The men and horses were well drilled and the service was good, but the supply of water furnished by the train of barrels seemed to be absurdly inadequate. It took one barrelful of water merely to fill the service-pipe. After the fire command had been dismissed with our compliments and thanks we drove back to our hotel.
Several days elapsed before I saw the chief of police again, and in the mean time a visit of inspection was made to the prisons by Count Ignátief , the newly appointed Governor-general of Eastern Siberia, who had just assumed the duties of his position. Tuesday of the following week Captain Makófski called upon us, and after the interchange of a few unimportant remarks said to me with some eagerness, "Mr. Kennan, please tell me frankly what impression was made upon you the other day by our prisons." I told him frankly that Siberian prisons generally made upon me a very bad impression, and that all I could truthfully say of the prisons in Irkútsk was that they were a little better—that is, somewhat less bad—than the prisons in Tiumén and Tomsk.
"I asked the question," he resumed, "because Count Ignátief and his wife have just made a visit of inspection and they are terribly dissatisfied. The Count finds the prisons dirty and overcrowded, the air foul and bad, the linen of the prisoners dirty and coarse, and the state of things unsatisfactory generally. Of course I know myself that the air in the kámeras is foul ; but if you have to put thirty men into a room like this [indicating our hotel room], how can you keep the air pure? It is very true also that the linen of the prisoners is cheap and coarse, but it is the best that can be had for the money that the Government allows. If you go to a hotel and pay two rúbles for a dinner, you have a right to expect a good one; but what can you expect if you pay only eight kopéks? As for the prisoners' linen being dirty—of course it 's dirty ! The Government gives a prisoner only one shirt every six months and one khalát [gray overcoat] every year. In these clothes he lives and sleeps twenty-four
