If the Tiumen prison was in horrible condition, that of Tomsk was infinitely worse. Its deplorable state was frankly admitted to George Kennan by the authorities when they granted him permission to visit it. “I think you will find it the worst prison in Siberia,” said the acting governor of the province of Tomsk. What else was to be expected when the buildings were filled with more than twice the number of inmates which they could properly accommodate? The Tomsk forwarding prison was designed to hold fourteen hundred, but three thousand or even four thousand were habitually crammed into it. The numbers arriving exceeded the power of distribution, and week by week a residuum remained to increase the permanent population. The _étapes_, or halting stations along the road, could accommodate only a limited number and there were not enough troops to provide for more than one marching party each week. The Tomsk forwarding prison is described by Mr. Kennan, who saw it in 1885, as, “a stockaded camp or enclosure three acres in extent, lying on open ground outside the city.” Within were some fifteen to twenty log buildings grouped about a pyramidal church tower. Each wooden building in the enclosure was a one-storied barrack prison of square logs with board roofs, heavily grated windows and massive iron doors secured with padlocks. There were eight of these, each constituting a prison ward and each divided into two _kameras_, one on each side of a central corridor running through the building. Each ward or building was calculated to hold 190 inmates, but was crowded with at least three hundred. Each cell was about forty feet square and the air space was seven-eighths of a cubic fathom per head. The cells were fairly well lighted, but the atmosphere was pestilential and the temperature from the natural heat of the prisoners’ bodies was fifteen or twenty degrees higher than the external air. The usual sleeping platforms ran across the cells, but there was not room on them for half of the number confined there, and the other half was forced to sleep beneath the platforms, or on the floor in the adjoining gangways. These lay there on the mud-stained and filthy floor, without pillows, blankets or bedclothing. They were in such a grievous state that they complained feelingly of the heat, foulness and oppressiveness of the air and declared that it was impossible to move about in the day time or to get rest at night.