Morning journal and courier., 1880-05-18
Tuesday Morning, Mayi1S, 1880.
EXILE TO SIBERIA.

Exile to Siberia IS, In the popular m1nd associated with nothing but horror, and ev. cry time the news comes that another lot o1 Nihilists have been sent to that country many sympathetic sighs are heaved for their hard fate, and they are thought of as about to suffer from the Cossack's whip, deadly work in mines, and the cold and misery attendant upon poorly protected life in the Arctic re- gions. These ideas are erroneous if they are to be accepted as true of Siberia at large or the state of matters there at the present time The country is by no means all sterile and ice bound. It forms the northern half of the continent of Asia, exceeding in size the whole of Europe, and much of it is both fertile and pleasant. In many districts the climate has the mildness of that of Italy, lying as it does in the same latitude as Ven ice The soil in these districts is rich black loam, capable of yielding large harvests. Game is abundant and food is cheap. And there is plenty of evidence that the life of most of the exiles in Siberia is quite as con- fortable as it would be in Russia.
 A paper in Appletons Journal for June, by a Russian, gives some interesting and in- oUA uSoANO AoSoo III OPpooAoiOAA oo oA-O idea of Siberia and the life of the exile there. Since this century began there have been, at most about 500 900 persons exiled to Siberia. Since 1860 the number of exiles has averaged about twenty thousand year, which is not considered large proportion out of pop ulation of eighty-four millions. Only the worst criminals, murderers and desperate enemies of the State, are sent to the mines and there employed in hard labor. Trans portation does not necessarily imply penal servitude, and in many cases convicts are simply conveyed across the Ural range and turned loose to help themselves. They are free to go where they please, as long as they do not return to European Russia. The number of those who escape is good evidence of the freedom enjoyed. In Tobolsk it is recorded that out of 51,122 exiles but 34, 293 could be found, and in Tomsk nearly 5, ,O00 were miss ing out of 3O,OO0. The writer says: ''The great mischief of our system of pitchforking convicts into Siberia and letting them do what they please is that very few of them take to honest labor. The country is so rich that they can live without hard work, and they become idle, good-for-nothing vaga- bonds. It is an easy way of getting rid of convicts, but 1t is not good for Siberia"
 Captain Wiggins, who has won fame by Arctic exploration, has had many opportuni- ties of studying the system of exile from other parts of the Russian Empire to Siberia, and his conclusions are very different from those generally entertained. He says that not one-third of the time-service exiles elect to make the return journey to their former homes. They find that life is pleasanter and easier in the land to which they have been forcibly sent, and they end by becom- ing free settlers in the country of their adop- tion. He says further that for many years past the desire of the Russian Government has been to forward, by all means in its power, the settlement of this portion of its territory, and it has learned that it is good policy to take the utmost possible care of the lives of the exiles, and to place them in the best pos sible positions for self maintenance at the earliest opportunity. Captain Wiggins' K perience of the people convinces him that they are "a happy, rollicking, joyous con- munity-wen clad, well fed and cared for.'
 This and similar testimony will do much to drive out the idea that Siberia is a gigantic quicksilver mine where, amid ice and snow, innocent persons are slowly murdered. Un- doubtedly there is plenty of cruelty there vet and the lot of those exiles condemned to work in the quicksilver mines is sufficiently horrible, but simple punishment to Siberia is evidently rapidly ceasing to be punishment