was arriving from a totally unexpected quarter. I
discussed a cheerless and silent meal with my companions, and we were
turning in that night when Stepan strolled in, cool and imperturbable as
usual. He even divested himself of furs and helped himself to food
before making an announcement which sent the blood tingling through my
veins with excitement and renewed hope.

"I have got the dogs," said the Cossack quietly, with his mouth full of
fish and black bread. "Sixty-four of them; we can go on now!" The news
seemed too good to be true, until Stepan explained that he had travelled
thirty miles down the river that day to obtain the animals from a
friend. The dogs were poor, weakly brutes, and the price asked an
exorbitant one, but I would gladly have paid it thrice over, or pushed
on towards our goal, if need be, with a team of tortoises. Even now I
anticipated some difficulty with the _ispravnik_, and was relieved when,
the next morning, he consented without demur to our departure. Indeed, I
rather fancy he was grateful to the Cossack for ridding him so easily of
his troublesome guests. The indefatigable Stepan had also procured three
drivers, so that I had no further anxiety on that score. But several
days must elapse before sufficiently strong sleds for our purpose could
be constructed. I therefore resolved to utilise the time by making the
acquaintance of the exiles and studying the conditions of their
existence in this out-of-the-way corner of creation. This was at first
no easy matter, for if the officials here were suspicious the politicals
were a thousand times more so, of one who had invariably written in
favour of Russian prisons. Most of these "politicals" were familiar with
Mr. Kennan's indictment and my subsequent defence of the Russian exile
system, but the fact that my party was the first to visit this place for
a period of over thirty years imbued an investigation of its penal
system with such intense interest that, notwithstanding many rebuffs, I
finally gained the confidence of all those who had been banished to this
Arctic inferno. And the information which I now place before the reader
is the more valuable in that it was derived, in the first place, from an
official source.

I should perhaps state that my experience of Russian prisons dates from
the year 1890. Mr. Kennan's report on the conditions of the penal
establishments throughout Siberia was then arousing indignation
throughout civilised Europe