The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1892-03-26
BANIsHED by THE CAR.
Experience of q Russian Exile In 81.
bertNn Penal Settlements.

tDef1AQ renal Settleme emit. itzs
Our worst trouble is want Of food.
says aSiberian exile writing in Free
Russia However hard we work at our
fishing,' however careful we are never
to losea 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 absolute
~ no meat to be got; and to live con-
stantly and exclusively on fish not only
affects one with nausea, but, with some
people. produces actual fish poisoning.
We have all come to the conclusion that a
sudden change from ordinary food to an
exclusive fish diet results in a peculiar
form OF poisoning not yet known to
science. In winter, when there is meat
as well, we all eat the fish, but in sum
mer the mere sight of boiled fish aflicts
many with nausea and vomiting
In summer we live on 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 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 go 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 go in the kitchen and
carefully gather up all the bits--an 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 origi-
nal on the one hand an out-of-the-way
Arctic hole where we are nobody's bust
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 sleep in general
barracks, to eat at a 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 labor-labor as
OF beast of burden-such as even the
allenduring Russian peasant has no
idea Of. For instance, for two persons
to drag a loaded barge along with tow
ing ropes for forty miles is regarded
here as the merest trife, and as 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 but the
water from the bog pools; then again
the hewing of trees in winter and in
summer the towing of RATS forty miles
or more, and so on indefinitely.