expense incurred by the responsible authorities to protect the gold-fields of the district, far more gold is obtained by unlawful than by lawful means. The receivers of the stolen treasure, and other middlemen, can always find a way to convey their merchandise over the border into China, where it fetches a far higher price than that given by “the Cabinet of His Majesty.” Meanwhile all authorities agree that the illicit gold-finders have conferred immeasurable benefit on the country. They are the true pioneers, who, wandering about the “Taiga” or virgin forests in all directions, seeking deposits of precious metals, are to be thanked for the discovery of numberless gold-fields—among them some of the most prolific of all. Certainly little enough profit falls to the share of the pirates themselves; most of them remain poor and needy all their lives, hardly earning their daily bread; and many of them become slaves of the middlemen. It would take me too long to describe further the lives and doings of these gold pirates; suffice it to say that they inhabit a curiously interesting little world of their own—a state within the state—with its own strictly administered laws and peculiar customs. CHAPTER XXXI THE TOUR OF THE HEIR-APPARENT THROUGH SIBERIA—OUR LIFE IN THE PENAL SETTLEMENT—AN INCENSED OFFICIAL Time passed by much faster in the settlement than in the prison. Busy with the necessary work for establishing our little community, we scarcely noticed the passing of autumn and winter. I can never forget the spring of 1891—the first I enjoyed after the long years of imprisonment; moreover, that spring brought quite unexpected hopes of favours soon to be granted us. A report reached us that the Tsar Alexander III. had decided to issue a manifesto to celebrate the treading of Siberian soil by the Heir-Apparent. This manifesto, it was said, would bring pardon to all convicts, and not even the “politicals” were to be excluded. The official telegram about this—obscurely worded though it was—could not fail to awaken in us hopes of at any rate increased liberty. If the news were correct, it was to be concluded that many of us would shortly be treated as “exiles,” and no longer as convicts. This would improve our situation in a greater or lesser degree according to the locality whither we should be banished. “Politicals” are generally sent to the province of Yakutsk, where conditions of life are in many respects no better than in the settlement at Kara. It must be remembered that Yakutsk is a very sparsely populated province, and lies further from the civilised world than the Transbaikalian province in which Kara is situated. The climate is worse than that of Kara, the winter longer; and in other ways, too, our comrades there were worse off than we. Their post arrived less often than ours, and in many parts of the Yakutsk government “luxuries,” such as tea, sugar, and petroleum,