Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. On the Middle Lena
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world quiver through the cold night air, echoing faintly
from the steep cliffs, which tower up like prison-walls on
either side of the river. The steamer rounds the promontory,
and yonder in the pale light of the Arctic night appear
two craft resembling gigantic coffins, slowly moving forward
with the current. The plaintive tones become stronger and
stronger, the outlines of the coffins clearer and clearer.
On their lids are sitting a crowd of men and women and
a few children, and at each end stands an armed gendarme.
They are pauski laden with exiles on their way to
Yakutsk. The captain slows the engines, and while our
steamer glides gently past, I open the camera to impress
on its plate the image of these melancholy craft.
Among these exiles, as I afterwards learnt, were not only
common criminals, but also some followers of Leo Tolstoy,
and others of the best and noblest sons and daughters of
Russia, on their way to Yakutsk, to Verkhoyansk, and
—hundreds of miles beyond—to Kolymsk, to be buried
alive in the most dreary land on the surface of our globe.
The distance increased between the steamer and the
floating coffins, their outlines became more and more dim,
the now but half-caught tones of the plaintive melodies
grew weaker, and finally died away behind us into the night.
We have passed the border between the provinces of
Irkutsk and Yakutsk. The villages on the western shore
have become still smaller, but the river has grown to several
kilometres in width, here and there, as before, enclosing
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