"Why don't you get it out, set up smelting-furnaces, and make your iron here on the ground where you need it? More than half of your convicts lie constantly idle in their cells—why don't you utilize their labor?"
"We can't open an iron mine," he replied, "without a razreshénia [a permit or an authorization] from St. Petersburg."
"Then why don't the proper authorities give you a razreshénia? What is the reason that a useful and necessary work of this kind cannot be accomplished? I don't see how the present state of affairs can be profitable to anybody."
His only reply was a shrug of the shoulders, which I interpreted to mean either that he did not know or that it was not his business.
From the prisons of Górni Zerentúi we drove in Captain Demídof's dróshky to the Sávenski mine, which we found on a snowy, desolate mountain slope about two miles from the village. The buildings at the mouth of the shaft were
