CHAPTER III THE EXILE SYSTEM The exile system—A principal secondary punishment—Reform of 19th century—Classification of exiles—The hideous march into Siberia—Infant mortality—Less than half the exiles sentenced by regular tribunals—Many banished by “administrative process” on arbitrary order—The “untrustworthy”—Power to banish exercised by many even minor authorities—Some cases of rank injustice—Monstrous ill-usage of a medical man—Dr. Bieli and his wife’s insanity—Students and young schoolgirls exiled—Simple banishment—The exile’s life in Siberia—Danger of protesting against ill-usage—Penalties of infringing rules—Surgeon forbidden to practise in a case of life and death—Terrors of banishment to the far north in the arctic province of Yakutsk—A living death—Denounced by Russian press. An account has been given of the most prominent Russian penal institutions in the mother country and of the prisons established for all offenders upon whom confinement has been generally imposed as a preparatory step to deportation. It remains to describe the system of Siberian exile, long the principal element of penal coercion known to the Russian code. For all alike, the undoubtedly guilty and the resolute patriots with high aims, but often violent methods, this penalty exists and has existed for centuries, ever imposed recklessly with marked indifference to the human suffering it has entailed. Banishment to the far-off wilds began soon after the vast region of Siberia became part of the Empire, that is to say, in the middle of the seventeenth century. It originated in the idea of “removal;” and was adopted as a convenient outlet for the wrecks of humanity who had survived the cruel, personal inflictions prescribed by savage laws. All who escaped the capital sentence and were neither impaled nor beheaded, endured secondary punishment of atrocious severity; they were flogged by the knout or bastinadoed; they were cruelly mutilated, their limbs were amputated or their tongues torn out; they were branded with hot irons or suspended in the air by hooks run into the ribs, and left to die a death of lingering torment. Those that were left were transported to Siberia.