530 SIBERIA

THE ISHIM ETAPE. Typhus fever constituted 55.2 per cent, of all the sickness in the Ishim etape in 1886, 50 per cent, in 1887, and 16.6 per cent, in 1888. — Rep's of CM. Pris. Adm. for years indicated, pp. 222, 317, and 292. THE KARA PRISONS. Complaints come to us from Kara of the rough and inhuman treatment of convicts by the Cossacks of the prison guard. " Not long ago," writes one correspondent, " I myself saw a soldier knock a convict down without provocation, and then trample upon and kick him." Is not this barbarous treatment of convicts the reason for the constantly recurring disorders at Kara *? — Newspaper Sibir, No. 26, p. 5. Irkutsk, June 23, 1885. We learn from Kara that, as a result of the recently discovered abuses there, almost all of the old officials have been discharged and new ones put in their places. How much better the latter will be than the former, time will show. — Newspaper Sibir, No. 26, p. 5, Irkutsk, June 23, 1885. Scurvy constituted 15 per cent, of all the sickness in the Lower Kara prisons in 1884. — Eep. of the Chf. Pris. Adm. for 1884, p. 222. THE KIRINSK PRISON. The Kirinsk prison is a wooden building, surrounded by a stockade, and is everywhere supported, inside and outside, by log props, without which it would long ago have fallen down from sheer decay. At the time of my visit to the prison one of the prisoners thrust his finger out of sight into the rotten wood of one of the logs, in order to show us how old and decayed the walls were. This year the ceiling fell in one of the cells and buried the prisoner who occupied it ; but he was taken out alive. The building is very cold, and can hardly be warmed on account of its old and decayed condition. ... At the time of my visit it contained eighty- six prisoners, although it was built to hold not more than fifty at the ut- most. . . . The wardeu complained that since September, 1882, the authorities in Irkutsk had sent him no clothing of any kind for the pris- oners, so that the latter could not leave their cells to work, nor even go out of doors to take a walk. . . . One of the prisoners — a woman named Dolgopolova — complained to me that she had lain three years in this prison, waiting for her case to be tried by the Yakutsk circuit court. The male pi'isoners complained most of overcrowding. Many of them had to sleep not only on the floor, but under the ndri. . . . There is

qo hospital in the prison, and sick prisoners are sent to the Kirinsk city