St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1892-02-14
BANIsHED BY THE CzAR.
Experience of Russian Exile il
a Siberian Penal Settlement.

Experience of q Russian Exile in
Siberian Penal Settlement.
Our worst trouble is want Of food.
However hard we work at our fishing,
however careful we are never to lose
chance of obtaining any kind of meat,
all the same in summer there are times
when we have to actually Starve,
for in summer there is alb
solutely no meat to be got, and to live
constantly and exclusively or fish not
only affects one with pauSea, but with
some people produces actual fish poison
ing. says Free Russia.
We have all come to the con-
clusiOn that sudden change from Or
binary food to nm exclusive fish diet re-
suits in peculiar form of poisoning
not yet known to scientists. In winter,
when there is meat as well, we all eat
the fish; but in the summer the mere
sight of boiled fish affiictS many with
nausea and vomiting.
In summer we live OH very small
quantity of f1Onr, little milk from our
own COWS, wild berries and the inter-
mediate Iish. The worst time of year
is the beginning of autumn, when large
quantities of food have to be stored up
and the roads are not properly frozen.
The cows leave off giving milk;
neither carcaSSeS nor live cattle are
brought in. The only way out of the
difficulty would be to 90 to sleep for
three weeks like the bears. But even
at the best season of the year we never
have really enough to eat; we are too
poor for that. And even if. we were
rich it would not help us; there is not
food enough IN the place.
You can imagine how delightful it
must be to lie down hungry at night; to
wake up the next morning still hun
grier; to wait anXiously for the half
rations that go by the name of dinner;
after dinner to 90 into the kitchen and
carefully gather up all the bits
all the scrapings of pots and pans-then
to strap ones belt tight for hunger and
wait for supper. and SO on, day after
day. 1t is like the life of half-starved
sailors, wrecked on desert island.
All our life is made up of thousand
pitiable wants and hardships. Alto
gether, our housekeeping is very orig
inal; on the one. hand an out-of-tte-way
Arctic hole where we are nobOdy's bust
ness and nobody cares what we do or
now we manage; on the other, our stern
jailer, Nature, who forces us to live
quite in prison style. to sleep in general
barracks, to eat at general mess, and
so on.
If we did not submit to this we should
all have died of cold and hunger before
now. Another feature Of our life is the
hard manual lahor-labor as OF beast of
burden-such as even the ali-enduring
Russian peasant has no idea Of For
instance, for two persons to drag
a loaded barge along with towing
ropes for forty miles is regarded here as
the ulnrPSt trif1o and rs there are no
sails here, hauling and rowing are the
only means of navigation.
Then there is the autumn fishing,
standing knee-deep IN the water and
floating ice, and pulling at frozen rope
that cuts your hands till the blood
comes; then moving in the swamp mud
at the mercy of the mosquito, often
without any food Or any drink; then
again the hewing of trees in winter and
in summer the towing of RATS forty
miles or more; and so on. Indefinitely.