A brief description of the old Saladero, which has at last disappeared off the face of the earth, may be of interest. It stood at the top of the Santa Barbara hill on the left hand side, in external aspect a half-ruined edifice tottering to its fall, propped and buttressed, at one corner quite past mending, at another showing rotten cement and plaster with its aged weather-worn walls stained with great black patches of moisture and decay. A poor and wretched place outside with no architectural pretensions, its interior was infinitely worse. It was entered by a wide entrance not unlike that of an ancient country inn or hostelry with a broken-down wooden staircase, leading to a battered doorway of rotten timbers. The portals passed, the prison itself was reached, a series of underground cellars with vaulted roofs purposely constructed, as it seemed, to exclude light and prevent ventilation, permeated constantly with fetid odours and abominable foul exhalations from the perpetual want of change of atmosphere or circulation of fresh air. Yet human beings were left to rot in these nauseous and pestiferous holes for two or three years continuously. At times the detention lasted five years on account of the disgracefully slow procedure in the law courts and this although trials often ended in acquittal or a verdict of non-responsibility for the criminal act charged. Many of the unfortunate wretches subjected to these interminable delays and waiting judgment, therefore still innocent in the eyes of the law, were yet herded with those already convicted of the most heinous offences.