> Y ORDER OF THE CZAR. 385
Consult your Encyclopedia, and you will find that the majority of the inhabitants of the central provinces of Siberia are Russians and Poles, who have been sent thither either as political or criminal exiles ; leavened somewhat by a respectable minority of colonists. The worst type of criminals and the prisoners who have given most offence to the reigning powers in the fierce political conspiracies, are condemned to hard labor in the mines ; others are detailed for work of a less fatal character ; and there is a third degree of punishment which gives to the political exile a large amount of freedom, in which many live more or less contentedly, with wives and families, and occasion- ally even preferring such limited freedom to a return to their former homes. They are relegated to specific districts under the surveillance of the police, but are permitted to employ themselves how they please. Some of these have entered upon their new life with their household goods, accompanied from Moscow by their wives. Many pathetic stories that are honorable to our humanity are told of lovely women thus sacrificing themselves on the altar of their loves, even marrying for the sake of such feminine martyrdom.
The general impression of the reader who has dwelt upon the gentle romance of Madame Cottin's " Elizabeth," is that around the heroine's humble home in the province of Ishim, the world was dark and dreary, and had but one sad tale of snow and chilly landscape, forgetting the author's description of the four months of summer that reigned even there with the perfumed blossoms of the birch-tree, which the exiles cultivated in their little garden ; the play- ful flocks of wild-fowl on the lake ; the genial character of the air ; the pleasant sunshine. It is true these delights were only enjoyed to the full by the natives of the country, the exiles still f/ghing for their liberty and the sight of old friends, Elizabeth, in the well-known story, at last found
