Morning journal and courier., 1889-06-15
THE USr KARA PRISON,
Terrible Condition of prisoners tn Si-
 berfan Dungeons-Filth and Lack of Ventilation Make Life almost Un- bearabIe.


 berian Dungeons--Filth and Lack of Ventilation Make Life almost Un- bearabIe.
 Iieorge Kennan in Centuryl
 A Cossack corporal ran to the entrance with 8 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 court yard. Three or four con yicts, with half shaven heads, ran hastily across the yard as we entered, to take their places in their cells for inspection. We as- cended two or three steps incrusted with an indescribabIe coating of filth and ice an inch and half thick, and entered, through heavy plank door, a long, low and very dark corridor, the broken and decaying floor of which felt wet and slippery to the feet, and where the atmosphere, although warm, was very damp and saturated with the strong peculiar odor that is characteristic of Siber- ian prisons. 4 person who has once inhaled that odor can never forget it; and yet it is so unlike any other bad smell in the world that I hardly know with what to compare it.
 can ask you to imagine cellar air, every atom of which has been half dozen times through the human lungs and is heavy with carbonic acid ito imagine that air still further vitiated by foul, pungent, slightly ammoni- aoal exhalations from long uu washed human bodies; to imagine that it has suggestion of
 
 gestion of human exerement-and still you will have no adequate idea of it. To unao- customed senses it seems so saturated with foulness and discease as to be almost insup- portable. AS we entered the corridor, slipped upon the wet, filthy floor and caught the | first breath of this air, Mai. Potulof turned | to me with a scowl of disgust and exclaimed 1 "Otvratiteini tinrmai', (ot-vratetelnee | tyoor- ma)-"It is repulsive prisoni'' | The Cossack corporal who preceded us l threw open the heavy wooden door of the l first kamera (kah' 'merah)snd shouted "Smir' nol" (Smeer,no)-"Be quietP' the customary 1 warning of the guard to the prisoners Wher ! an officer is about to enter the cell. We stepped across the threshold into room about 24 feet long, 9 feet wide and 8 feet high, which contained twenty-nine convicts | The air here was so much worse than the ai | in the corridor that it made me faint an6 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 provis' ion anywhere for ventilation. Even the brick oven, by which, the cells were warmed drew its air from the corridor.
 The walls of the kamera were of squared logs, and had once been whltewasneaI ante Ianse Da l they had become dark and grimy rom lapse of time and were blotched in hundreos ol l nlaoes with dull red blood stains where Sne convicts had crushed bedbugs.
 The floor was made of heavy pIanks, ano' | althouah it had recently been swept, It was inorusted with dry, hard trodden filth. Out l iron, the walls on three sides Of the room projected low, sloping platforms about sis 1 feet wide. upon which the convicts slept siJe by side, in closely packed rows, witt their beads to she walls and their feet ex tended towards the middle of the cell. The, had neither pillows nor blankets, and wer compelled to lie down upon these sleepini benches at night without removing thei