THE PRISONER. 



91 



collars, and the heavy waist -chains, do not pre- 

 vent black man from conversationizing, singing 

 comic songs, and gambling with pebbles. The 

 same was the case with our gruel-houses — 

 ' Kanji-Khanah,' vulgo 6 Conjee- Connah ' — in 

 British India. The Sepoys laughed at them and 

 at our beards. The Bombay Presidency jail is 

 known to Arabs as El Bistan (El Bostan, the 

 Garden), because the courts show a few shrubs, 

 and with Ishmaelites a 6 Bistan ' has ever an 

 arriere pensee of Paradise. But the most mutin- 

 ous white salt that ever floored skipper would 

 6 squirm ' at the idea of a second night in the 

 black-hole of Zanzibar. Such is the Oriental 

 beau-ideal of a prison — a place whose very name 

 should develope the goose-skin, and which the 

 Chinese significantly call fi hell.' 



In my day foreigners visited the prison to see 

 its curio, a poor devil cateran who had beaten 

 the death- drum whilst his headman was tor- 

 turing M. Maizan. An Arab expedition sent 

 into the interior returned with this wretch, de- 

 claring him to be the murderer in chief, and for 

 two years he lay chained in front of the Erench 

 Consulate. Since 1847 he was heavily ironed to 

 a gun, under a mat-shed, where he could neither 

 stand up nor lie down. The fellow looked fat 



