What the system was and to a great extent still is, despite skin-deep reforms, with its most glaring evils, claims description in any account purporting to be complete. It is necessary to refer to the sufferings endured and the infamies practised in some detail, so that we may realise the true measure of the infinite misery they have caused. It is almost impossible to conceive of the horrors of that march of thousands of both sexes across a continent; ragged, debilitated men, weak women and helpless children, tramping on and on for a whole year or more, shoeless, insufficiently clad and subsisting on the chance alms of the charitable; fed by a meagre pittance, lodged nightly in half-ruinous log prisons, or festering for weeks in detestable forwarding prisons. The Russian exile system has rivalled in its inflictions the cruelties and barbarities of the darkest ages. By degrees changes in the penal code, multiplying offences punishable by exile, increased the numbers sent to Siberia. The colonisation and development of the new country claimed the attention of the government. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries increasing numbers were deported, but with no attempt at organised system and with the most callous neglect of the human beings driven forth like cattle along the dreary road. They were at all times abominably misused everywhere, harassed, whipped, starved, and treated worse than the four-footed beasts, which from their intrinsic value would have been worth a certain amount of care. Exile was substituted for the death penalty, and the families of the offender often accompanied him. The punishment was sometimes accorded for breaking laws and regulations that were most trivial and ridiculous. Among offences were included fortune-telling, prize-fighting, snuff-taking, and driving with reins—a culpable western innovation—for the Russian rode his draught horse then or ran beside it. The demand for enforced labour steadily increased as Siberia’s natural resources became more and more evident. The discovery of mineral wealth, the rich silver mines of Nertchinsk in the Trans-Baikal, and the establishment of large manufactories at Irkutsk called for more exiles, and laws were passed extending the punishment. Any kind of misconduct led to deportation. Jews were exiled for failing to pay their taxes, serfs for cutting down trees without permission, and minor military offences were visited with this penalty. Large numbers took the road, but without the slightest organisation. There was no system; the exiles were driven in troops like cattle from town to town. No one knew exactly the cause of exile or could differentiate between individuals. Some were murderers and the most hardened offenders; some were simple peasants guilty of losing their passports or the victims of an oppressive proprietor. “The exile system,” says Kennan, “was nothing but a chaos of disorder in which accident and caprice played almost equally important parts.”