do at home. If they are educated men they may practise their professions, give instruction to young people, or find employment with merchants as book-keepers or other assistants in business. Some years ago the permission for exiles to engage in teaching anything else than music, drawing and painting was revoked, when it was discovered that some of them had been using their opportunities to spread revolutionary doctrines. Whether this order is yet in force I do not know.
"The next thing to hard labor in Siberia is the sentence to become 'a perpetual colonist.' This means that the exile is to make his living by tilling the soil, hunting, fishing, or in any other way that may be permitted by the authorities; he must be under the eye of the police, to whom he reports at regular intervals, and he must not go beyond certain limits that are prescribed to him.
"The perpetual colonist has a grant of land, and is supplied with tools and materials for building a house; he receives flour and other provisions for three years, and at the end of that time he is supposed to be able to take care of himself. Where he is sent to a fertile part of the country, his life is not particularly dreadful, though at best it is a severe punishment for a man who has been unaccustomed to toil, and has lived in luxury up to the time of being sent to Siberia. Many of these colonists are sent to the regions in or near the Arctic circle, where it is almost continuous winter, and the opportunities for agriculture are very small. Only a few things can be made to grow at all, and the exile doomed to such a residence must depend mainly upon hunting and fishing. If game is scarce, or the fishing fails, there is liable to be great suffering among these unhappy men.
"The friends of an exile may send him money, but not more than twenty-five roubles (about $20) a month. As before stated, the wife of an exile may have an income separate from that of her husband, and if she chooses to spend it they may live in any style they can afford.
"Many criminal and political exiles are drafted into the army in much the same way that prisons in other countries are occasionally emptied when recruits are wanted. They receive the same pay and treatment as other soldiers, and are generally sent to distant points, to diminish the chances of desertion. Most of these recruits are sent to the regiments in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and a good many are found in the Siberian regiments.
"All money sent to exiles must pass through the hands of the officials. It is a common complaint, and probably well founded, that a goodly part of this money sticks to the hands that touch it before it reaches its rightful owner. The same allegation is made concerning the allowances of
