The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1884-11-06
Man.nunting in Siberia.

SOrrT, lQQeeQ. even WleQ QealQ OOes
not come to put an end 10 his existence,
Is the lot of the convict who has sue.
ceeded in escaping from the miRes o!
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 sequences. The con-
vict of the lowest type regards the ST.
berian coloniSt a. an il erior. and has
saying which describes him as blind
for three days a te.' birth" But the
colonist has his revenge. He works the
supercilious convict like beast of bur-
den, and gives him a. tile rest and as
little food as possible. When wages
are demanded the colonist has an origi-
nal way Of satisfying his laborer. The
money is pad without demur, but be-
fore the convict can get clear, he falls
dead, killed by a bullet from the gun of
his cruel employer. This method OF
payment is some ines carried out on q
large scale. 1t is adopted in the case
of Vagabond labor rs who. having fin
ished .heir autumn work in the fields,
return to the neighborng village to be
paid of. The wages are forthcoming,
and the labo:ers allowed 10 depart with
their hardly earned money. But they
have no sooner gone than the peas
ant farmer assem- les his neigh,
bors, and havins provided them
with horses and firearms. the whole
party sallies forth in purs it OF the vag-
abonds. The retiring laborers are
speedily overtaken: most are killed on
the spot, all are robbed. the recovered
money being divided between the farm
er and his confederates The only re-
spect shown for authort ty is the preva-
lent habit, where ro' berry has been the
motive of slaughter, O. concealing the
dead The murdered convicts are
usually cut up and mutilated, and the
remains buried in out-os-the-way
places. The hunting of the "hunch-
backs" as the es Il ed conv:cts are Oft
en- called in de:,is cn, has gone on for
years, entering 50 dc ply into the hab-
its of the people th"t It has escaped the
attention of Jew ira elerS through East
ern Siberia. Where are the men?"
was asked of a woman lett in charge of
small village al dining the highway
"Gone after the hunclbacks, was the
reply. Such is the prevailing demoral-
ization in this resDect 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 certain
death for conv!cs cSca |, or still un-
der supervision. to be caught returning
from the min. Occasionally the sol
d:ers initiate the colonists in their ex-
ploitation of the vagabond. The Cos
sack, as well as the ordinary colonists,
covets cheap labor. and is in the habit
of rewarding with an Once or two Of
lead the convict who declines to pass
from one con ition of bond slavery to
another.
During the colonization of the Trans
baikal region the hunting of vagabonds
was one OF the common diversions of
the newly-arriyed settlers. From
Tomsk to Chit there is {: locality that
has rendered itself notorious for the
pursuit on large sca!e o: escaped con-
victs. In the Tonsk Government itself
whole villages are described as living
solely by the robbery of vagabonds.
The river karasan has been so filed
with the bodies of murdered conv:cts as
to become putrid. Near Fingul open
woods are known as favorite ground
for the slaughter. The whoe of the
districts full Of the memories and ira
ditions OF Siberian man hunting. He
roes of the sport are still! alive, Bitkov,
Romanov and Zavorota were each ex-
pert in different was. Romanov for
instance gained celebrity in the village
of Fingul, whera was in the habit Of
lying in ambush close to the highway,
and shooting down every yagabond who
passed. In the autumn evenings Bit
kov used to pick OF stragglers along
the banks of the river Augar. During
subsequent sport along the Biryus there
were individual Siberians who boasted
that they had brought down as many
as sixty and in some cases ninety vag-
aoonds. Only upon one Of these hunt
ers of men do the vaeabonds seem to
have taken vengeance. They selected
one Paramonch, who had cen all his
life engaged in killing convicts. The
vagabonds assembled together, seized
him and brought his career to close
by plunging him alive into a cauldron
of incandescent metal-S. Petersburg
Cor. London Glotr.