Siberia

“…the need to populate Siberia and to mine its ore drew out a deepening river of deportees, and by 1753, when the death penalty was abolished in favor of lifelong labour, the variety of offences punishable by exile had grown bewildering. Prize-fighting, wife-beating, begging with false distress, illicit tree-felling, vagrancy and fortune-telling might all condemn a man to Siberia as well as the European innovations of taking snuff (exile was accompanied by ripping out the nostrils’ septum) or driving a cart with the use of reins.”

- Colin Thubron In Siberia.