Thus it is that Siberia, after all, yields a great deal of wealth, and the emperor of Russia therefore holds on to it with a greedy grasp. But it is not for its productions alone that he holds it; for the emperor has a large family--about fifty millions in Europe and Asia--and as he is a hard master, some of them are pretty often rebellious; and to punish them, he sends them to Siberia. This is a kind of prison,--though a large one,--where those are banished who have incurred the displeasure or dislike of his majesty. So numerous are these exiles, that Tobolsk, one of the largest towns, and lying in the western part of the country, is to a great extent peopled by them and their descendants. It is about some of these exiles that I am going to tell you a story. A few years since, a Polish officer, by the name of Ludovicus Pultova, was banished to Siberia, by Nicholas, the present emperor of Russia. His offence was, that he had engaged in the struggle of 1830 to liberate Poland, his native country, from the tyranny exercised over it by its Russian masters. The Poles had hoped for aid in their efforts from other nations; but in this they were disappointed, and they were overwhelmed by the power of the emperor. Thousands of them fled to other lands, to escape the fate that awaited them at home; others were shot, or shut up in dungeons; and others, amounting to many hundreds, were sent to Siberia. The wife of Pultova was dead, but he had a son and daughter, the first about eighteen years of age, and the other sixteen, at the time of his banishment. It was no small part of his misery that they were not permitted to accompany him in his exile. After a year, however, they contrived to leave Warsaw, where they had lived, and, passing through many dangers and trials, they at last reached their father at Tobolsk. This city is about as large as Salem in Massachusetts, and consists of a fort and citadel, with numerous dwellings around them, on a hill, and another portion on the low ground, bordering on the river Obi. The people, as I have said before, are chiefly exiles, or their descendants; and as it has been said that tyranny never banishes fools, so the society embraces many persons of talent and merit. Some of them, indeed, were celebrated for their genius, and numbers of them were of high rank and character. But what must a city of exiles be?--composed of people who have been separated from their native land--from their homes, their relatives--from all they held most dear; and that, too, with little hope of return or restoration to their former enjoyments? Most of them, also, are stripped of their property, and if they possessed wealth and independence before, they come here to drag out a life of poverty, perhaps of destitution.