Sometimes we passed the night in an insanitary _étape_ in one of the wretched little villages along the road, but often we camped out in the open, and, after our meagre ration of soup, wrapped our rugs around us, and slept upon the ground around the fire we had lit. The hardships of the long, monotonous marches were bad enough for men to bear, but the women—who numbered about twenty, including several of noble birth, condemned to the mines as Nihilist conspirators—fared worst of all. One of them, Madame Marie Koutowzow, was a young widow I had met in Petersburg society. She told me that she had incurred the special animosity of a _tschinovnik_, or Government official, by refusing to marry him, and he, anxious to avenge himself, had caused her arrest, and had heaped up the hardships which might hurry her out of life. Death had released three of these delicately nurtured ladies from their misery, and we had buried them, without coffin or religious ceremony, ere we reached Tobolsk. When at length we arrived at the latter town, we were lodged in the great convict prison, and allowed to rest for two days, after which we resumed our journey eastward to Tomsk, arriving there three weeks later, with our clothing in rags, and almost shoeless. Although our experiences had been terrible enough during our forced marches, the most horrible of all was our sojourn at the perisilni at Tomsk—the prison where exiles remain until their fate is decided upon by the authorities. The horrors of this den of vileness were indescribable. The _kamera_, or public cell, into which we were driven like cattle, was a long low room, ill-ventilated, and disgustingly dirty. Already there were fully fifty convicts in it, and the smell of humanity that greeted us as the great iron door was opened I shall never forget. When I looked around and noted the dreadful groups, ragged, unkempt, unwashed, some lying on the sloping wooden shelves which formed the common beds, others crouching on the filthy floor, I shuddered with horror, and was appalled. Amid this filth disease was rife. No fewer than four men and two women were at that moment dying of typhoid, while the body of a girl who had succumbed was lying unheeded in a corner. No notice whatever was taken of invalids by the officials, and I afterwards learnt that this room, originally intended as an infirmary, had been converted into a common cell for the accommodation of the ever-increasing crowds of exiles, 12,000 of which pass through the prison annually. Coarse brown bread and tschi were our two articles of diet. The former was flung to us as to dogs, and owing to the rations never being sufficient to satisfy all, a fierce fight for a morsel of food invariably resulted. Ravenously hungry men struggled with one another to secure bread for their wives and children who had voluntarily accompanied them into exile, while friendless females, too ill to move, were left in corners to die.