Small wonder that contagious diseases were rife in such an atmosphere; scurvy, typhus and typhoid constantly prevailed and the prison surgeon admitted that the first was endemic, saying, “We have more or less scurvy here all the year round.” The infected were not at once removed to hospital, but lay there to pollute and poison the air breathed by their comparatively healthy comrades. All the conditions of this were so manifestly odious that the commandant did not attempt to explain, defend or excuse them, but, as Kennan tells us, “he grew more and more silent, moody and morose as we went through the _kameras_.” He knew too well that it was beyond his power to remedy the abounding evil; he might listen to grievances, hear petitions and complaints, but was powerless to relieve them. The middle Kara prison was on precisely similar lines, but the air was fresher during the day time, when the bulk of the inmates were absent at the mines, to which the hard-labour prisoners proceeded in the early morning and where they spent the day. Their midday meal was taken with them, to be eaten beside the camp fire in any weather, even the fiercest winter storms. They returned to the prison late in the afternoon, and dined on a fairly good meal of hot soup, bread and meat and a cup of brick tea. This they ate on their sleeping platforms, and passed the night without removing their clothing. The gold “placers” at Kara were generally in deep gravel pits, and the auriferous sand was located beneath a stratum of clay, gravel or stones, in what had once been the bed of the stream. The work consisted in breaking up and removing this overlying stratum, extracting the gold bearing sand and carrying it to the machine, where it was washed in several waters which in flowing away left deposits of black sand and gold particles. Pick and crowbar were in constant use by the convict labourers, working in their leg irons silently and listlessly under the close surveillance of a cordon of Cossack sentries. The average daily task was of ten hours, but much time was lost in going to and fro, and the annual amount washed was some four hundred pounds. A large quantity of gold was stolen by the surreptitious washing of convicts of the free command. They disposed of it to “receivers,” who ran great risks but generally managed to smuggle it across the frontier. This illicit trade flourishes in spite of the fact that it is a penal offence to be in possession of the precious metal or “golden wheat,” as it is technically called. But the great profits accruing outbalance the risks, and small speculators are always to be found who will secretly buy the stolen treasure secured by the convicts at large.