Ceuta is essentially a convict city, not exactly founded by penal labour but enlarged and improved by it and served by it in all the needs of daily domestic life. The first period of close confinement on arrival is comparatively brief and is spent in the prison proper outside the city at hard labour in association on the fortifications, in the workshops and quarries. In the second period the convicts are permitted to enter the city and are employed under supervision in warehouses, offices and in water carrying. In the third period, commonly called from "gun to gun," extending daily from the morning gun fire until the evening, the convicts are allowed to go freely into the city and work there on their own account. The fourth and last, entered when two thirds of the whole sentence has been completed, is called "under conditions," that is to say, in conditional freedom, and the convicts are let out to private employers precisely as they were "assigned" in old Australian days. They may live with their masters, sleep out, and are only obliged to report at the prison once a month for muster. More than a third of the total number are thus employed. The result is that Ceuta offers the singular spectacle that it is nominally a prison, but the bulk of the prisoners live beyond the walls, quite unguarded and really in the streets forming part of the ordinary population. Convicts are to be met with at every corner, they go in and out through the front doors of houses, no one looks at them in surprise, no one draws aside to let them pass. The situation is described graphically by Salillas. "Who is the coachman on the box? A convict. Who is the man who waits at table? A convict. The cook in the kitchen? A convict. The nursemaid in charge of the children? A convict (male). Are their employers afraid of being robbed or murdered? Not in the least." Another eye witness[11] writes:-- [11] Relosillas, "Four Months in Ceuta."