The factories are the most interesting part of the gaol at Montgomery. Carpets are made in many beautiful patterns. A carpet over fifty feet wide can be woven on the largest loom, and it is an interesting sight to see a row of twenty-five men engaged in pulling the threads from the many coloured balls of wool above their heads, slipping them into place and with a small curved knife cutting off the ends, pressing down the stitches with a wooden fork, and never making a mistake. The pattern is read out by convicts stationed behind a loom, sometimes from patterns, sometimes from books and often from memory. To the uninitiated these instructions are incomprehensible, for there is such a confusion of sounds that it is difficult to distinguish any one voice. The marvel of it is how each man knows what colours to use and where. Somehow or other, in spite of all the noise and confusion, dust and glare, these lovely carpets are produced. The ordinary woollen carpet costs from sixteen to twenty-four shillings a square yard, according to the number of stitches to the inch, but the prices range higher for specially selected wool, while the price of a silk carpet is almost a small fortune. Another part of the factory contains the cloth looms. The weavers rig up their looms in the same manner as they would in their native villages, and consequently the yard appears to be in considerable disorder; “each weaver sits at his own little loom with his legs in a hole in the ground and flashes the spindle backwards and forwards, seldom wasting his time for fear he may not finish his day’s job, and thus lose marks or fail to gain any. One man, in training, has to complete nine yards of the duster-cloth, three-quarters of a yard wide, in a day; fifteen yards of blanketing four feet, eight inches wide, is another task; while a man working on a carpet, ‘_munj_-mat,’ or cotton mat, has to work on a width of two feet and complete four inches, twelve feet and two feet respectively in one day.” If a prisoner is able to do extra work he obtains marks and gains some remission from his sentence. The dormitories contain curious looking long rooms with passages down the middle and on each side rows of couches made of hard baked mud. The prisoners are provided with blankets and mattresses made of rice straw, and they can be fairly comfortable. Even beds made out of such material have been diverted to other uses by the ingenious inmates. A convict is said to have made a pipe out of his bed. By hollowing out a place near the head of the bed and plastering it over, he made two holes, one to hold the tobacco and ashes, and the other to serve as a mouthpiece.