There was little to choose between the _étapes_ and the _polu étapes_, but the latter were smaller and the accommodation was consequently worse. Both were stockaded enclosures, containing three or more long, low, one-story buildings. One of these was the commanding officer’s quarters, a second was for the soldiers of the escort, and the remaining hut or huts formed the prison. Each was divided into two or three cells; each was furnished with the usual plank sleeping platforms in a double row, and a brick stove. The available space was much too small for the prisoners passing through as these halting prisons were built for about half the number. “All of these,” says an official report, “are not only too small, but old and decayed and demand capital repairs.” The governor-general of Eastern Siberia, Anuchin, reported confidentially in 1880, to the Czar, Alexander III, that all prisons he had visited, including the _étapes_, were tumbled-down buildings in a lamentable sanitary condition; that they were cold in winter and saturated with miasma; that the prisons of the empire generally, with the exception of the principal ones recently erected, were not remarkable for their good qualities, but the Siberian prisons were particularly bad because they were built quickly, with insufficient means, and almost wholly without supervision of any kind. Only one architect had been employed and his sphere of action was so wide that he paid only a rare visit to new works in progress. The contractors departed from the original plans and evaded conditions, so that the work was continually neglected. In the first place the money was insufficient, after a portion of the government appropriation had been stolen by fraudulent contractors and corrupt officials, and the new _étapes_ were run up without stone foundations, so that the walls soon “settled” and the buildings rapidly deteriorated under climatic agencies and the injurious wear and tear of the constant overcrowding. In temperate weather half the prisoners slept on the ground in the outer courtyard, but when it was too inclement they filled the _kameras_, lay about the corridors and packed themselves into the garrets. Not the smallest care was taken to make places habitable. Dirt accumulated everywhere; no provision had been made for ventilation, and the windows would not even open. Occupation of quarters was a matter of force, when the weakest went to the wall.