It is one thing to be deported to Viatka, to Tobolsk, or even to Omsk; it is another thing to be sent to Bérézov, as was our warm-hearted Madame Felinska, or to Kamtschatka, like Beniowski or General Kopec, and so many illustrious compatriots; it is another thing, again, to serve in the army of the Caucasus, with the right of promotion, that is to say, with the possibility and the hope of being one day protected from corporal punishments, or of being placed in a Cossack regiment, and sent to the Kirghis frontier. One may get off with the _katorga_ in some of the factories or government distilleries, as I did at Ekaterinski-Zavod; but how many miserable beings labour in the horrible mines at Nertchinsk, with irons on their feet, and only hoping for some falling in of the mine to put an end quickly to a life which has nothing more to hope or to expect in this world. The verdigris mines are those which are the most dreaded. The disciplined gangs of Orenbourg, and other places, have the reputation of leading a life yet more awful than that at Nertchinsk. There the rod and the bastinado are the daily bread of our poor students and artisans, who are in general banished thither. There remains the fortress of Akatouia, not far from Nertchinsk, the last punishment reserved for the greatest criminals, and for convicts who revolt, or are taken in the attempt to break their ban. Here it was that Peter Wysoçki, after the bad success of his conspiracy in Siberia, was at last shut up. I know nothing of this mysterious place, and I can say nothing about it, for I have never seen any one who had penetrated its mystery; but I only know that, throughout Siberia, the very name is pronounced with an indescribable terror.