THE GEORGE CATLtN INDIAN GALLERY. 649 



great interest, and for the three nights of their amusements their room, was well filled 

 and nightly increasing; but all arguments were in vain, and we must needs be on the 

 move. I relieved their minds in a measure relative to the instruments of death they 

 had seen and the executions of which they had heard an account, by informing them of 

 a fact that had not occurred to them — that the number of executions mentioned had been 

 spread over a great number of years, and were for crimes committed amongst some hun- 

 dreds of thousands of inhabitants, occupying a tract of country a great many miles in 

 every direction from York; and also that the poor men imprisoned for debt were from 

 various parts of the country for a great distance around. This seemed to abate their 

 surprise to a considerable degree; still, the first impression was here made, and made by 

 means of their eyes (which they say they never disbelieve, and I am quite sure they will 

 never get rid of it), that York was the " wicked town," as they continued to call it dur- 

 ing the remainder of their European travels. I explained to them that other towns had 

 their jails and their gallows — that in London they daily rode in their bus past prison 

 walls, and where the numbers imprisoned were greater than those in York in proportion 

 to the greater size of the city. 



NOTIONS OF IMPRISONMENT AND TRANSPORTATION. 



Their comments were many and curious on the cruelty of imprisoning people for debt, 

 because they could not pay money. "Why not kill them?" they said; "it would be 

 better, because when a man is dead he is no expense to any ODe, and his wife can get a 

 husband again, and his little children a father to feed and take care of them; when he 

 is in jail they must starve; when he is once in jail he cannot wish his face to be seen 

 again, and they had better kill them all at once. ' ' They thought it easier to die than 

 to live in jail, and seemed to be surprised that white men, so many hundreds and thou- 

 sands would submit to it, when they had so many means by which they could kill them- 

 selves. 



They saw convicts in the cells who were to be transported from the country ; they in- 

 quired the meaning of that, and, when I explained it they seemed to think that was a 

 good plan, for, said they, " if these people can't get money enough to pay their debts, 

 if they go to another country they need not be ashamed there, and perhaps they will 

 soon make money enough to come back and have their friends take them by the hand 

 again. ' ' I told them, however, that they had not understood me exactly — that transpor- 

 tation was only for heinous crimes, and then a man was sent away in irons, and in the 

 country where he went he had to labor several years, or for life, with chains upon him, 

 as a slave. Their ideas were changed at once on this point, and they agreed that it would 

 be better to kill them all at once, or give them weapons and let them do it themselves. 



While this conversation was going on the Recorder Jim found here very interesting 

 statistics for his note-book, and he at once conceived the plan of getting Daniel to find 

 out how many people there were that they had seen in the prison locked up in one 

 town ; and then, his ideas expanding, how many (if it could be done at so late an hour) 

 there were in all the prisons in London; and then how many white people in all the 

 kingdom were locked up for crimes, and how many because they couldn't pay money. 

 His friend and teacher, Daniel, whose head had become a tolerable gazetteer and statis- 

 tical table, told him it would be quite easy to find it already printed in books and 

 newspapers, and that he would put it all down in his book in a little time. 



The inquisitive Jim then inquired if there were any poorhouses in York, as in other 

 towns; to which his friend Daniel replied that there were, and also in nearly every 

 town in the kingdom, upon which Jim started the design of adding to the statistical en- 

 tries in his book the number of people in poorhouses throughout the kingdom. Daniel 

 agreed to do this for him also, which he could easily copy out of a memorandum-book 

 of his own, and also to give him an estimate of the number of people annually trans- 

 ported from the kingdom for the commission of crimes. This all pleased Jim very 



