The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1878-03-15
Horrors Of sib an Quicksilver Mines.

Horrors of Sib an Quicksilver Mines.
The exiles W o., live in the mines are
convicts of the worst type and political
offenders of the best. The murderer
for his villainy, the intelligent Polish
rebel for his patriotism, are deemed
equally worthy of the punishment of
slow death. They never see the light
of day, but work and sleep all the year
round in the depths of the earth, ex-
tracing silver or quicksilver under the
eyes of taskmasters who have orders
not to spare them. Iron gates guarded
by scntres, close the lodes or streets,
at the bottom of the shafts, and the min
ers arc rallied off from one another in
gangs of twenty. They sleep within
recesses hewn out of the rock, very
kennels, into which they must creep on
all-fours.
Prince Joseph Lubomirski, who was
authorized to visit one of the mines of
the Oural at n time when it was not
suspected he would ever publish an ac-
count of his exploration in French, has
given an appalling account of what he
saw. Convicts racked with the Joint
pains which quicksilver produces; men
whose hair and eyebrows had dropped
off, and who were gaunt as skeletons,
were kept to hard labor under the lash.
They have only two holidays a year,
Christmas and Easter; and all the other
days, Sundays included, they must toll
until exhausted nature robs them of the
use of their limbs, when they are hauled
up to die in the infirmary.
Five years in the quicksilver pits are
enough to turn a man of thirty into an
apparent seXagenarian, but some have
been known to struggle on for ten
years. No man who has served in the
mines is ever allowed to return home
the most he can obtain in the way OF
grace is leave TO come up and work in
the road gangs, and it is the promise OF
this favor as reward for industry
which operates even more than the lash
to maintain discipline. Women are en-
ployed in the mines as sifters, and get
no better treatment than the men.
Polish ladies by the dozen have been
sent down 10 rot and die, while the St.
Petersburgh journals were declaring
that they were living as free colonists
and, more recently, ladies connected
with Nihilist conspiracies have been
consigned to the mines in pursuance OF
" SNitciiNC VI llttltt litDOG. IL IluSI Ill
ways be understood that sentence OF
Siberian hard labor means death.
The Russian government we'll knows
that to live for years in the atrocious
tortures of the mines is humanity i'm
possible, and, consequently, the use OF
euphemism to replace the term capi-
tai punishment is merely ola piece with
the hypocrisy of all official statements
in Russia. Once week a pope, him.
self an exile, goes down into the mines
to bear the consolation of religion, un-
der the form of a sermon, enjoining pa
tience. BY the same occasion, he drives
a lively trade in vodki
The miners, who live habitually OH
tschi and black bread, are allowed ko.
peck for good days work, and this
sum invariably goes in drink. Perhaps
the raw, rancid spirit serves to keep NJ
their strength; any how, the intoxica-
ton it brings on affords the unfortu.
mates the only dreg of comfort they can
expect on this earth. One shudders tc
think of the state of the better educated
men who refuse the consolation of occa.
sionally drowning their sorrows in
liquor. What must be the plight OF
professors, journalists, landowners
who have been condemned TO die BY
inches for the crime of emitting liberal
opinions, which in England bring q
man to great honor and comfort on ev-
cry side?