“The rays of the morning sun now began to struggle through the chinks of the prison walls and told us that day dawned, bringing life and happiness to the world outside, but only the consciousness of misery to all within. The prisoners being counted and found to tally correctly with the reckoning of overnight, symptoms of the routine of the day began to attract attention. Our considerate parent made his appearance and with his customary grin lowered down the bamboo to within a foot of the floor, to the great relief of our benumbed limbs in which the blood slowly began again to circulate. At eight o’clock the inmates were driven out in gangs of ten or twelve at a time, to take the air for five minutes, when they were huddled in again, to make way for others; but no entreaty could secure a repetition of the same favour that day, though a bribe, which few could promise, might effect it. Fresh air, the cheapest of all the gifts of Providence, was a close monopoly in the hands of the ‘sons of the prison,’ who sold it at the highest price, and with a niggard hand. “After breakfast the business of trying the prisoners began, and each was brought in turn before the _myo-serai_, or assistant to the governor. The first was a young man accused of being concerned in the robbery of the house of a person of rank. Whether the accusation was well founded or not I had no means of judging except by the result; but certainly the man had not the appearance of a robber. As a matter of course, he denied the crime; but denial was assumed to be obstinacy, and the usual mode of overcoming obstinacy was by some manner of torture. By order of the _myo-serai_, therefore, he was made to sit upon a low stool, his legs were bound together by a cord above the knees and two poles inserted between them by the executioners, one of whom took the command of each pole, the ground forming the fulcrum. With these the legs were forced upwards and downwards and asunder, and underwent a peculiar kind of grinding, inflicting more or less pain as the judge gave direction. Every moment I expected to hear the thighbone snap. The poor fellow sustained this torture with loud cries but still with firmness until the agony became so intense that he fainted. ‘The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.’ To restore animation they resorted to cold water and shampooing. Thus revived, he was again thrust back into his den with menaces of fresh torture on the morrow, as no confession had yet been wrung from him. I may as well finish the revolting story at once.