Drunkenness and absence from roll-call were among the infractions of rules for which punishment was most often inflicted. The character and severity of the punishment depended upon the mood of the commanding officer. Colonel Snelling, who was usually a very gentle man, was particularly severe in his treatment of offenders. "He would take them to his room", wrote one who spent several years in the Snelling household, "and compel them to strip, when he would flog them unmercifully. I have heard them beg him to spare them, 'for God's sake.'"[236] This punishment by flogging was often performed with a "cat"--an instrument made of nine thongs about eighteen inches long, knotted in every inch, and attached to a small stick. When the culprit was stripped to the waist and tied to the flagstaff, the drummers took turns in applying the "cat" to the bare back.[237] Other officers used less painful methods. Thus, Major Loomis was known as "Old Ring", since his favorite punishment was to place a log of wood upon the prisoner's shoulder and compel him to walk around and around in a circle under the vigilant eye of a sentinel. To Major John Bliss, who was in command at Fort Snelling from 1833 to 1836, the name "Black Starvation" might well have been applied. The negro servant, Hannibal, who clandestinely sold spruce beer to the soldiers was confined in the Black Hole for forty-eight hours; and Private Kelly, who refused to do his part in the fatigue party spent more than seventy-two hours in the Black Hole before the pangs of starvation persuaded him to promise Major Bliss to be good in the future.[238] On one occasion, which may be taken as typical of usual conditions, out of a total garrison of three hundred and twenty-nine, twenty-six were confined in prison. But at another time the commanding officer could report: "No Convicts at this Post".[239] The severity of the military rules and the monotony of the life led to two undesirable consequences--mutinies and desertions. Of the former there is apparently no description, and the brief entry in Taliaferro's diary for February 3, 1831, leaves much to the imagination: "Mutiny of Most of the Troops of the 1st Infantry, Stationed at Fort Snelling this Morning".[240] What grievances led to the uprising on that wintry day, and by what diplomacy or by what punishments it was put down, are unrecorded.