Omaha daily bee., 1889-02-17
ON THE ROAD TO iRKUTSk.
Terrible Suffering Endured BY n Paii
of siberian xilcs.

from Mr.. Remnants article in the Feb.
ruary Century:
1.-Two of the most interesting politicals
whom we met in Irkutsk were Mr.. and
Mrs. Ivan Chermavski, who were ban
ished to Siberia by administrative pro
cess in 1878. | became very well &c.
uuainted with them, and for Mrs. Cher.
mavski especially | came to feel the pro
foundest pity and regard.
Few women, even in Russia, have
had before. the age of thirty-ive, sc
tragic and Misunderstanding u life, and
still fewer have maintained through
hardship, sickness and bereavement
such checrfulness and courage.
she was arrested in Odessa in the
early part of 1878 at the age Of about
twenty-five, and after a long term of i'm
p~risonment was sent by administrative
process to the province of Tobolsk. In
the city prison of Kieve, on her way to
| Siberia, she was detained for a few
| days, and while there was forced to be
almost an eye witness of the assassin
alton of her dearest friend.
"a young man of English descent
| named Beverly, whom she had known
from childhood, had been arrested
shortly before upon "A charge of living
| upon a false passport and carrying on a
revolutionary propaganda, and he was
| at that time in the Kiev prison.
THE night before Mrs. Ch~erniavski
was to resume her journey to Siberia.
Beverly, with a conrade named Izbit-
ski. attempted to escape through a tun-
| mel which they had succeeded in dig
| ging from their cell to Il point outside
the prison wall.
THE prison authorities, however,
had. IN some way become aware of the
49,, =, 90 tha ,n,,n aud 6nl nrctnl
a squad of soldiers near the place where
the fugltives mnst emerge from the
ground. Late at night, when they
made their appearance, they were re-
ceived with a volley of musketry.
"Beverly was mortally wounded, and
as he lay writhing on the ground he
was dispatched by asoldier with several
repeated bayonet thrusts. Izbitski,
wounded and severely beaten, was
taken back into prison.
THE ncxt morning when Mrs. Cher
niavski started with her party for ST.
IBERIA she had to march past the bloody
friend, which was still lying where it
had fallen, in plain sight of the prison
windows.
~ can bear my own personal tor
ment,' she said to me with a sob as she
finished the story of the tragedy, but
such thin gs as that break my heart
II need not recount the hardships and
and miseries that she, n cultivated and
refined woman, endured on the road
and in the roadside etapes between
Kiev and the small town in the Siberian
province of Tobolsk, where she and her
husband had been assigned a residence.
''They reached their destination at
last; IA child was there born to them and
thn,, Eynl thnrn IN Gn~mpthjnp like nnIn-
fort until March, 1881, when Alexander
III. came to the throne and Mr.. Cherni-
avski was required to Il * the oath OF
allegiance.
''He refused to do so, and they we're
sent still farther eastward to the town
of KrasnOyarsk. A second refusal to
take the oath of allegiance resulted in
their being sent to Irkutsk.
''By this time winter had set in, and
they were travelling in an open tarantas
with delicate baby thirteen months of
age. 1t vas with the greatest difficulty
that Mrs. Chcrniavski could keep her
baby. warm, and at the last station be-
fore reaching Irkutsk she removed the
heavy wrappings in which she had en-
veloped it and found it dead.
with the shock of this discovery
she became delirious, and wcpt, sang
pathetic little nursery songs to her dead
child, rocked it in her arms, and prayed
and cursed God by turns.
In the courtyard of the 1rkutsk for
%warding prison, in II temperature OF
3OS below zero, Mr. Cherniavski stood
for the party to be formally received,
with his wife raving in delirium beside
him and his dead child in his arms.
Mrs. Cherniavski lay mt the prison
hospital at Irkutsk until she recovered
her reason, and to some extent her
strength, and then h and her husband
were sent 1000 miles farther to the
nOrtheastward, under guard OF gem
darmes. and colonized in II Iakut set
Element known as the Bataruski oOlOos,
situated in the 'tiaga' or primcval vii
dcrness of Yakutsk, 1876 miles from the
nearest town.
''There, suffering almost every con
ceivable hardship and privatlon, they
the interior allowed them to return to
a more civilized part of Siberia.
"Mrs. Cherniavsky, when | made her
acquaintance, was a pale, delicate, hol-
woman, whose health had
been completely wrecked by years OF
Imprisonment, Punishment and grief.
''She had had two children, and had
lost them both in exile under circum-
that made the bereavement
almost in~tolerable; for several years she
had been separated by n distance of
many thousand miles from all OF her
kindred; the future seemed 10 hold for
her absolutely nothing except the love
of the husband whose exile she could
still share, but whose interests she
could do so little in her broken state OF
health to promote.
''She had not been able to step outside
the house for two months, and it seemed
10 me when | babe her %good-by, that
her life of happiness and suffering was
drawing to n close.
Il felt profoundly sorry for her
while listening to her story my face was
wet with tears almost for the first time
since boyhood-and hoping TO give her
some pleasure and to show her how sin
cerely / esteemed her, | offered her my
photograph, as the only memento
nnAlI lan.In .uriIl hon