CONDITION OF PRISONS. 151 



of Mexican crime, — mixed and mingling, like a hill of busy ants 

 swarming from their sandy caverns. Some are stripped and bath- 

 ing in the fountain ; — some are fighting in a corner ; — some 

 making baskets in another. In one place a crowd is gathered 

 around a witty story-teller, relating the adventures of his rascally 

 life. In another, a group is engaged in weaving with a hand- 

 loom. Robbers, murderers, thieves, ravishers, felons of every 

 description, and vagabonds of every grade or aspect, are crammed 

 within this dismal court-yard ; and, almost free from discipline or 

 moral restraint, form, perhaps, the most splendid school of misde- 

 meanor and villany on the American continent. 



Below, — within the corridor of the second story, — another 

 class of criminals is kept ; and yet, even here, men under sentence 

 of death, are pointed out w T ho are still permitted to go about with- 

 out restraint. 



In one corner of the quadrangle is the chapel, where convicts 

 for capital offences are condemned to solitude and penance, during 

 the three last days of their miserable life ; and, at a certain hour, it 

 is usual for all the prisoners to gather in front of the door and 

 chant a hymn for the victim of the laws. It is a solemn service of 

 crime for crime. 



The women are not generally seen in the Accordada, but their 

 condition is but little better than that of the males. About one 

 hundred of the men, chained in pairs like galley slaves, are driven 

 daily, under a strong guard, into the streets as scavengers ; and it 

 seems to be the chief idea of the utility of prisons in Mexico, to 

 support this class of coerced laborers. 



There can be no apology, at this period of general enlightenment 

 in the world, for such disgraceful exhibitions of the congregated 

 vice of a country or capital. Punishments, or rather incarceration 

 or labor on the streets,- is in reality no sacrifice, because public ex- 

 hibition deadens the felon's shame, inasmuch as such inflictions 

 cannot become punishments, under any circumstances of a lepero's 

 life. Indeed, what object in existence can the Mexican lepero pro- 

 pose to himself? His day is one of precarious labor and income ; 

 — he thieves ; — he has no regular home, or if he has, it is some 

 miserable hovel of earth and mud, where his wife and children 

 crawl about with scarce the instinct of beavers. His food and 

 clothing are scant and miserable. He is without education or 

 prospect of social improvement. He belongs to a class that does 

 not rise, for his class is ostracised by hereditary public opinion. 

 He dulls his sense of present misery by intoxicating drinks. His 



