United States or Martinique ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"That is an objection," the policeman agreed, smiling. "We are not going to travel night and day, as we did between Ekaterinburg and Tiumen, I hope?" "Oh, no; we shall only travel while it is light." "Well, that is a comfort. It was bad enough for that short distance. It would be something awful if it had to be kept up for a fortnight. How long shall we be before we get to Irkoutsk?"
It was, however, a long and dreary journey, and Godfrey was heartily glad when at last they saw the domes of Irkoutsk, a city of fifty thousand inhabitants. They drove rapidly through the town to the prison, where he was placed in a cell by himself. The morning after his arrival the warder entered with a man carrying a basin and shaving apparatus. "Confound it!" Godfrey muttered.
Acting on the pressing advice of his friends, he gave up his wanderings, and went to reside in the house of his fathers, piled up his skins and ivory, bought new ones, and prepared for the annual fair. The merchants from Irkoutsk, the capital, came, and Ivan, who was sharp and clever, did a good trade.
And then we send him, at the public expense, from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government, in company with the most depraved of men. "But we do nothing to destroy the conditions in which people like these are produced; on the contrary, we support the establishments where they are formed. These establishments are well known: factories, mills, workshops, public-houses, gin-shops, brothels.
Ivan joined heartily in all this dissipation: he smoked with the old men; he drank their punch; he roasted nuts for the ladies, and told them wonderful stories which were always readily listened to, except when some new fashion, which for several years before had been forgotten in Paris found its way via St. Petersburgh, Moscow, and Irkoutsk, to the deserts of Siberia.
In the extreme north of the Chinese empire, just south of Irkoutsk, in the midst of desert wilds, unknown to Greek or Roman, there were wandering tribes called Mogols. They were a savage, vagabond race, without any fixed habitations, living by the chase and by herding cattle.
"About a month. I know nothing as to what will be done with you beyond that. You may, for anything I know, go to the mines at Nertchinsk, which are a long distance east beyond Irkoutsk; or you may go to Verkhoyansk, a Yakout settlement 3000 miles from Irkutsk, within the Arctic Circle. There are lots of these penal settlements scattered over the country.
The inhabitants of the town are chiefly traders, who buy of the Yakouta hunters their furs at a cheap rate, and then sell them in a mysterious kind of fashion to the agents who come from Russia in search of them. During the annual fair they stow up their goods in private rooms; and here the Irkoutsk men must come and find them.
And we do not destroy these places, but, looking at them as necessary, we support and regulate them. We educate in this way not one, but millions of people, and then catch one of them and imagine that we have done something, that we have guarded ourselves, and nothing more can be expected of us. Have we not sent him from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government?"
Word Of The Day