PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. 269 
quarrel, or unknown murder during the night ; and all who miss a friend, 
a parent or a brother, resort to these iron bars to seek the lost one. It is 
painful to behold the scenes to which this melancholy assemblage fre- 
quently give rise, and hear the wails of sorrow that break from the home- 
less orphan, whose parent lies murdered on the stones of the dead-house. 
Yet this is scarcely more shocking than the scenes presented by the 
livings within the walls of the loathsome prison. A strong guard of mili- 
tary is stationed at the gate, and you enter, after due permission from the 
commanding officer. A gloomy stair leads to the second story, the en- 
trance to which is guarded by a portal massive enough to resist the assault 
of a powerful force. Within, a lofty apartment is filled with the officers 
of the prison and a crowd of subalterns, engaged in writing, talking, 
and walking — amid the hum of the crowd, the clank of chains, the shout 
of prisoners, and the eternal din of an ill-regulated establishment. 
Passing through several iron and wood barred gates, you enter a lofty 
corridor, running around a quadrangular court-yard, in the centre of 
which, beneath, is a fountain of troubled water. The whole of this area is 
filled with human beings — the great congress of Mexican crime — mixed 
and mingling, like a hill of busy ants swarming from their sandy caverns. 
Some are stripped and bathing in the fountain ; some are fighting in a 
corner ; some making baskets in another. In one place a crowd is gath- 
ered around a witty story-teller, relating the adventures of his rascally 
life. In another, a group is engaged in weaving with a hand-loom. Rob- 
bers, murderers, thieves, ravishers, felons of every description, and vaga- 
bonds of every aspect, are crammed within this court-yard ; — and, almost 
free from discipline or moral restraint, form, perhaps, the most splendid 
school of misdemeanor and villainy on the American Continent. 
Below, within the corridor of the second story — from which I have de- 
scribed the view of this wretched mass of humanity — a rather better sort 
of criminals are kept ; and yet, even here, many were pointed out to me 
as being under sentence of death, who still went about entirely without 
restraint. 
In one corner of the quadrangle is the chapel, where convicts for capi- 
tal 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. 
I did not see the prison for the women, but I am told it is much the same 
as the one I have just described. About one hundred of the men, chained 
in pairs like galley slaves, are driven daily into the streets, under a strong 
guard, 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 coun- 
try. Punishment, or rather, incarceration, and labor on the streets, in the 
manner I have described, is, in fact, no sacrifice ; — ^both because public 
