life and death to hundreds of weak or half-sick human beings, who come into an étape soaked to the skin after a march of twenty miles in a cold rain, and who have no dry clothing

to put on. The very money spent for the burial of the poor wretches who die from croup, pleurisy, or pneumonia, as a result of sleeping in wet clothes on the road, would buy a substantial tarpaulin for every exile baggage-wagon in Siberia—and yet the tarpaulins are not bought. If it be