This does not look as if the tribunal were oppressed with poverty; in fact it must have enjoyed abundant means for about this time it completed what is described as an imposing palace for its habitation. This had a spacious patio, covered with an awning in hot weather, which led into a handsome garden, opening upon a street in the rear. To these the public was freely admitted and they formed a thoroughfare from one street to another, the object of which was to enable witnesses and informers to come without attracting attention. In the building were lodged the senior inquisitor, the gaoler and the subordinate officials, the prison and the torture-chamber being in the rear.[305] Later financial data are missing, but the tribunal probably managed to meet its expenses to the end, with no greater difficulty than those of the Peninsula. From first to last it was not burdened with a punitive prison or _casa de la misericordia_, and its sentences to confinement are always to convents or to the houses of the culprits or to hold the city as a prison. The detentive or secret prison was economically administered, the ration, as we learn in 1577, being only 24 maravedís a day. The visitor, Bravo y Zayas, was assailed with many complaints by the inmates of insufficient food, which they ascribed to the knavery of the officials, but Fúnez explained it by saying that, while in the Canaries there were usually one or two months of scarcity in a year, there had been a famine lasting through 1571, 1572 and 1573, when the price of bread went up to a cuarto of six maravedís for two or three ounces and the people were reduced to eating chestnuts; meat was correspondingly scarce and the supply of fish was very uncertain. Rich and poor suffered alike and, as the prisoners’ allowance was in money, their food was unavoidably diminished.[306] * * * * *