St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1883-01-26
Convict Hunting in Siberia.

[St. Petersburg Letter in London Globel
Sorry, indeed, even when death does
not come to put an end to his exis-
tence, is the lot of the convict who has
succeeded in escaping from the mines
of eastern Siberia. Without resources
of any kind, he must beg or rob his
way back to Russia. The alternative
of seeking employment is one which
often has disastrous consequences.
The convict of the lowest type regards
the Siberian cOlOnist as an inferior,
and has a saying which describes him
as "blind for three days after birth"
But the cOlOnist has his revenge. He
works the superciliOus convict like a
beast of burden, and gives him as lit
tie rest and as little food as possible.
When wages are demanded the colo
mist has an original way of satisfying
his laborer. The money is paid with
out demur, but, before the convict can
get clear, he falls dead, killed by Il
bullet from the gun of his cruel en-
plOyer. This method of payment is
sometimes carried out on large scale
1t is adopted in the case of vagabOnd
labOrers who, having finished their
autumn work in the fields, return to
the neighboring village to be paid off.
The wages are forthcoming and the
labOrers allowed to depart with their
hardly earned money. But they have
no sooner gone than the peasant farm
er assemblies his neighbOrs, and having
provided them with horses and fire
arms, the whole party sallies forth in
pursuit of the vagabOnds. The retir-
ing laborers are speedily overtaken !;
most ale killed on the spot, all are
robbed, the recovered money being
divided between the farmer and his
cOnfederates. The only respect shown
for authority is the prevalent habit,
where robbery has been the motive
of slaughter, of cOncealing the dead.
The murdered cOnvicts are usually cut
up and mutilated, and the remains
buried in out-of-the-way places. This
! hunting of the ''hunchbacks," +" as the
escaped cOnvicts are often called i'll
derision, has gone on for years, enter
ing so deeply into the habits of the
people that it has escaped the atten-
ton of few travellers through eastern
Siberia. "Where are the men ?" was
asked of a woman left in charge of a
small village adjoining the highway
"GOne after the hunchbacks," was the
reply. Such is the prevailing demOral-
iZatiOn in this respect that boys have
been heard to ask their fathers to kill
vagabOnds in order that they may see
chow the fellow will roll on his hump
In some of the governments it is GER
tain death for convict escaped, ol
still under supervision, to be caught
returning from the mine. Occasion
ally the soldiers initiate the colonistS
in their exploitation of the vagabOnd
The Cossack, as well as the ordinary
cOlonist, covets cheap labor, and is in
the habit of rewarding with an ounce
or two of lead the convict who declines
to pass from one condition of bono
slavery to another.
During the colonization of the Trans
baikal region, the hunting of vaga
bonds was one of the common diver
sions of the newly arrived settlers
From Tomsk to Chit there is a local.
ty that has rendered itself nOtoriOu,
for the pursuit on large scale of es
capped cOnvlcts. In the TOmsk gov
ernment itself whole villages are de
scribed as living solely by the robbery
of vagabonds. The river Karasan ha
been so filed with the bodies of mur
dered cOnvicts as to become putrid
Near Fingul open woods are know
as favOrite ground for the slaughter
The whole of the district is full of til,
memories and traditions of Siberian
man-hunting. Heroes of the sport ar,
still alive, Bitkov, RomanOv and Ia
vorOta were each expert in differen
ways. ROmanOv for instance, gained
celebrity in the village of Fingul
where he was in the habit of lying il
ambush close to the highway, ant
shooting down every vagabOnd wh
passed. In the antumn evenings Bit
kOv used to pick off stragglers alonj
the banks of the river Augar. Durinj
subsequent sport along the Biryu
there were individual Siberians VIII
boasted that they had brought dow
as many as sixty and in some case
ninety vagabOnds. Only upon one G
these hunters of men do the vagabOnd
seem to have taken vengeance. The
selected one Paramonich, who ha
been all his life engaged in killing con
. victs. The vagabOnds assembled to
! gether, seized him and brought his ca
; reer to close by plunging him aliv
, in caldrOn of incandescent metal.