I did not hasten to answer your letter because I am not leaving Petersburg
before next Saturday. I am sorry I have not been to see Madame Naryshkin,
but I think I had better defer my visit till my book has come out, when I
shall be able to turn more freely to the material I have. My brief Sahalin
past looms so immense in my imagination that when I want to speak about it
I don’t know where to begin, and it always seems to me that I have not said
what was wanted.
I will try and describe minutely the position of the children and young
people in Sahalin. It is exceptional. I saw starving children, I saw girls
of thirteen prostitutes, girls of fifteen with child. Girls begin to live
by prostitution from twelve years old, sometimes before menstruation has
begun. Church and school exist only on paper, the children are educated by
their environment and the convict surroundings. Among other things I have
noted down a conversation with a boy of ten years old. I was making the
census of the settlement of Upper Armudano; all the inhabitants are
poverty-stricken, every one of them, and have the reputation of being
desperate gamblers at the game of shtoss. I go into a hut; the people are
not at home; on a bench sits a white-haired, round-shouldered, bare-footed
boy; he seems lost in thought. We begin to talk.