at even a
small town can moulder away here into non-existence and no one be the
wiser for years after its disappearance. The authenticity of the
following anecdote is vouched for by Mr. George Kennan, the American
traveller, who quotes from Russian official statistics.[31]

[Footnote 31: "Siberia and the Exile System," by George Kennan.]

"In the year 1879 there was living in the city of Pultava a poor
apothecary named Schiller, who was banished as a political offender to
the village of Varnavin, in the Province of Kostroma. Schiller, finding
a forced residence in a village to be irksome and tedious, and having no
confidence in petitions, changed his location without asking leave of
anybody, or in other words ran away. About this time the Tsar issued a
command directing that all exiles found absent from their places of
banishment without leave should be sent to the East Siberian Province of
Yakutsk. When, therefore, Schiller was rearrested in a part of the
Empire where he had no right to be, he was banished to Irkutsk, and the
Governor-General of Eastern Siberia was requested to put him under
police surveillance in some part of the territory named in the Imperial
command. Governor-General Anuchin, who had then recently come to
Irkutsk, and who had not had time apparently to familiarise himself with
the vast region entrusted to his care, directed that Schiller be sent
to the district town of Zashiversk, which was (supposed to be) situated
on the River Indigirka, a few miles south of the Arctic Circle. A
century, or a century and a half, ago Zashiversk was a town of
considerable importance, but for some reason it lost its pre-eminence as
a fur-trading centre, fell gradually into decay, and finally ceased to
exist. Its location was still marked by two concentric circles on all
the maps, its name continued to appear regularly in the annals of the
Governor-General's Office, and I have no doubt that a coterie of
'Tchinovniks'[32] in Irkutsk were dividing and pocketing every year the
money appropriated for repairs to its public buildings; but, as a matter
of fact, it had not contained a building or an inhabitant for more than
half a century, and forest trees were growing on the mound that marked
its site. Poor Schiller, after being carried three or four times up and
down the Rivers Lena and Indigirka in a vain search for a non-existent
Arctic town, was finally brought back to Yakutsk, and a report was made
to the Governor-Gen