Siberia and the exile system . he Siberian boundary post was coveredwith brief inscriptions, good-bys, and the names of exilesscratched or penciled on the hard cement with which, thepillar was originally overlaid. At the time of our visit,however, most of this hard plaster had apparently beenpounded off, and only a few words, names, and initialsremained. Many of the inscriptions, although brief, weresignificant and touching. In one j^lace, in a mans hand,had been written the words Prashchai Marya! [Good-by, Mary! ] Who the writer was, who Mary was, thereis nothing now left to show; but it may
Siberia and the exile system . he Siberian boundary post was coveredwith brief inscriptions, good-bys, and the names of exilesscratched or penciled on the hard cement with which, thepillar was originally overlaid. At the time of our visit,however, most of this hard plaster had apparently beenpounded off, and only a few words, names, and initialsremained. Many of the inscriptions, although brief, weresignificant and touching. In one j^lace, in a mans hand,had been written the words Prashchai Marya! [Good-by, Mary! ] Who the writer was, who Mary was, thereis nothing now left to show; but it may be that to the exilewho scratched this last farewell on the boundary pillar Mary was all the world, and that in crossing the Sibe-rian line the writer was leaving behind him forever, not onlyhome and country, but love. After picking a few flowers from the gi-ass at the base ofthe boundary pillar, we climbed into our carriage, saidGood-by to Europe, as hundreds of thousands had saidgood-by before us, and rode away into CHAPTER III THE FLOWERY PLAINS OF TOBOLSK IN crossing the boundary line between the provinces ofPerm and Tobolsk, we entered a part of the Russianempire whose magnitude and importance are almost every-where underestimated. People generally seem to have theimpression that Siberia is a sub-arctic colonial provinceabout as large as Alaska; that it is everywhere cold,barren, and covered during the greater part of the yearwith snow; and that its sparse population is composedchiefly of exiles and half-wild aborigines, with a few sol-diers and Government officials here and there to guardand superintend the ostrofjs, the prisons, and the few Americans, if I may judge from the questionsasked me, fully gTasp and appreciate the fact that Siberiais virtually a continent in itself, and presents continentaldiversities of climate, scenery, and vegetation. We areapt, unconsciously, to assume that because a country isgenerally mapped upon a small scale it must
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectsiberiarussiadescrip
