, and his heart-rending accounts of the
sufferings endured by political and criminal offenders obviously called
for some sort of an explanation from the Tsar's Government. A mere
official denial of the charges would have been useless; a disinterested
person was needed to report upon the prisons and _etapes_ which had been
described as hells upon earth, and to either confirm or gainsay the
statements made by the American traveller. The evidence of a Russian
subject would, for obvious reasons, have met with incredulity, and it
came to pass, therefore, that through the agency of Madame de Novikoff,
herself a prison Directress, I was selected for a task, which although
extremely interesting, subjected me to much unfavourable criticism on my
return to England. Some yellow journals even went so far as to suggest
that I had received payment from the Russian Government for
"whitewashing" its penal system, but I fancy the following pages should
conclusively disprove the existence of any monetary transactions, past
or present, between the Tsar's officials and myself, to say nothing of
the fact that my favourable account of the prisons of Western Siberia
has been endorsed by such reliable and well-known English travellers as
Dr. Lansdell and Mr. J. Y. Simpson. In fairness, however, to Mr. Kennan,
I should state that my inspection of the Tomsk forwarding prison and
similar establishments was made fully five years after his visit.

In 1894 I again proceeded to Siberia (under similar conditions) to
report upon the penal settlement on the Island of Sakhalin, the
political prison of Akatui, and the mines, where only convict labour is
employed, of Eastern Siberia. On this occasion I travelled from Japan to
the Island of Sakhalin on board a Russian convict ship, a voyage which
convinced me that the Russian criminal convict is as humanely treated
and well cared for at sea as he is on land, which says a great deal. I
have always maintained that were I sentenced to a term of penal
servitude I would infinitely sooner serve it in (some parts of) Siberia
than in England. It is not now my intention, however, to deal with the
criminal question, but to describe, as accurately as I can, the life led
by a handful of political exiles.

There are now only two prisons throughout the Russian Empire where
political prisoners are actually incarcerated,[40] one is the fortress
of Schlusselburg on Lake Ladoga within a short journey of St.
Petersburg, the