The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1892-04-14
eANIsHep ey THE GAR.
Experience OF q Russian Exile In 81.
berian Penal settlements.

Experience OF Russian Exile In o 81.
berian Penal settlement.
Our worst trouble is want Of food,
says Siberian exile writing In Free
Russia. However hard we work ut our
fishing, however careful we ire never
TO lose chance of obtaining any kind
Of mcat all the same in summer there
are times when we have to actually
starve, for in summer there is absolute
ly no meat to be got; and to live con-
staDtly and exclusively on fish not only
affects one with nausea, bat, with some
people. produces actual fish poisoning
We have all come to the conclusion that q
sudaon change from ordinary food to an
exclusive fish dict results In q peculiar
form Of poisoning not yet known to
science. In.wfntcr, when there Is meat
as we'll, we all eat the fish, but in sum-
ncr the mere sight Of boiled fish aflicts
many with nausea and vomiting.
In summer we live on q very small
quantity Of -four, little milk from our
own cows, wild berries. and the inter-
mediate fish. The worst time Of year
is the beginning of autumn, when large
quantities of food have to be stored up
and the roads arc not properly frozen.
The cows leave Off irving milk; neither
carcnsses nor live cattle are brought in.
The only way out Of the difficulty
would be to go to sleep for thrcc weeks
like the bears. But oven at tho best
season OF the year we never have really
enough to cat; we arc too poor for that.
And even If we were rich it would not
help us; there is not food enough in the
place.
You Gun imagine how delightful it
must be to lie down hungry at night; TO
wake up tho next morning still hun
gr;er; to wait anxiously for tho half
ratiors that go by the name of dinner;
after dinner to SO in tn, kitchen and
carefully gather up all the bits-all the
scrapings of pots and pans-thcn 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 q desert island.
All our life is made up of thousand
pitiable wants and hardships. Alto
gether our housekeeping is very origi-
nal; on the one hand an out-of-the-way
Arctic hole where we arc nobody's busi-
ness and nobody cares what we do or
how we manage; on the other our stern
jailer, Nature, who forces us to live
quite in prison style, to s!ocp in general
barracks to eat at general moss 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 labor-labor as
of beast OF burden-such as even the
all-enduring Russian peasant has no
idea Of For instance, for two persons
to drag loaded barge along with tow
ing ropes for forty miles is regarded
here as the mcrcst triile, and as there
are no sails here hauling and rowing
arc the only means of navigation.
Then there is the autumn fishing,
standing knec-dcep in the water and
floating ice, and pulling at q 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 but the
water from the bog pools; then again
the hewing Of trees in winter md in
summer the towing of rnfts forty miles
or moro, and so on indefinitely,