than one with mud walls; for in the night a prisoner can dig his way through a mud wall with a knife or a sharpened bit of stick without making any noise, whereas the bamboo mat will creak or crackle as soon as it is touched, and so even the somnolent guard, or someone else, may be aroused. Some of the larger jails are built of brick and stone, and are calculated to hold four hundred persons, and are divided into ten or twelve wards, some of which are sub-di vided. The ward is called the Hajut. but set apart for men under trial. Another ward is for females, and usually contains a few women and babies; for babies up to two years old sometimes went to jail with their mothers if the ladies wished it. The bulk of the male prisoners are divided into laboring and non-laboring, The latter, whose sentences do not condemn them to hard labor, live a life of idleness. They eat and sleep and smoke surreptitiously (to bacco not being allowed) until their sen tences expire. They had to eat the jail's rations, which were as good and as abun dant as the food they would have got in their own homes. Their only punishment was the loss of their liberty, There was, however, one risk. If they did not conform to the jail rules, or were in any way quar relsome or troublesome, they were liable to punishment for a breach of jail discipline. In such a case they were usually provided with some hard labor, to teach them to be have better; but they might also receive corporal punishment, which frightened them. The laboring prisoners were subjected to a somewhat ruder classification. Murderers were kept with murderers, bur glars with burglars, thieves with thieves, and so on. But as murderers were very few, they could not have a ward to them selves, and so they got mixed up with burglars.
These three classes were usually kept in fetters, according to the term of their judi cial sentence. Formerly the laboring pris oners were put into heavy fetters, weighing seven pounds, and sent to work on the roads without any choice or question. The system of employing convicts to work on roads was an inheritance from the Moham medan rulers whom the English succeeded in India. There is a high embanked road in the Hooghhy district about ten miles long, which a ruler of the Hindoo dynasty is said to have made with prisoners some seven hundred years ago. The fixed establishment of most of the large jails consists of a native jailor, with deputies and a few paid warders, with a semi-military guard for sentry duty, armed with muskets and provided with ammuni tion. They are commanded and drilled by a Subahdar (native officer.) In every jail there is a hospital ward and dispensary, with a native doctor in charge of it; and there is a mortuary house for post mortem examinations. Some of the wellbehaved convicts are encouraged to be come hospital compounders and dressers, and take to their new duties gladly. The civil surgeon of the station seldom fails to visit his jail every morning. Some of the jails were old forts built by the Mohammedans and the Mahrattas. The old Mahratta fort at Midnapore, and the still older fortress at Monghyr, on the Ganges, had been appropriated as jails. Of course, so far as security is concerned, the walls of a fortress would serve well for the walls of a jail. But the internal ar rangements were not so suitable, and the bomb-proof barracks and magazines with their low, solid roofs, were very bad for the prisoners who had to sleep in them. Some engineer, who had the building of jails in other districts, seems to have been struck
