from the colony, to the relief of the colony and of the gaol.
The stone prison was too manifestly not built with a knowledge of what a prison should be. The ground floor is faulty enough in all conscience, and difficult to work, but as regards the upper storey, if the designer had intended to place all power in the hands of the prisoners, and to make their control a work of immense difficulty and continual source of danger to the officers, he could not have succeeded better in his purpose. It is a perfect labyrinth—cells within cells, and corridors within corridors. There are a few single cells, in four small groups, as widely apart from each other as the walls of the building will allow; but for the most part the cells are absurdly large, and were made to accommodate as many as eight, ten, twelve, and in one instance even sixteen men, in double tiers of bunks (one above the other), placed lengthways against the four walls, and to get to the single cells it is (or was) necessary for the warders, in discharge of their nightly inspection, or in the case of the sickness or sham-sickness of a prisoner, to pass between the tiers with their occupants. It will thus be seen that the internal construction is such as to afford every facility for conspiracy and sudden attack, and to place the officers at a dreadful disadvantage. The marvel is that the institution has existed so long without any very serious thing occurring, especially in the desperate days of '61–3. But, of course, no gaoler in his senses would place known dangerous men, or even doubtful men, in circumstances so favourable to themselves. Of late years the danger has been very much reduced by the removal of the double tiers of bunks, and the erection of iron gratings with locks. Still, as a gaol the building is extremely defective and inconvenient; but no doubt it will ere long be superseded by a prison formed on sounder principles, and more worthy of the name.
In the years 1870 and 1879 large accessions were made to the inmates of Dunedin gaol by the arrival of two batches of Maori prisoners from the North Island, the first being Waikato warriors taken in the field, the second the disturbers of the peace who knocked down the settlers' fences at Parihaka. The Waikato men were a fine, noble body. They conducted themselves with amazing good humour, and joined heartily, as
