inspected the prison, Mr. Frost and I returned to Mr. Fomin's comfortable house, where we met the isprávnik of Nérchinski Zavód, a tall, well-built, good-looking man about forty years of age, who was making a tour of his district. He was very pleasant and communicative, talked with us frankly about the Nérchinsk mines, and said, without hesitation, that the Government's management of them was "clumsy, incompetent, and wasteful." He thought that it would be much better for the country if the whole Nérchinsk silver-mining district were thrown open to private enterprise. Many of the engineers in the employ of the Government were either corrupt or incapable, and the
