The prisons of Sicily were equally disgraceful. At Palermo the inmates were herded like cattle, exposed to the sun in the open yards or buried in underground dungeons. These _dammusi_ were sufficient to cause a shudder; excavated far out under the Porta Carbone, but so limited in size that a man could not stand erect or lie at full length on the only bed provided, of hard stone. Complete darkness, dripping damp, and vermin innumerable, make up the horrible picture, drawn by an Italian who afterward visited the prison, escorted by Professor Pasquale Pacini, who pointed out the _dammuso_ he had himself occupied, and cut out the very iron ring to which he had been chained to carry away with him. In this prison there was a torture chamber in which the nails and rings once used still remained. There were many such underground prisons on the mainland. I have myself seen those of the castle of St. Elmo at Naples, now thrown open and dismantled, but which are still very much like dry wells or the mouth of a coal mine, deep pits too dark and foul even for the reception of wild beasts. The male prison of Aversa was a by-word; at the gateway as late as 1830 it was the custom to hang iron baskets in which were kept the shrivelling heads of decapitated criminals. At the prison of Santa Maria, there were caverns hollowed out of the rock behind the criminal prison, the only admission to which was through an aperture like a window and inside which the unhappy occupant lay heaped up, hermetically sealed. The old fortress of the Castel dell’ Ovo at Naples contained dungeons as bad as any of those just mentioned.