184 TRINIDAD. 



tendance when ill, and what to the Creole and Asiatic is an 

 immense enjoyment, he can sleep from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. next 

 morning. 



" The labour to which he is put is not more severe than that 

 to which he has been accustomed on the estate or roads of the 

 island, and certainly can in no case be considered penal, or even 

 in the light of a punishment. What, then, does such a prisoner 

 suffer by imprisonment ? " Let me add that you can hear that 

 class of people declare that they are quite content to be sent to 

 gaol, as they are better off there than they can be when at 

 liberty. 



The inspector again remarks that "imprisonment in tht 

 gaol, when accompanied by hard labour, is not looked upon as 

 disgrace ; and a convict who comes out of prison after one oi 

 two years of penal servitude, resumes his place in society witl 

 no more difficulty than if he had been absent for the same perioc 

 in a neighbouring colony " 



The remark is unfortunately but too well justified by facts 

 " Of course/'' adds the inspector, " in such a state of things thei 

 is one advantage — the facility which a discharged prisoner hj 

 here of obtaining work on his release. "Whereas, in the ok 

 countries, the reverse has been one of the greatest difficulty 

 with which those anxious for the future well-being of the mai 

 have had to contend ; but this advantage, great though it b 

 cannot compensate for the fact that no sense of moral degradatio 

 attaches here to the prison dress, or even to the fact of havi 

 been an inmate of the gaol/'' 



Generally, when such prisoners as are members of the societies 

 or bands alluded to are discharged from the gaol, they are met at 

 the gate by friends, male and female, and received with demon- 

 strations of joy, but with not the faintest exhibition of shame ; 

 and they are accompanied home with triumph. When taken to 

 gaol, they had been escorted by a retinue of followers. For the 

 last two years, however, they have been conveyed to the prison 

 in a closed van. Yet it is really painful to hear them — the 

 female prisoners especially — singing at the top of their voices, 

 as if in defiance of the law and of all decency. It cannot be 

 surprising that the conduct, in prison, of creatures so callous to 

 any feeling of shame is extremely bad, and that " a fearful 

 amount of depravity is practised between them when in an un- 



