ich should assuredly and without
delay be erased from the face of civilisation. The above tragedy is but
one of many that have occurred of recent years, and although space will
not admit of my giving the details of others, I can vouch for the fact
that since the year 1898 no fewer than three cases of suicide and four
of insanity have occurred here amongst about a score of exiles. And yet
every winter more miserable hovels are prepared for the reception of
comrades; every year Sredni-Kolymsk enfolds fresh victims in her deadly
embrace. "You will tell them in England of our life," said one, his eyes
dim with tears, as I entered the dog-sled which was to bear me through
weeks of desolation to the Bering Straits. And the promise then made in
that lifeless, forsaken corner of the earth, where, as the exiles say,
"God is high and the Tsar is far away," I have now faithfully kept. For
the first time in thirty years I am able to give an "unofficial" account
of the life of these unfortunates, and to deliver to the world their
piteous appeal for deliverance. May it be that these pages have not been
written in vain, that the clemency of a wise and merciful Ruler may yet
be extended towards the unfortunate outcasts in that Siberian hell of
famine, pestilence, and darkness, scarcely less terrible in its ghastly
loneliness than those frozen realms of eternal silence which enshrine
the mystery of the world.

CHAPTER IX

THE LOWER KOLYMA RIVER

"Why don't you try to escape," I once asked an exile at Sredni-Koylmsk,
"and make your way across Bering Straits to America?" For I was aware
that, once in the United States, a Russian "political" is safe from the
clutch of the bear.[46]

[Footnote 46: A political exile escaping to the United States can become
(in ten years) an American citizen.]

"You do not know the coast," was the reply, "or you would not ask me the
question." My friend was right. A month later I should certainly not
have done so.

Indeed, had I been aware, at this stage of the journey, of the
formidable array of obstacles barring the way to the north-easternmost
extremity of Asia, I might perhaps even now have hesitated before
embarking upon what eventually proved to be the most severe and
distressing of all my experiences of travel. It does not look much on
the map, that strip of coast-line which extends from the Kolyma River to
Bering Straits (especially when viewed from the depths of a cosy
armchair); and