When a party of women reach Alexandrovsk today, they are accompanied ceremoniously from the prison to the pier. The women, bent under the weight of bundles and knapsacks hanging fore and aft, stagger along the road, pale from seasickness, while mobs of women, men, children and office workers follow behind, like the troops of people who follow comedians at a fair. The scene brings to mind a run of herring on the Aniva River, when the fish are followed by whole schools of whales, seals and dolphins determined to feast on the spawning herring. The peasant settlers fol- low the crowd with obvious and honorable intentions: they need housewives. The women look to see whether they can find fellow countrywomen. The clerks and guards need "girls." This usually happens in the early evening. The women are locked up in wards which have been prepared for them, and then all night long the talk goes on in the prison and at the post about the new arrivals, about the joys of family life, about the impossibility of homesteading without women, etc.
During the first twenty-four hours, before the boat has left for Korsakov, the women are assigned to districts. This distribution is made by Alexandrovsk officials, and there- fore this district receives the lion's share as to quantity and quality. The nearest district, Tymovsky, receives slightly fewer and less qualified women. The North makes a careful selection. Here, as though they have been filtered out, remain the youngest and prettiest, so that the good fortune of living in the Southern district falls only to the lot of those who are getting old or those who "did not earn the favor of men." No thought is given to the agricultural colony during this distribution, and so, as I have already stated, women in Sakhalin are assigned to districts with no thought of a fair distribution. Furthermore, the worse the district, the less hope for success in colonization, and the more women there are. In the worst district, Alexandrovsk, there are 69 women to 100 men; in the second worst, Tymovsky, 47, and in the best, Korsakov, only 36.®
One parry of women chosen for the Alexandrovsk dis- trict arc designated as servants of the officials. After their experienccs in prisons, thc prison vans and the ship's hold, thc well-lit rooms of an official must seem to these women to be an enchaming palace, and the lord of the palace ap- pears as a good or evil genius with unlimited power over her. Howevcr, she soon becomcs accustomed to her new circumstances, while thc prison and thc ships hold can long bc heard in hcr spccch: "I don't know"; "Eat, your worship"; "Exacdy so."
A second batch of women enter the harems of the clerks and the guards. Thc third batch, the majority, go to live in the setders' huts. Only the richer sctders and those with influence get these women. A convict, even a convict on probation, can get a woman if he has some money and influence within the prison hierarchy.
At the Korsakov Post the newly arrived women are again housed in separate barracks. The district commander and the sctdemem supervisor decide which of the setders and peasams is worthy of having a woman. Preference is given to those who have settled down, are good homebodies and are well behaved. These few chosen ones are ordered to appear on such and such a day at the post, in the prison, to receive a woman.
So it happens that on the designated day, along the whole length of the long road from Naybuchi to the post, there can be seen travelers making their way to the south; these are the suitors or bridegrooms, as they are called, not without irony. They all have a peculiar look about them; they actually look like bridegrooms. One has donned a red bunting shirt, another wears a curious planter's hat, a third sparts shining new high-heeled boots, though nobody knows where he bought them and under what circum- stances. When they arrive at the post they are permitted to enter the women's barracks and they are left there with the women. The suitors wander around the plank beds, silently and seriously eyeing the women; the latter sit with downcast eyes. Each man makes his choice. \Vithout any ugly grimaces, without any sneers, very seriously, they act with humanity toward the ugly, the old and those with criminal features. They study the women and try to guess which of them will make good housekeepers by looking into their faces. If some younger or older woman "reveals herself" to a man, he sits down beside her and begins a sincere conversation. She asks if he owns a samovar, and whether his hut is covered with planks or straw. He an- swers that he has a samovar, a horse, a two-year-old heifer, and his hut is covered with planks. Only after the house- keeping examination has been completed, when both feel that a deal has been made, does she venture to say:
"You won't hurt me in any way, will you?"
The conversation comes to an end. The woman signs herself over to such and such a settler, to such and such a settlement—and the civil marriage is completed. l1ie set- tler leaves for his home with his cohabitant, and as a final act, to make a good impression, he hires a horse and cart, and frequently it happens that this costs him his last penny. At home, the first thing she does is set up the samovar, and all the neighbors, seeing the smoke, jealously comment tlut so-and-so has finally got a woman.
There is no penal labor for women on the island. True, the women sometimes scrub the floors in offices, or work the gardens, or sew bags, bm there is no systematic or clearly defined work in the sense of hard compulsory labor, and probably there never will be.
In this way the prison yields all the convict women to the colony. \Vhile they are being transported to the island, the officials do not think in terms of punishment or reform but only of their ability to bear children and work home- steads. Convict women are assigned to settlers as laborers, according to Article 345 of the Code on Convicts, which permits unmarried women convicts "to earn their living by working in the nearest settlements of older inhabitants until they get married." This article, however, exists only as a screen for the law which prohibits fornication and adultery, since a convict woman or a woman settler who livcs with a settler is not primarily a female farmhand but his cohabitant, an illegal wife who has achieved her status with the knowledge and consent of the administration. In the government dcpartments and in the orders issued by them, a woman living under the same roof with a settler is recorded as existing in "the joint organization of a home- stead" or in "joint housekeeping."4 The man and the woman are described as "a free family."
\XIe can say definitely that with the exception of a small number of women from the privileged class and women who arrive on the island with their husbands, all convict females become cohabitants. This may be regarded as a rule. I was told that when one woman in Vladimirovka refused to become a cohabitant and announced that she had come here to serve a sentence of penal servitude, to work and to do nothing else, her words caused great consterna- tion."'
Local practice has developed a peculiar view of the convict woman, and this probably exists in all penal colo- nies. She is regarded as being neither a person, nor a home- maker, nor a creature lower than a domestic animal. The settlers in the Siska settlement presented the following petition to the regional supervisor: "We humbly beg your worship to release to us one head of horned cattle for milk- ing in the above-mentioned locality and one of the female sex for keeping house." The island commandant, speaking in my presence with a settler from the Uskovo settlement and making various promises, said among others:
"As to women, I will see that you get what you want."