526 SIBERIA

into a condition not far removed from frenzy. The prison sometimes has 600 inmates, and to its filth and disorder are attributable the typhus fever, diphtheria, and other diseases that spread from it, as from a pit of contagion, to the population of the city." It is commonly said that European Russia has no prisons for criminals, and that it is necessary, therefore, to send the latter to Sibei-ia ; but the pictures drawn by our correspondents show what is the condition of the Siberian prisons to which these criminals are sent, and into which there are sometimes crammed more than 2000 exiles. Sibei'ian prisons contami- nate not only the Siberian air, but the morals of the Siberian people. — Newspaper Vostochnoe Obozrenie, No. 22, p. 4. St. Petersburg, June 2, 1883. Typhus fever constituted 16.6 per cent, of all the sickness in the Achinsk prison in 1886, and 10.8 per cent, in 1888. - Rep. of Chf . Pris. Adm. for 1886 and 1888, pp. 221 and 292. If you once glance into the Achinsk prison you will never forget it. I have seen many prisons and e'tapes, but not one worse than tliis. As you look at the prisoners in these cloaca, you are simply astonished at the capacity of the human organism for endurance. When I said to the warden, " Why don't you try to clean your prison — at least a little ? " he replied, "Galkine Wrasskoy [the chief of the Russian prison administra- tion] saw it all just as it is. The only way to make this prison endurable is to burn it down and build another — and where are you going to get the money ? " There was nothing to be said after that. — " Prisons and Etapes " by I. P. Belokonski. Orel, 1887. THE BALAGANSK PRISON. The Balagansk prison is one of the oldest buildings in the city, and long ago fell into decay. Official correspondence has been in. progress for many years with regard to the erection of a new prison, but it was not until recently that the sum of 19,000 rubles was appropriated for the purpose, and the work of construction will not begin until spring. It is hard to understand how living human beings can continue to exist in the present prison ruins. There is no separate hospital connected with the prison, nor even an independent prisoners' kitchen ; but in a small wing are the quarters of the warden, and there a room has been set apart for a hospital, and there, in the warden's kitchen, the prisoners do their cooking. You will find in the hospital neither dishes, nor utensils, nor linen in sufficient quantities, nor medicines. The food is scanty and bad. Meat is hardly given to the prisoners at all, and the bread is of such

quality that, to adopt the words of a director of the prison committee