One day, going to survey the fields and meadows near Derbinsk, I came across a large workers’ barracks that laborers had built during their construction of the highway. Among them proved to be an educated exile who’d arrived long ago, E. N. P., a visibly sickly young seminarian from a province in southern Russia. He ardently prevailed upon me to spend several days in the barracks, to live among nature and help them lay out an extension of the road. I was in a hurry with my survey, so I agreed to stay with them just till the following morning.

The road construction had reached a spot where, in addition to a small river (the Kamenukha, it seems), there were many small rivulets and streams flowing together to form a wide bog. Regardless of the guards’ urgent demands, the road could not go forward: the water was washing mud down its embankments and filling the ditches. With no progress at all on the road's construction, the senior guard had dashed off to Rykovsk to inform the administration “the water's just gonna crush us.”

When I reached the barracks, the laborers were on the road, and I encountered only my comrade P— — i. He was there as a clerk and occupying a pole-and-bark shed together with the guards. We energetically waved away the importunate mosquitos and tiny gnats and told each other the latest news, then evening came and, with it, the end of work.

I stepped out of the shed to see the gray throng of penal laborers returning. This throng was literally gray: their white underclothes were indistinguishable from the color of their waistcoats, trousers, and caps of gray cloth. Most were armed with iron spades. Some, before reaching the barracks, fell before a little brook and greedily drank the cold water. The barracks quickly filled with the rumble of conversation, shouting, and clanging kettles. Campfires once more burned like a huge conflagration. The air was scented by smoke. Intensified by the damp breeze from the woods, it pointedly drove the body of insects from the shed. After the laborers settled themselves on the grass in groups of ten to a cauldron and the hum of voices had somewhat quieted, my comrade and I again went to his shed where, for all this, the mosquitos had diminished.