usually contrive to lead as riotous a life within the prison walls, as ever it was their lot to do beyond them.
The different rooms, or cells, of the second storey are appropriated to criminals of a superior condition, and for the reception of malefactors whose crimes are of a deeper dye than ordinary. It is no unusual thing, nevertheless, to behold individuals of the latter class—some even under sentence of death—permitted to mix with the indiscriminate crowd in the court-yard, and wandering about from one range of rooms to another, at will. It may appear strange, at first sight, that the number of escapes is not greater; but there are many doors and gates to pass between the corridor, or court-yard, and the great thoroughfare without; and the warders, inactive as they are in the discharge of their duties, are yet sufficiently numerous to frustrate the most desperate of such designs.
As there is no pauper asylum, nor any provision for the needy and destitute, throughout the country, it is not remarkable—considering the brutal and degraded state of the poorer classes—that theft and murder are rife, and that the cells of the Accordada are
