Siberia and the exile system . loping bridgeto the landing-stage. More than three-fourths of the menwere in leg-fetters, and for an hour there was a continuousclinking of chains as the prisoners passed me on their wayto the barge. The exiles, although uniformly clad in gray,presented, from an ethnological point of view, an extraor-dinary diversity of types, having been collected evidentlyfrom all parts of the vast empire. There were fierce, wild-looking mountaineers from Daghestan and Circassia, con-demned to penal servitude for murders of blood-revenge;there were Tatars from the lower Volga,
Siberia and the exile system . loping bridgeto the landing-stage. More than three-fourths of the menwere in leg-fetters, and for an hour there was a continuousclinking of chains as the prisoners passed me on their wayto the barge. The exiles, although uniformly clad in gray,presented, from an ethnological point of view, an extraor-dinary diversity of types, having been collected evidentlyfrom all parts of the vast empire. There were fierce, wild-looking mountaineers from Daghestan and Circassia, con-demned to penal servitude for murders of blood-revenge;there were Tatars from the lower Volga, who had beensunburned until they were almost as black as negroes;Turks from the Crimea, whose scarlet fezzes contrastedstrangely with their gray convict overcoats; crafty-look-ing Jews from Podolia, going into exile for smuggling; andfinally, common peasants in great numbers from all partsof European Russia. The faces of the prisoners generallywere not as hard, vicious, and depraved as the faces of A SIBEKIAN CONVICT BARGE 115. EXILES GOING ON BOARD THE BARGE. 116 SIBEKIA criuiiiials in America. Many of tlioni wore pleasant andgood-humored, some were fairly intelligent, and even tlieworst seemed to me stupid and brutish rather than savage W//ZM/A
Size: 1272px × 1965px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectsiberiarussiadescrip
