Naturally the exile seeks to supplement his inadequate income. His position is nearly hopeless. Possibly he has had the best education, is a graduate of the university, knows several languages, and is a skilful surgeon or practised physician. He does not, of course, expect to find in the wilds of Siberia as many openings for his trained intelligence as in St. Petersburg or Moscow, but surely there is room for an expert penman, a good accountant, a competent teacher, a fair musician? Yet he seems to have no chance to earn a few rubles, a few kopecks even, day by day. The regulations, quoted above, close every avenue, debar him from every employment but ordinary manual labour. He has never learned any handicraft; he cannot work as carpenter, shoemaker, wheelwright or blacksmith; he has no capital and cannot go into trade; he must not engage himself as driver or teamster, for he cannot leave the village to which he has been assigned. There is nothing left for him except to dig, but there is not an inch of land for him to cultivate. All the ground in the neighbourhood belongs to the village commune and has been already allotted to its members, so that any available land is so far distant that he would risk arrest by going there. In this dilemma he petitions the government to relieve him of his restrictions, and permit him to engage in such a harmless vocation as teaching music, but he is referred to the rule forbidding it. To this refusal was once added the cruel suggestion that the starving and impecunious convict might hire himself out as a labourer to the king, his peasant, for half a dozen kopecks a day. The same answer was given to a petition from some political prisoners who begged to be allowed to occupy and cultivate a tract of government ground near their village.