Housebreaking is among the minor crimes of India which is especially troublesome. Earthen walls and foundations facilitate the operations of the thieves who are commonly known as “wall-piercers.” These depredators are in the habit of making a hole through the walls, driving a gallery, in fact, into the interior of a house through which they can wriggle into the strong room, generally situated about the centre. As it is always understood that the owner of the house may be on the alert and in waiting to receive the thief, as a matter of precaution he will either emerge feet foremost or push before him an earthen vessel having something of the shape of a man’s head to receive the first blow of the _tulwar_, or other defensive weapon. The Indian housebreaker is a slippery customer, difficult to seize, for he is usually naked, and has carefully oiled his person so as to easily slip through the fingers of any one who lays hold of him. I cannot bring this account of crime in India to a close without mention of an atrocity which is unequalled in the annals of human oppression. What imprisonment may mean in the East, when inflicted in defiance of the most elementary conditions of health in a tropical climate, has been recorded in letters of blood in the awful story of the Black Hole of Calcutta. The miscreant responsible for the crime was the Nabob of Bengal, Surajah Dowlah, who had gained a fleeting triumph over the early English settlers, and having captured Fort William at the mouth of Hugli, and made all the occupants prisoners, he turned them over to his savage followers. For security they were incarcerated in one small room or chamber some eighteen feet square. The season was the height of summer; the room was closed to the eastward and southward by dead walls and to the northward by a wall and door, so that no fresh air could enter save by two small windows, strongly barred with iron. Into this limited space 146 human beings were crammed, already in a state of exhaustion by a long day spent in fatiguing conflict, and several of them seriously wounded. Piteous entreaties were made to the guards on duty to diminish the numbers imprisoned by removal elsewhere; large sums were offered as the price of this boon, but with no effect. No step could be taken without the permission of the Nabob, who was asleep, and none dared wake him. After vain attempts to break open the doors and fruitless appeals to the mercy of the sleeping Nabob, “the prisoners went mad with despair.” The rest of the story can best be told in the words of one of the masters of the English language, Lord Macaulay. “They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in the meantime held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims.