"People come to the prison gates and sell it as we come back from work. You can buy anything except vodka, and you can buy that, though not openly; it gets smuggled in."
"How many hours do you work a day?"
"Thirteen; but of course it is only for five months in the year. In winter the ground is too hard."
"Too hard!" Godfrey repeated. "Why, it never gets cold in mines."
"You don't think you are going to work underground, do you?" the man said; "there are very few underground mines here. It is all on the surface. There are some underground, because I have worked in them. I would rather work there than here. They can't look after you so sharp, and you can take it as easily as you like."
Godfrey looked astonished. His ideas of the Siberian mines had been taken from stories written by men who had never been within thousands of miles of them, and who drew terrible pictures of the sufferings of exiles simply for the purpose of exciting feeling throughout Europe against the Russian government.
"But it is very unhealthy in the mines underground, is it not?"
"No; why should it be? It is much cooler and pleasanter working underground than it is in the dust and heat, I can tell you."
"But I thought all quicksilver mines were unhealthy."