Note 8 — Chapter XLIX · THE ISLAND OF SAKHALIN.

Thus I met with a gentleman who was elected director of the local committee for the prison at Nikolaefsk, to whom, for many years, the Government allowed only 13 kopecks per day to provide food for each prisoner. The committee petitioned for 25 kopecks a day, and it received 17, at which rate he believed it now stands. At that time 17 kopecks represented about 6d. a day, now they represent only 4½d. But three pounds of rye bread at Nikolaefsk cost 15 kopecks, and thus there was less than 1d. left for other kinds of food. The result, in the case of my informant, was that he often put his hand in his own pocket to the extent of £20 or £30 a year; but it is not likely that many can be found thus to act, especially in such a place as Sakhalin, where there is no colony, and the free inhabitants are very few. There is no philanthropic committee there at all, so that the management of the exiles is left solely to the administrative authorities. My informant said that the corn sent to Dui was good, but that the meat and fish were always bad, and that, in fact, the convicts scarcely ever got meat at all.