Siberia and the exile system . office door, it contained 1741. As we approachedthe entrance we were stopped by an armed sentry, who,upon being informed that we desired admittance, shoutedthrough a square port-hole in the heavy gate, Star-she-e-e !(the usual call for the officer of the day), A corporal orsergeant, with a saber at his side and a Colts revolver in aholster on his hip, answered the summons, carried our noteto the warden, and in a moment we were admitted to theprison yard. Fifty or sixty exiles and convicts were walk-ing aimlessly back and forth in front of the main prisonbuilding,
Siberia and the exile system . office door, it contained 1741. As we approachedthe entrance we were stopped by an armed sentry, who,upon being informed that we desired admittance, shoutedthrough a square port-hole in the heavy gate, Star-she-e-e !(the usual call for the officer of the day), A corporal orsergeant, with a saber at his side and a Colts revolver in aholster on his hip, answered the summons, carried our noteto the warden, and in a moment we were admitted to theprison yard. Fifty or sixty exiles and convicts were walk-ing aimlessly back and forth in front of the main prisonbuilding, or sitting idly in groups here and there on theground. They were all dressed from head to foot in a cos-tume of gray, consisting of a visorless Scotch cap, a shirt andtrousers of coarse homespun linen, and a long gray overcoatwith one or two diamond-shaped patches of black or yellowcloth sewn upon the back between the shoulders. Nearlyall of them wore leg-fetters, and the air was filled with a THE TIUMEN FORWARDING PRISON 85. THE COLKT-YARI) OF TlIK TIUMEN lia-ii.\. 86 SIBERIA peculiar clinking of chains which suggested the continuousjingling of innumerable bunches of keys. The liist /idnicra or cell that we entered was situated ina one-story log barrack standing against the wall on theleft of the gate, and built evidently to receive the over-flow from the crowded main building. The room wasabout 35 feet in length by 25 in width and 12 feet high;its walls of hewn logs were covered with dirty whitewash;its rough plank floor was black wdth dried mud and hard-trodden filth; and it was lighted by three grated windowslooking out into the prison yard. Down the center of theroom, and occupying about half its width, ran the sleeping-bench—a wooden platform 12 feet wdde and 30 feet long,supported at a height of 2 feet from the floor by stoutposts. Each longitudinal half of this low platform slopeda little, roof-wise, from the center, so that when the pris-oners slept upon it in two c
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectsiberiarussiadescrip
