or plan from the prison at Ust Kará; but it was in better sanitary condition than the latter, and was evidently of more recent construction. As most of the prisoners that belonged there were at work in the upper gold placer when we arrived, I could not determine by inspection whether or not the building would be overcrowded at night. Major Pótulof told me, in reply to a question, that the number of criminals confined in it was 107. At the time of our visit, however, its kámeras contained only a few men, who had been excused from hard labor on account of temporary disability, or who had been assigned to domestic work, such as sweeping or cooking. The atmosphere of the kámeras was heavy and lifeless, but it seemed to be infinitely better than the air in the Ust Kará prison, and I could breathe it without much repugnance. By fastening against the walls over the sleeping-platforms large fresh boughs of hemlock and pine, an attempt had apparently been made to disguise the peculiar odor that is characteristic of Siberian prisons. Between these boughs in some of the kámeras I noticed, tacked against the logs, rectangular cards about twenty inches long by twelve inches wide, bearing in large printed letters verses from the New Testament. The only ones that I can now remember were: "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out," and "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Whence these scriptural cards came I do not know, but there seemed to me to be a strange and almost ghastly incongruity between the dark, grimy prison walls and the festal decorations of aromatic evergreens — between the rough plank sleeping-benches infested with vermin and the promise of rest for the weary and heavy-laden. How great a boon even bodily rest would be to the hard-labor convicts was shown in the pitiful attempts they had made to secure it by spreading down on the hard sleeping-benches thin patchwork mattresses improvised out of rags, cast-off foot-wrappers, and pieces cut from the skirts of their gray
