A fruitful source of profit was the sale of privileged offices, permits to hawk goods and to trade within the precincts of the prison. Salillas when he visited the Seville prison not many years ago, saw numbers of prisoners selling cigars and cigarettes in the yards, various articles of food, such as _gazpacho_, the popular salad of Andalusia, compounded of oil and bread soaked in water, and drinks including _aguardiente_, that powerful Spanish spirit akin to Hollands. Some kept gaming tables and paid a tax on each game and its profits and especially when the "King" was turned up at "Monte." Salillas publishes a list of prices that ruled for places, privileges and boons conceded to the prisoners. To become a "_cabo de vara_," a "corporal carrying the stick" or wand of office, cost from eight to sixteen dollars. "Who and what was the _Cabo de Vara_?" he asks and answers the question. "A hybrid creature the offspring of such diverse parents as the law and crime; half murderer, half robber, who after living in defiance of the law is at least prevented from doing further harm in freedom, is locked up and entrusted with executive authority over companions who have passed through the same evil conditions and are now at his mercy. He is half galley-slave chained to the oar, half public functionary wearing the badge of officialdom and armed with a stick to enforce his authority. He represents two very opposite sets of ideas; on the one hand that of good order and the maintenance of penal discipline, on the other that of a natural inclination towards the wrong doing in which he has been a practitioner and for which he is, in a way, enduring the penalty. To succeed he must possess some strongly marked personal qualities; he should be able to bully and impose his will upon those subjected to his influence, overbearing, masterful, swaggering, ready to take the law into his own hands and insist upon its observance as he chooses to interpret its dictates." The post of hospital orderly or cook or laundry-man could be secured for about the same price, while a small fee to the prison surgeon gained a perfectly sound man admission to hospital for treatment he did not need, but in which he was much more comfortable than in the ordinary prison. The place of prison barber was to be bought for four dollars; employment as a shoemaker two dollars; relief from a punishment ordered three dollars; permission to pay a visit home, four dollars. These prices were not definitely settled and unchangeable. Where a certain profit could be extracted from a particular post such as the charge of the canteen it was put up to auction and knocked down to the highest bidder. CHAPTER VII PRESIDIOS AT HOME AND ABROAD