sented nothing that was either new or interesting. One hundred and eighty convicts were confined in the two buildings, and about as many more, who had finished their terms of probation, were living outside in the free command. A new three-story brick prison was in process of erection a short distance away, but work upon it had apparently been suspended or abandoned. It was already ten years old, and in view of the corrupt, shiftless, and inefficient management of prison affairs throughout Eastern Siberia, it seemed to me altogether likely that work upon it would drag along for five or six years more. At the time of our visit the structure had neither floors nor roof, and was still surrounded with scaffolding. Meanwhile 180 idle convicts were being slowly poisoned to death by bad air in the overcrowded kámeras of the log prison that the brick building was intended to replace.[1]
It is hard for an American to understand or make allowances for the shiftlessness, indifference, and inefficiency that are everywhere manifested throughout the Nérchinsk silver-mining district. The mines themselves are not half worked; hundreds of hard-labor convicts lie idle, month
- ↑ Upon my return to St. Petersburg in the spring of the following year, I had an interview with Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy, the chief of the Russian prison administration, in the course of which I ventured to call his attention to the condition of the prisons in the Nérchinsk silver-mining district, and to the unfinished prison at Górni Zerentúi in particular. He admitted that the necessity for new places of confinement at the Nérchinsk mines was evident as early as 1872, and said that in 1874 a special construction committee was appointed to investigate, report, and submit plans. When he [Gálkine Wrásskoy] made a tour of inspection through Siberia in 1881 — seven years later — he found that this specially appointed committee had spent 74,318 rúbles in the erection of two or three small log buildings and in temporary repairs to a few others, had pocketed 61,090 rúbles for salaries and expenses, and had not furnished to the prison administration a single plan or estimate. (These facts were set forth in the annual report of the prison administration for 1882, pp. 72, 73.) "Well," I said, "what was done in view of this state of affairs?" "I recommended," he replied, "that the construction committee be abolished." "And was it abolished?" "It was." "I did not see anything at the Nérchinsk mines," I said, "to show for the 74,000 rúbles that the committee is supposed to have expended, except one small log prison that appeared to be new at the mine of Pokrófski and the unfinished brick building at Górni Zerentúi. Why has the latter been so
