The presidio of Valladolid was also condemned for the severity of its régime. The climate alternated between great summer heat and extreme cold in winter, but the convicts worked in the quarries in all weathers. The death record rose in this prison to such a high figure that a third of the average total population of three thousand perished within eighteen months. The general average of the presidios was low but as a rule the death rate was not high. Even when twenty per cent. of males and twenty-five per cent. of the females were sick and hospital accommodation was scarce and imperfect, the deaths did not exceed two and a half per cent. per annum and this included the fatal results of quarrels ending in duels to the death. One of the most serious evils was overcrowding. Official figures give the prison population as about nineteen thousand and the available house-room was for not more than twelve thousand. Salillas puts it at a much lower total, asserting there was barely room for three thousand. While the prisons of Cuba are not strictly within the scope of this work, one of historic and particular interest may be mentioned. This is Morro Castle, which still guards the Harbour of Havana. It was begun in 1589, soon after the unsuccessful attack on Havana by Drake, and was finished in 1597. In 1862 it was partly destroyed by the English who captured it and remained in possession of the city for a year. The arms of the city, granted by royal decree, were appropriately three castles of silver on a blue field, and a golden key. The castles were La Fuerza, El Morro and La Punta, guarding the harbour. The ancient fortress has been described as a "great mass of dun coloured rock and tower and battlement and steep, of which the various parts seem to have grown into one another." It contains cells as damp, dark and unwholesome as those in the notorious dungeons of the old world. This is testified to by a California journalist, Charles Michelson, who was arrested by mistake and thrown into a cell in the castle just before the Spanish-American War. Although he was liberated in two days, his experience was not soon forgotten. The cell was an arch of heavy masonry, damp with the moisture of years. The only window was high up in the arch, and there was no furniture--no bed, blanket or chair. He was not without company of a kind, however, for the place was full of cockroaches and rats. When he clambered up and tried to look out of the window, which commands a fine view of the harbour, a guard outside poked at him with a bayonet. The soup brought him was, he said, "strong and scummy, and the can had been so recently emptied of its original contents that there was a film of oil over the top of it." His interpreter, who was arrested at the same time, fared worse, for he was bound and kept in even a fouler cell.