unfortunate, who have fallen beyond the pale of human law, but not beyond the reach of God’s mercy. The workrooms where they pass their days are light and airy, but the small, bare, white, vaulted cells, where they spend their time from six in the evening till six in the morning, look barren, cold, and silent as so many narrow graves. There are no windows, they are honeycombed into the wall, and air and light are only admitted through the iron-grated entrance door, which gives on to a wide whitewashed corridor, where the warder in charge keeps watch during the night. The penitentiary is surrounded by very extensive grounds, laid out to supply the prison with vegetables, here a score or two of prisoners in striped, zebra-like clothing are at work digging potatoes or cultivating cabbages. A high wall surrounds this open space, a turret or watch-box stands in the centre on the top of each section, commanding every inch of the ground. These are occupied night and day by an armed guard, who have orders to shoot down any prisoner who attempts to escape. “They don’t often miss their aim either,” observes our guide complacently. On Sunday we attend service here. The barn-like building dedicated to divine worship is not nearly large enough to hold half the prisoners; they overflow outside the doors, swarm on the steps, and cling in groups outside the windows. Nearly all are coloured, some pure black. The leader of the choir, a tall, good-looking young fellow, we are told is a “lifer,” in for arson, a very common crime among the negroes. The southern laws seem to be far more rigorous than those of the north, capital punishment being enforced for some offences which are met only by imprisonment in the northern States. Amongst the crowd of coloured folk, we notice there are three or four white women, who, according to general custom, take precedence of the dark race; they enter first in the procession, and sit in the front row. One keeps her head determinedly bent down; we just see under the shadow of her calico poke-bonnet a young rounded chin, a fair smooth cheek with a peach-like bloom upon it; but her eyes and brow we never catch a glimpse of; she sits through the whole service with eyes and head bowed resolutely down out of our range of sight. What is her story? Somehow we feel it must be a pitiful one, and our sympathies go out to her. Does the sight of us “remind her of the state from which she fell?”--the descent so easy, the return so hard and almost impossible! Next her sits another woman, a striking contrast, an older woman with a powerful characteristic face, dark defiant eyes, close thin lips, she seems to look her fate in the face boldly, as though she had “dreed her weird,” and took her punishment without shrinking; a hard Ishmaelitish face it is; she looks as though _she_ was against all the world, and the world was against _her_; no softening line, no gleam of sorrow or regret rested thereon.