Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1881 — ESCAPE FROM SIBERIA. [ARTICLE]

ESCAPE FROM SIBERIA.

Four Thoound Jilin on Foot - !•«««■ that Hu Only One Parallel. [Genera Correspondence London News.] M. Mokrievitch is about thirty-three years old. He is the Bon of a country gentleman and highly educated. In 1873 he joined a secret political society, and for six years was actively engaged in what he calls the revolutionary propaganda in Southern Russia. Although constantly tracked by the emissaries of the Third Section, it was not until 1879 that he fell into their hands. In January of that year he was in Kief, conducting a secret printing office, which one day during his absence was entered by the police. Three of Mokrievitch’s companions,' Brandtner, Ossinsky and a third who died without disclosing his name, drew their revolvers and made a vigorous resistance, but were finally captured, and Mokrievitch was taken the next day. All four were tried by court martial. Brandtner, Ossinsky and the unknown were hanged, and Mokrievitch was sentenced to fourteen years penal servitude in Siberia. In June following he and some other state convicts were sent to the central jail of Mtzensk, whence early in July they set out on their long journey for Oust Kara, where they had to undergo their sentences. They traveled part of the way via Nijni Novgorod by railway, steamboat and on horseback. The remainder of the journey, 1,450 miles, had to be done on foot and in chains. They marched at the rate of about fifteen miles a day, the night being passed in so-called etapes, small houses swarming with vermin and unspeakably filthy, where all classes of prisoners of both sexes were compelled to sleep huddled together on bare floors. Between Krasnoyarsk and Irkoutsk M. Mokrievitch and two of his companions, Izbitzkey and Orloff, changed names and dresses with three ordinary convicts who were undpr sentence of perpetual exile. This, *M. Mokrievitch assures me, is a very common expedient, and can be effected at a cost of a few rubles. His destination was now that of the peasant whose name he had taken, a settlement in the province of Irkoutsk. Izbitzkey and Orloff got away before reaching Irkoutsk, probabably by the connivance of the guard. Orloff was recaptured. Izbitzkey has never been heard of since, and is supposed to have perished of hunger or been devoured by wolves in the trackless forests of Eastern Siberia. On November 12th, 1879, a few days after leaving Irkoutsk for Balaganask—his final destination—M. Mokrievitch also gave his escort the slip. As soon as his flight was discovered a number of Bouryats, half savage Mongol horsemen, as keen as sleuth hounds and as cunning as red Indians, were sent after him, but he succeeded in evading their pursuit and reaching Irkoutsk. To avoid recapture, which, had he gone west, would have been almost certain, he made off toward the Chinese frontier, and after a walk of 700 miles in the depth of a Siberian winter, he doubled back in the direction of European Russia, which he reached after a journey of 4,000 miles, performed mostly on foot. He underwent terrible hardships and met with many adventures. Without the frequent aid and generous hospitality of the country people, who are noted for their kindness to fugitive convicts, he could not possibly have made good liis escape, and lest he should expose those who helped him to the vengence of the Russian Government, he does not desire to make publicly known the exact direction which he took. M. Mokrievitch’s journey across Russia, though not un at - tended with difficulty g.ncl risk, was child’s play compared with his walk through Siberia. Furnished by his friends with false papers, he succeeded in getting safely out of the country, and reached Switzerland, Except Wiotrowsky in the last century, M. Debagorio Mokrievitch is the only state prisoner condemned to hard labor that ever escaped from Siberia. Lapatia, who escaped from Irkoutsk, was an unconvicted exile, and Bakounine, an iuyoluntry settler on the Amoor, was taken away ov an American merchant ship.