at least three classes of people who not only have never committed crime, but are guiltless of any intention to commit crime. I was well aware myself of this fact, but I had never before heard it admitted by a chief of police.
There were not many political exiles in Irkútsk at the time of our visit, and we had some difficulty in finding them. At last, however, we succeeded, without asking the help of Captain Makófski; and although he, as chief of police, was supposed to know everything that was going on, I do not think he dreamed that I sometimes went directly from his house to a place where I met all the political exiles in the city, and that I was spending with them half my nights.
I was surprised to find among the administrative exiles in Irkútsk men and women who had just returned from long terms of banishment in the sub-arctic province of Yakútsk. "How did it happen," I said to one of them, "that you, a mere administrative exile, were sent to the worst part of Eastern Siberia? I thought that the province of Yakútsk was reserved as a place of punishment for the more dangerous class of political offenders, and for compulsory colonists from the mines of the Trans-Baikál."
"That is not quite the case," he replied. "It is true that administrative exiles are usually sent to some part of Western Siberia, but they are frequently transferred afterward to the province of Yakútsk. I myself was sent to Western Siberia in the first place, but in 1881 I was transported to Yakútsk because I would not take the oath of allegiance to Alexander III."
"Do you mean," I said, "that the Government, while punishing you for treason, required you to take an oath of loyalty?"
"Precisely," he replied; "and because I could n't and would n't do it, I was banished to a Yakút ulús."[1]
- ↑ Ulús is the name for a native settlement, consisting perhaps of only one or two earth-covered yurts, situated in the taigá, or primeval wilderness of Yakútsk, sometimes hundreds of miles from the nearest Russian village and more than 5000 miles from St. Petersburg. The gentleman to whom
