Within, The Blackness, The Filth, The Vermin, The Stench, Overpowering Even In This Cool Weather, The Rubbish Of Rags And Potsherds, Cannot Be Described.

Here in semi-starvation and misery, with nameless cruelties practised upon them without restraint, festering in one depraved mass,

Are the tried and untried, the condemned, the guilty and innocent (?), the murderer and pirate, the debtor and petty thief, all huddled together, without hope of exit except to the adjacent judgment-seat, with its horrors of "the question by torture," or to the "field of blood" not far away. On earth can there be seen a spectacle more hideous than these abject wretches, with their heavy fetters eating into the flesh of their necks and ankles (if on their wasted skeletons, covered with vermin and running sores, there is any flesh left), their thick matted, bristly, black hair - contrasting with the shaven heads of the free - the long, broken claws on their fingers and toes, the hungry look in their emaciated faces, and their clamorous cry, _kum-sha! kum-sha!_ They thronged round us clattering their chains, one man saying that they had so little rice that they had to "drink the foul water to fill themselves;" another shrieked, "Would I were in your prison in Hong Kong," and this was chorused by many voices saying, "In your prison at Hong Kong they have fish and vegetables, and more rice than they can eat, and baths, and beds to sleep on; good, good is the prison of your Queen!" but higher swelled the cry of _kum-sha_, and as we could not give alms among several hundred, we eluded them, though with difficulty, and, as we squeezed through the narrow door, execrations followed us, and high above the heavy clank of the fetters and the general din rose the cry, "Foreign Devils" (Fan-Kwai), as we passed out into sunshine and liberty, and the key was turned upon them and their misery.

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