Thirty acres were enclosed by stone walls, the outer of which was sixteen feet high,[10] and was separated by a broad military way from the inner wall, which was hung with bells on wires connected with all the sentry boxes dotted along it. One half of the circle thus enclosed was occupied by five huge barracks, each capable of holding more than 1,000 men, with their airing grounds and shelters for bad weather, their inner ends converging on a large open space, where was held the market. Each barrack consisted of two floors, and above the top floor ran, the length of the building, a roof room, designed for use when the weather was too bad even for the outdoor shelters, but, as we shall see, appropriated for other purposes. On each floor, a treble tier of hammocks was slung upon cast-iron pillars. Each barrack had its own airing ground, supply of running water, and Black Hole. The other half-circle was occupied by two spacious blocks, one the hospital, the other the petty officers’ prison, by the officials’ quarters, the kitchen, washing-houses, and other domestic offices, and outside the main, the Western Gate, the barrack for 400 soldiers and the officers’ quarters. The cost of the prison was £135,000. By the foreign prisoners of war Dartmoor was regarded, and not without reason, as the most hateful of all the British prisons. At Norman Cross, at Stapleton, at Perth, at Valleyfield, at Forton, at Millbay, they were at any rate within sight and hearing of the outer world. Escape from any one of these places was, of course, made as difficult as possible, but when once an exit was effected, the rest was comparatively easy. But escape from Dartmoor meant very much more than the mere evading of sentries, the breaching and scaling of walls, or the patient labour of underground burrowing. When all this was accomplished the fugitive found himself not in a crowded city, where he could be lost to sight among the multitude, nor in the open country where starvation was at any rate impossible, nor by a water highway to freedom, nor, in short, in a world wherein he could exercise his five senses with at least a chance of success; but in the wildest, most solitary, most shelterless, most pathless, and, above all, most weather-tormented region of Britain. Any one who has tried to take his bearings in a Dartmoor fog, or who has been caught by a Dartmoor snowstorm at the fall of day can realize this; those who have not had one or other of these experiences, cannot do better than read _The American Prisoner_, by Mr. Eden Phillpotts.