< Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu
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SIBERIA

OUR LAST DAYS IN SIBERIA 395

and that, if we desired it, an excursion to one of their vil- lages might easily be arranged. I replied that we should be very glad to make such an excursion, and it was decided at once that we should go on the following day to the Akunefski ulus, a settlement of Kachinski Tatars about fifteen versts from Minusinsk on the river Abakan. After making a comprehensive but rather hasty survey of the whole museum, Mr. Frost and I decided that the departments of archeology and ethnology were its most striking and interesting features, but that it was a very creditable exhibition throughout, and an honor to its foun- der and to the town. Its collections, at the time of our visit, filled seven rooms in the building of the town council, and were numbered up to 23,859 in the catalogue, while the number of volumes in its library was nearly 10,000. All this was the direct result of the efforts of a single individ- ual, who had, at first, very little public sympathy or en- couragement, who was almost destitute of pecuniary means, and who was confined ten or twelve hours every day in a drug-store. Since my return from Siberia the directors of the museum, with the aid of I. M. Sibiriakof, Inokenti Kuznetsof, and a few other wealthy and cultivated Siberians, have published an excellent descriptive catalogue of the archaeological collection, with an atlas of lithographic illus- trations, and have erected a spacious building for the ac- commodation of the museum and library at a cost of 12,000 or 15,000 rubles. The catalogue and atlas, which have eli- cited flattering comments from archaeological societies in the various capitals of Europe, possess an added interest for the reason that they are wholly the work of political exiles. The descriptive text, which fills nearly 200 octavo pages, is from the pen of the accomplished geologist and archaeolo- gist Dmitri Elements, who was banished to Eastern Siberia for "political mi trustworthiness" in 1881, while the illustra- tions for the atlas were drawn by the exiled artist A. V.

Stankevich. It has been said again and again by defenders

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