The convicts who have committed heinous offenses, such as murder, burglary, highway robbery, or who have been judged guilty of high treason, and are banished for life and condemned to forced labor, are chiefly under the superintendence of the governor of Irkutsk, who determines whether they are to be employed in the mines and salt-works, or in the distilleries, or other manufactories of the crown. For each of these convicts government allows thirty-six paper rubles yearly; but the price of the necessaries of life being in Siberia so very low that the half of this suffices for the support of the convict, the other half goes to form a fund which, in case, after the lapse of four or six years, he gives proofs of reform, is given to him to begin life with in some part of the wide-spread steppes which admits of cultivation, and where a certain portion of land and materials for building a house are assigned to him. The house must, however, be erected by his own labor, and the money laid by for him be applied to the purchasing of the necessary utensils and implements for commencing house-keeping and agricultural pursuits. From this moment the convicts become _glebæ adscripti_ in the strictest sense of the term, as they are, under no pretense whatsoever, allowed to quit the lands assigned to them, or to change their condition; thenceforward also they pay the capitation tax and other imposts in like manner as the other crown peasants of Siberia, and enjoy in return the same rights, such as they are. The children of these convicts, born during the parents' period of punishment, are bound to the soil; but their names are not enrolled among those of the exiles, and the law orders that they shall be treated in the same manner as the overseers of the works.