no attention, but
presently skin-clad forms emerged here and there from the miserable
huts, and haggard faces nodded a cheerless welcome as we drove past them
towards the police office. Here a dwelling was assigned to us, and we
took up our residence in quarters colder and filthier than any we had
occupied since leaving Verkhoyansk. And yet our lodgings were preferable
to many of those occupied by the exiles.

During our visit Sredni-Kolymsk had a population of about three hundred
souls, of whom only fourteen were political offenders. The remainder
were officials, criminal colonists, and natives of the Yakute, Lamute,
or Tunguse races. The Cossacks here subsist chiefly by trapping and
fishing, but are also nominally employed as guards--a useless
precaution, as starvation would inevitably follow an attempt to escape.
The criminal colonists are allotted a plot of ground in this district
after a term of penal servitude, and I have never beheld, even in
Sakhalin, such a band of murderous-looking ruffians as were assembled
here. They were a constant terror to the exiles, and even officials
rarely ventured out after dark.

The police officials here were sour, stern-visaged individuals, and our
welcome was as frigid as it had been warm at Verkhoyansk. The Chief of
Police had recently met his death under tragic circumstances, which I
shall presently describe, and I was received by the acting _ispravnik_,
whose grim manners and appearance were in unpleasant contrast to those
of our kind old friend Katcherofsky. Although this natural prison had no
bolts and bars or other evidences of a penal system, the very air seemed
tainted with mystery and oppression, and the melancholy row of huts to
scrawl the word "captivity" across the desolate landscape. Even the
_ispravnik's_ room, with its heavy black furniture and sombre draperies,
was suggestive of the Inquisition, and I searched instinctively around
me for the rack and thumbscrews. How many a poor wretch had stood in
this gloomy apartment waiting patiently, after months of unspeakable
suffering, for some filthy hovel wherein to lay his head. It seemed to
me that crape and fetters would more fittingly have adorned those
whitewashed walls than a sacred _Ikon_ encrusted with jewels, and
heavily gilt oil-paintings of their Imperial Majesties! A couple of
tables littered with papers occupied the centre of the room, and at one
of these sat the _ispravnik_, a wooden-faced peremptory pers