There is a law which admits of the seizure and detention as hostages of entire families, any members of which have broken the laws of the empire and fled from justice. Such hostages are not liberated until the offending relatives have been secured, and consequently they are not unfrequently imprisoned during a period of five, ten or twenty years. Indeed, many of them pass the period of their natural lives in captivity. Thus the mother or aunt of Hung Sow-tsuen, the leader of the Taiping rebellion, died after an imprisonment of several years in the prison of the Nam-hoi magistrate at Canton. The unoffending old woman grievously felt this long detention for no crime or offence of her own. Should the crime of the fugitive be a very aggravated and serious one, such, for example, as an attempt upon the life of the sovereign of the empire, it is not unusual to put the immediate, although perfectly innocent, relations of the offender to death, while those who are not so nearly related to him are sent into exile. In 1803 an attempt was made to assassinate the emperor Ka-hing. The assassin was no sooner apprehended than he was sentenced to be put to death by torture; and his sons who were young children were put to death by strangling. The mortality in Chinese prisons is very great. The bodies of all who die in prison are thrown into the dead-house and remain there until the necessary preliminaries, which are of a very simple kind, have been arranged for their interment. In the prisons of Canton these receptacles may be seen full of corpses and presenting the most revolting and disgusting appearance. Some of the unhappy victims have died from the effects of severe and often repeated floggings. Others have fallen victims to one or other of the various diseases which such dens are only too well fitted to create and foster. In the prison of Pun-yu there were on one occasion in the dead-house five bodies, all with the appearance of death from starvation--a form of capital punishment which in China is frequently inflicted upon kidnappers and other grave offenders. Directly in front of the door of the dead-house and at the base of the outer boundary wall of the prison there is a small door of sufficient size to admit of a corpse being passed through. The corpses of all who die in prison are carried through this aperture into the adjoining street for burial. It would be paying too much reverence to the deceased prisoner to allow the remains to be carried through the gates of the _yamun_ to which the prison is attached.