the aged, and the infirm; and these usually lead the van, the younger men following, and the whole party, commonly numbering from fifty to sixty individuals, being escorted from station to station by a detachment of the Cossacks stationed in the villages. That a journey of several thousand wersts on foot, and through such a country as Siberia, must cause much suffering, can not be doubted; but the stations are not at very great distances from each other, and travelers agree in asserting that the ostrogs--that is, fortified places--in which the convicts rest from their fatigues, afford as comfortable accommodation as any post-house throughout Siberia; besides which the inhabitants of the towns and villages through which they pass, either from that perverse sympathy which so frequently leads the unthinking masses to look upon a doomed felon as upon a victim of oppression, or from a knowledge of how many sufferers for mere opinion may be mixed up with the really guilty individuals in the troop, contribute in every way in their power to mitigate the hardships of their position. The officer commanding the escort is intrusted with the sum stipulated by law for the daily subsistence of each convict, and this must never, under any pretense, pass into the hands of the latter. Many tales are told of the barbarous treatment to which the exiles are subjected during their passage to their various places of destination; but this, it would seem, must be attributed to the general brutality of the men forming the escort, and not to any desire in the government to render in an indirect way the punishment of the condemned more severe than expressed in the terms of the sentence; though in these cases, as in all others, it is of course the despotic character of the government in Russia which prevents the complaints of the oppressed from being heard, and thus perpetuates all abuses.