of Siberia
they could hardly survive a lengthened period of the cruelty alleged.
Most of them served out their sentences and retained their health.
Some returned to Europe after more than thirty years exile, and a few
were living in Siberia at the time of my visit, forty-one years after
their banishment. I conclude they were either blessed with more than
iron constitutions, or there is some mistake in the account of their
suffering and privation.

Many attempts have been made to escape from these mines, but very few
were completely successful. Some prisoners crossed into China after
dodging the vigilant Cossacks on the frontier, but they generally
perished in the deserts of Mongolia, either by starvation or at the
hands of the natives. I have heard of two who reached the Gulf of
Pecheli after many hardships, where they captured a Chinese fishing
boat and put to sea. When almost dead of starvation they were picked
up by an English barque and carried to Shanghae, where the foreign
merchants supplied them with money to find their way to Paris.

A better route than this was by the Amoor, before it was open to
Russian navigation. Many who escaped this way lost their lives, but
others reached the seacoast where they were picked up by whalers or
other transient ships. In 1844 three men started for the Ohotsk sea,
traveling by way of the Yablonoi mountains. They had managed to obtain
a rifle, and subsisted upon game they killed, and upon berries, roots,
and the bark of trees. They escaped from the mines about midsummer,
and hoped by rapid travel to reach the coast before winter overtook
them.

One of the men was killed by falling from a rock during the first
month of the journey. The others buried their dead companion as best
they could, marking his grave with a cross, though with no expectation
it would again be seen by human eyes. Traversing the mountains and
reaching the tributaries of the Aldan river, they found their
hardships commencing. The country was rough and game scarce, so that
the fugitives were exhausted by fatigue and hunger. They traveled for
a time with the wandering Tunguze of this region, and were caught by
the early snows of winter when the coast was still two hundred miles
away. They determined to wait until spring before crossing the
mountains. Unluckily while with the Tunguze they were seen by a
Russian merchant, who informed the authorities. Early in the spring
they were captured and returned to thei