Under the influence of the feelings aroused by this intelligence, my longing to return home sprang up with redoubled strength. This thought had been kept in the background during the last few years; but now it forced itself upon me with urgent insistence. What were the possibilities of the case? This question was hard to answer with any certainty. I had now been fourteen years in Siberia, and it was fifteen years since my arrest in Freiburg; in accordance with the terms of the last imperial manifesto, by which I was to benefit, I might go home after another seven years,[114] and this term might conceivably be further shortened by some fortunate concatenation of circumstances. Once more to see European Russia, where I had not been as a free man for twenty years, was the most fervent wish of my heart; yet what warrant had I for supposing I should be still alive in another seven years? or that, being alive, I should actually be granted the privilege of returning to Russia? Life in Siberia became each year more irksome to me. I found it well-nigh impossible to remain in Stretyensk, and I determined to go further east, to the comparatively large town of Blagovèstshensk. After exerting myself for some time to obtain permission to do this, I at last succeeded, and in the autumn of 1899 I quitted Stretyensk. Footnote 114: See note, p. 293.—_Trans._ I found myself much better off at Blagovèstshensk; I soon got employment on one of the two local newspapers, and the work was far more interesting than that to which I had hitherto been condemned. The society here, also, was much more agreeable, for the town contained many cultivated people, and also several comrades in our movement, political exiles like myself. The town possessed schools, a public library, a theatre, a telephone service—in short, so far as outward civilisation went, Blagovèstshensk stood in no way behind European towns of the same size, and was even in some ways more advanced. During the last few years the place has attained an unenviable notoriety from the occurrences there at the time of the war with China in 1900. I thus became an involuntary witness of that terrible series of events of which the Russian Government gave such a lying version to the world. In the interests of truth I will here relate the particulars from my own experience as an eye-witness of much that occurred.[115] First of all let me give some details about Blagovèstshensk. It is the chief, and was formerly the only town in the Amur province, which covers a considerably larger area than many a European state. Blagovèstshensk is situated on the flat left bank of the Amur river, which for a long distance forms the boundary between Russia and China; before the war it contained 38,000 inhabitants. Most of the houses are of wood, and there are no fortifications. Footnote 115: