Independently of voluntary immigrants, Siberia used to receive annually a great number of political and other exiles and convicts. By a _ukaz_, issued in 1899, Tsar Nicholas II. put a stop to the old and cruel system of exiling suspects and convicts into Siberia,[11] which ought undoubtedly to result in much good; for when a country begins to be thickly peopled with free immigrants it is unwise to continue to use it as a penal settlement. These exiles may be divided into two principal groups: firstly, political, often very honest and amiable people, such as students who have taken part in a manifestation hostile to the Government; Poles, compromised in recent insurrections; Catholics and Protestants who have displayed too much zeal in the affirmation of their religious opinions; and Raskolniks, whose peculiar theological opinions have already been described. The second category includes less estimable people: youths of good family of by no means irreproachable character, who have been sent to meditate on their shortcomings for a certain number of years, and repent of their follies at their leisure on the pleasant banks of the Obi or the Yenissei; and certain functionaries of good family who have been guilty of appropriating money officially entrusted to them. Of these unfortunate people, those who have been guilty of minor offences are sent to Western Siberia, where they often obtain employment as servants and coachmen. On the other hand, those who have committed graver offences, and who have been condemned to hard labour, undergo their punishment in Eastern Siberia, in Irkutsk, Yenissei, or in Trans-Baikalia, and must remain there. Inveterate criminals, murderers, and escaped galley-slaves, are sent to the island of Sakhalin, opposite the mouth of the Amur, where, even at the expiration of their terms, they are obliged to end their lives. Those political exiles who are not punished for grave offences are also relegated to the west, where the climate is fairly temperate. The graver the charge and the heavier the sentence, the farther are they sent eastward, even to the icy territories of Yakutsk, Verkhoyansk, Nijne Kolymsk, and Ust-Yansk. To these regions are also relegated the members of the strange sect of Eunuchs. The majority of these people, unless indeed they are very gravely compromised, after being obliged to reside three, or even ten, years in a village, are allowed to settle in a town, to go freely all over Siberia, and even at the expiration of a certain number of years to return to Russia. They not infrequently make themselves extremely useful. Many Poles become innkeepers, and I know of one at least who is a Doctor of Law, and who speaks excellent French. At Irkutsk one can get good beer, a beverage elsewhere execrable, a boon entirely due to the enterprise of an exile from the Baltic provinces. In the extreme north not a few exiles employ their time with scientific and meteorological studies.