Having reached Chudova, we were conveyed by train to Nijni Novgorod, and there placed in a sort of cage on board a large barge, and taken down the Volga and up the Kama to Perm, whence we took train to Ekaterinbourg, a town of considerable proportions beyond the Ourals. Here our weary journey on foot across Siberia commenced, and long before the Asiatic frontier was reached, the paucity of human habitations, the barrenness of the soil, and the increasing bleakness of the climate, had had their effect upon even the hardiest among us. But we still pushed onward, ill, hungry, footsore. I well remember the day we crossed the frontier, and bade farewell to our native land. Already we had walked three hundred versts from Ekaterinbourg, along the Great Post Road, at that season covered by a deep snow, and only marked by the long straight line of black telegraph posts and wires. Away, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was visible but the broad plain of dazzling whiteness, and the grey, snow-laden sky, when suddenly we came to a tall, square, brick-built obelisk, bearing on one side the arms of the European province of Perm, and on the other those of the Asiatic province of Tobolsk. It was the boundary-post of that great lonely prison-land, Siberia. No other boundary-mark in the world has witnessed so much human suffering, or, according to Mr. George Kennan, has been passed by such a multitude of heart-broken people. As it is situated about half-way between the last European and the first Siberian _étape_, the captain allowed our convoy to halt for rest, and for a last farewell to home and country. The Russian peasant, even when a criminal, is patriotic, and deeply attached to his native land; and there was a heart-rending scene when our wearied band stopped before the crumbling obelisk. Some gave way to wild hysterical grief; some comforted the weeping; others knelt and pressed their faces to the loved soil of their native land, and collected a little earth to take with them into exile, while a few of the women, pale, tragic figures in their black-hooded cloaks, pressed their thin, pale lips to the European side of the cold brick pillar, kissing good-bye to all it symbolised. The officer commanding our escort, who had been smoking a cigarette, and looking with calm indifference upon this touching scene, suddenly shouted the stern order, “_Stroisa!_” (“Form Ranks”), and at the word “March,” a few moments later, we crossed ourselves, and with a confused jingling of chains and leg-fetters, moved slowly away, past the boundary post, into Siberia. Day after day, week after week, hungry, cold, and fatigued, we trudged across the bleak, snow-covered steppes, until life became so burdensome that we longed for death.