The true state of the case may best be judged by examining and setting forth the conditions prevailing. On the surface the convicts may seem to abstain from serious misconduct, but even this may be doubted from the facts in evidence. "It is a wild beasts' cage," writes one well informed authority. It may be to some extent a cage without bars, or in which the wild beasts are so tamed that they may be allowed to go at large and do but little harm, but evil instincts are at times in the ascendancy as shown in the quarrels and disorders that occur, but to no greater extent says the apologist than in any of the prisons on the Spanish mainland. It may be that the régime is so mild that the convicts yield willingly to it without a murmur and seldom rise against it. But the very atmosphere of the place is criminal. There may be few prison offences where rules are easy but if serious offences against discipline are but rarely committed within the limits, others against society are constantly prepared for execution beyond. Ceuta is a hot bed of crime, the seed is sown there, nourished and developed to bear baleful fruit afterwards. It is a first class school for the education of thieves, swindlers, coiners, and forgers who graduate and take honours in the open world of evil doing. It is the original home, some say, of the famous fraud, peculiarly Spanish, called the _entierro_, which still flourishes and draws profit as ever, not from Spain alone, but from far and wide in nearly all civilised countries. The _entierro_, or the "burial" literally translated, means an artful and specious proposal to reveal the whereabouts of a buried treasure. It is another form of the well known "confidence trick" or, as the French call it, the "_vol à l'americaine_," and we cannot but admire the ingenuity and inventiveness so often displayed in its practice, while expressing surprise at the credulity and gullibility of those who are deluded by it. It originates as a rule in a letter addressed from the prison to some prominent person in Spain or elsewhere, for the astute practitioner is well provided with lists of names likely to be useful to him in his business. It is on record that a seizure was made in the presidio of Granada of a whole stock in trade, a great mass of information secretly collected from all parts of the world to serve in carrying out the fraud of the _entierro_, and with it a number of forms of letters in various European languages. The invitation is marked "very private and confidential" and conveys with extreme caution and mystery the suggestion that for a sufficient consideration the secret hiding place of a very valuable treasure will be confided to the person addressed. Colour is given to the proposal by some plausible but not always probable story on which it is based.