. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across were totally unfitted for thetoil to which they were sentenced; and if treated with the cruelty that issaid to be a part of exile, they could not have lived many months. 3U THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE RUSSLA-N EMPIRE. The most of them were sent to the mines of Nertchinsk, Avhere theywere kept at labor for two years. Afterwards they were employed in apolishing-mill at Chetah and on the public roads for four or five years,and at the end of that
. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across were totally unfitted for thetoil to which they were sentenced; and if treated with the cruelty that issaid to be a part of exile, they could not have lived many months. 3U THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE RUSSLA-N EMPIRE. The most of them were sent to the mines of Nertchinsk, Avhere theywere kept at labor for two years. Afterwards they were employed in apolishing-mill at Chetah and on the public roads for four or five years,and at the end of that time were allowed to settle in the villages andtowns, making their living in any way that was practicable. Some ofthem were joined by their wives, who had property in their own right(the estates of the exiles were confiscated at the time of their banish-ment), and those thus favored by matrimonial fortune were able to set upfine establishments. Some of the Decembrists, as these particular exiles were called, fromthe revolution having occurred in December, died within a few years, butthe most of them lived to an advanced age. When Alexander II. as-. «%#vJ INTKRIOR OF AN EXILE S HUT. cended the throne, in 1856, all the Decembrists were pardoned. Some ofthem returned to European Russia after thirty-one years of exile, but the}found things so changed, and so many of their youthful companions dead,that they wrote back and advised those who were still in Siberia to staythere. My first visit to Siberia was in 1866, forty-one years after the De-cember revolution. At that time there were ten or twelve of the Decem-brists still living, all of them venerable old men. One was a prosperous SOCIAL POSITION OF EXILES. 115 wine-mercliant at Irkutsk; another had made a fortune as a timber-mer-chant ; others were comfortable, though not wealtliy; and two or tlireewere in humble, though not destitute circumstances. Now, if they hadl)een treated with the cruelty that is alleged to be the lot of
Size: 1885px × 1326px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorknoxthomaswallace1835, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880
