tion of damp, decaying wood and more than a suggestion of human excrement—and still you will have no adequate idea of it. To unaccustomed senses it seems so saturated with foulness and disease as to be almost insupportable. As we entered the corridor, slipped upon the wet, filthy
floor, and caught the first breath of this air, Major Pótulof turned to me with a scowl of disgust, and exclaimed, "Atvratítelni tiurmá!" [It is a repulsive prison!]
The Cossack corporal who preceded us threw open the heavy wooden door of the first kámera and shouted, "Smirno!" [Be quiet!] the customary warning of the guard to the prisoners when an officer is about to enter the cell. We stepped across the threshold into a room about 24 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 8 feet high, which contained 29 convicts. The air here was so much worse than the air in the corridor that it made me faint and sick. The room was lighted by two nearly square, heavily grated windows with double sashes, that could not be raised or opened, and
