for one day for the purpose of making their acquaintance. Their names were Constantine Shamárin, a young student from Ekaterínburg; Mr. Kardashóf, a Georgian from the Caucasus; and Madame Breshkófskaya, a highly educated young married lady from the city of Kiev. Mr. Kardashóf and Madame Breshkófskaya had both served out penal terms at the mines of Kará, and I thought that I could perhaps obtain from them some useful information with regard to the best way of getting to those mines, and the character of the officials with whom I should there have to deal.
Mr. Shamárin, upon whom I called first, was a pleasant-faced young fellow, twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, of middle height and quiet, gentlemanly bearing, with honest, trustworthy, friendly eyes that inspired confidence as soon as one looked at him. His history seemed to me to furnish a very instructive illustration of the complete disregard of personal rights that characterizes the Russian Government in its dealings with citizens who happen to be suspected, with or without reason, of political untrustworthiness. While still a university student he was arrested upon a political charge, and after being held for three years in one of the bomb-proof casemates of the Trubetskói bastion in the fortress of Petropávlovsk was finally tried by a court. The evidence against him was so insignificant that the court contented itself with sentencing him to two months' imprisonment. Holding a man in solitary confinement for three years in a bomb-proof casement before trial, and then sentencing him to so trivial a punishment as two months' imprisonment, is in itself a remarkable proceeding, but I will let that pass without comment. Mr. Shamárin certainly had the right, at the expiration of the two months, to be set at liberty, inasmuch as he had borne the penalty inflicted upon him by virtue of a judicial sentence pronounced after due investigation and trial. The Government, however, instead of liberating him, banished him by
