Another impediment to colonisation is the noted and invincible dislike to the place constantly present in the minds of the enforced colonists or exiled class at large. No ex-convict would willingly remain on Saghalien. When their terms of detention are ended, all want to turn their backs on the island forever. Nothing would reconcile one to continued residence, not even the acquisition of comparative wealth and the possession of lands and herds, a house to shelter him, and domestic ties. Anyone who can happily scrape together the necessary means hungers to spend it in paying his passage home. He must possess his soul in patience for a long time. Six years must be spent as an exile settler after release from his prison probation; six more as a peasant, and then only permission is granted to cross to the mainland, but never to return to St. Petersburg or Moscow. Now and again a fugitive—and there is a large percentage of escapes as we shall see—may reach home, but he is in constant danger of rearrest. One political prisoner actually succeeded in reaching the capital, but had the bad luck to meet in the streets of St. Petersburg a gendarme officer who knew him. He was recognised and sharply interrogated. “How did you manage to come so far, and what brings you here?” asked the officer. “This brought me,” replied the exile, as he promptly drew his revolver and shot his inconvenient questioner down. Arrest followed immediately, and trial, with a fresh sentence of fifteen years. Once more he was sent to Saghalien, where he is still living as an exile settler with small hope of a second enlargement.