The same evils were present in every cell. But the horrors culminated in the “family” room or _balagan_, the long, low shed of rough pine boards,—a frame work hastily put together and with sides of thin white cotton sheeting. There were three of these crammed full of family parties, men, women and children. The shed was surrounded by a foul ditch half full of filth which soaked through and from under the cotton-sheeting wall. The only light that penetrated within the windowless _balagan_ was through this wall of cotton. The place was packed with hundreds of occupants,—“weary-eyed men, haggard women and ailing children,” sitting and lounging about the sleeping platforms and on the broken boards of the floor through which exuded all kinds of abominations. The air was insufferably fetid from the great numbers of infants unwashed and wholly uncared for. Wet underclothing, washed in the camp kettles, was hanging from the beams to dry; an indistinguishable chaos of bags, bundles and domestic utensils encumbered the floor, and the crowd was so closely packed that people could not move without touching each other. No remedy, no alleviation was possible. The cold at night in these cotton enclosed walls, or the damp heat and imperfect ventilation in the bath-house—which many would have preferred—were equally fatal to infant life. Detention in these wretched apologies for shelters was greatly prolonged. No change of clothing was provided; a man wore the same shirt for months, until it almost dropped off, in dirty ragged scraps, full of vermin. Not strangely was it thought a welcome relief when the orders came to take the road. The toilsome march with its incessant hardships and exhausting fatigue was preferable to the fixed residence in a forwarding prison. The hospital at Tomsk was in some respects better than that at Tiumen; it occupied a separate building, and was kept in better order. There were always more patients than beds to receive them, and the surplus in various stages of acute disease lay about on benches or on the floor. Despite the overcrowding, the place was kept fairly clean, the bed clothing was fresh and plentiful and the air was less polluted than at Tiumen. The percentage of the sick varied according to the season. It rose in November, when the population was at its highest, to twenty-five per cent., and among the diseases malignant typhus, the true type of the ancient, but now happily rare, “gaol fever,” was always largely present. There were twenty-four hundred cases of illness in the year and at the most crowded time there have been 450 cases in the hospital with beds for only 150 patients.