From these four we heard much about the conditions of life in Kara, our appointed destination; as also from another comrade now in Irkutsk, who could give us his personal experience of the prison there. This was Ferdinand Lustig—formerly an artillery officer, and afterwards a student at the Petersburg Technological Institute—who had been sentenced in 1882, in the case of Suhanov and Mihaïlov, to four years’ penal servitude. He had now ended his term in Kara, and was going to be interned elsewhere, under police supervision. What he told us was not comforting: the régime was severe, and the governor of the political prison—a captain of gendarmerie, named Nikolin—of the worst repute. Four of us only were to travel eastward together: Maria Kalyùshnaya, Tchuikòv, Làzarev, and myself. The other seven were to be sent to various places in the government of Irkutsk; and the nineteen-year-old Rubinok, whose sad case I have already described, was to go northward to the deserts of Yakutsk. * * * * * At the end of September we started, in company with a party of ordinary prisoners. We had now before us a journey of some twelve hundred versts (eight hundred miles), which would take at least two months. Winter in Siberia begins much earlier than in other places of the same latitude, even in European Russia, and therefore we had to expect many hardships. In two days the last steamboat was to start for Listvinitchnaya, across Lake Baikal, and if we missed that we should have to winter in Irkutsk. The tempestuous Baikal treated us kindly on the whole, though usually the autumnal storms are a real danger to voyagers on its waters. It is often asserted that the scenery of its shores rivals that of the Swiss mountain lakes; and without myself instituting any comparison, I can vouch for it that the impression those magnificent hills made on me was unforgettable. We had to pass a night at the landing-station on the opposite shore—Mysovaya; and we had been already shut into our prison, when the grating of the lock again sounded, and the warder brought in a young lady, who came straight towards me.