kitchens, where food was prepared every day for more than a thousand men, and where I could discover nothing that was out of harmony with the neatness and good order that prevailed in other parts of the building. I tasted some of the bread and soup furnished to the prisoners and found both palatable and good. The convict ration, Mr. Sipiágin informed me, consisted of three pounds of rye bread, about seven ounces of meat, and three ounces of barley per day, with potatoes or other vegetables occasionally. Tea and sugar were not supplied by the Government, but might be purchased by the prisoners with their own money. When we came out of the kitchens the warden asked us if we would not like to see the school-room. I replied that we certainly should, inasmuch as we had never seen such a thing as a school-room in a Russian prison, and did not suppose that such a thing existed. Mr. Sipiágin laughed, and conducted us to a clean, well-lighted apartment in the second story, which had been fitted up by the convicts themselves with rude desks of domestic manufacture, and had been furnished by the prison authorities with a black-board, a large globe, a wall map of Siberia and another of the Holy Land, and a few cheap lithographs. There were no scholars in the room at the time of our visit to it, but the warden said that the convicts frequently came there to read, sing, or listen to instructive talks from the priest. They were greatly in need of books. They had a few tracts and testaments, left there some years before by the Rev. Mr. Lansdell,[1] but they wanted school-books and a library. From the school-room we went to the shops, where 25 or 30 tailors, shoemakers, and carpenters were hard at work, and where the air was filled with the pleasant odors of fresh pine shavings and Russia leather. The convicts were at liberty, the warden said, to do any work that they were capable of doing, and they received two-thirds of all the
- ↑ This was the only place in Siberia where I found any trace of the books and tracts that Mr. Lansdell distributed.
