Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1889-08-24
THE UsT KARA PRISON.
Some OF the Horrible Things Seem by
George KEENAN, In Siberia.

A Cossack corporal ran to the en-
trance with a bunch of keys in his
hand, unlocked the huge paddock that
secured the small door in the larger |
wooden gate, and admitted us to the
prison courtyard. Three or four con-
victs, with half-shaven heads, ran
hastily across the yard as we entered,
to take their places in their cells for
inspection. We assembled two or three
steps incrusted with an indescribable
coating of filth and ice an inch and
half thick, and entered, through a
heavy plank door, long, low, and
very dark corridor, the broken and de-
caying floor of which felt wet and slip
perry to the feet, and where the atmos-
phere, although warm, was very damp,
and saturated with the strong, peculiar
odor that is characteristic of Siberian
prisons. A person who has once in
hailed that odor can never forget it;
and yet it is so unlike any other bad
smell in the world that hardly know
with what to compare it. l can ask
you to imagine cellar air, every atom
OF which has been half a dozen times
through human lungs and is heavy
with carbonic acid; to imagine that air
still further vitiated by foul, pungent,
slightly ammoniacal exhalations from
long .unwashed human bodies; to i'm
agine that it has asuggestion of damp,
decaying wood and more than sug-
gestion of human excrement-and still
you will have no adequate idea of it.
To unaccustomed senses it seems so
saturated with foulness and disease as
to be almost insupportable. AS we
entered the corridor, slipped upon the
wet, filthy floor, and caught the first
breath Of this air, Major Potulof
turned to me with a scowl Of disgust,
and exclaimed, "Otvratitelni tiurma!"
(Ot-vra-te-tel-nee tyoor-ma)-"It is a
repulsive prison."
The Cossack corporal who preceded
us threw open the heavy wooden door
of the first kamera (kah merah) and
shouted: ''Smirno! (Smeer no)-"Be
quietm the customary warning of the
guard to the prisoners when an officer
is about to enter the CELL We stepped
across the threshold into room about
"a feet long, % feet wide and feet
high, which contain ed 80 convicts. The
air here was so much worse than the
air in the corridor that it made me
faint and sick. The room was lighted
by two nearly square, heavily-grated
windows with double sashes, that could
not be raised or opened, and there was
not the least apparent provision any
where for ventilation. Even the brick
oven, by which the cell was warmed,
drew its air from the corridor The
walls of the kamera were of squared
logs, and had once been whitewashed
but they had become dark and grimy
from lapse of time, and were blotchet
in hundreds of places with dull rec
blood-stains, where the convicts hat
crushed bed-bugs. The floor was made
of heavy planks, and, although it hat
recently been swept, it was incrusted
with dry, hardtrodden filth. Gu
from the walls on three sides of tn
room projected low-sloping wooder
platforms about six feet wide, upo
which the convicts slept, side by side
in closely-packed rows, with Hthei
heads to the walls and their feet ex
tended toward the middle of the cell
They had neither pillows nor blankets
and were compelled to lie down upol
1 these sleeping-benches at night with
out rem owing their clothing and with
out other covering than their coars
l gray overcoats The cell contained n
furniture of any kind, except thes
4 sleeping platforms, the brick oven, an
q large wooden-tub. When the doc
i was locked for the night each one {
: these 20 prisoners would have, for s {
3 10 hours consumption, about as muc
e air as would be contained in a pacl
e ing-boX feet square and feet higl
u could discover no way in which
J, single cubic foot of fresh air could g,
q into that cell after the doors had bee
n closed for the night George Kennal
d in Century.
|