I think there must have been about fifty or sixty men in the prison, and for a short time not one of them moved. They were apparently, to judge by the way they looked at us, as much startled as though we had ascended from a trap like goblins in a pantomime, and then half of them, with one accord, came scrambling towards us on their hands and knees. They were half naked, and their hair hung down over their eyes; and this, and their crawling towards us instead of walking, made them look more or less like animals. As they came forward there was a clanking of chains, and I saw that it was because their legs were fettered that they came as they did, and not standing erect like human beings. The guard who followed us in was over two minutes in getting the door fastened behind him, and my mind was more occupied with this fact than with what I saw before me; for it seemed to me that if there was any tearing to pieces to be gone through with, I should hate to have to wait that long while the door was being opened again. This thought, with the shock of seeing thirty wild men moving upon us out of complete darkness on their hands and knees, was the only sensation of any interest that I received while visiting the prison. [Illustration: IN THE PRISON] The inmates looked exactly like the poorer of the Moors outside, except that their hair was longer and their clothing was not so white. There was one man, however, quite as well dressed as any of the Sultan's counsellors, and he seemed to be the only one who objected to our presence. The rest did nothing except to gratify their curiosity by staring at us; they did not even hold out their hands for money. They were very dirty and poorly clothed, and their long imprisonment had made them haggard and pale, and the iron bars around their legs gave them a certain interest. The atmosphere of the place was horribly foul, but not worse than the atmosphere of either the men's or women's ward at night in a precinct station-house in New York city. Indeed, I was not so much impressed with the horrors of the Sultan's prison as with the fact that our own are so little better, considering our advanced civilization. I do not mean our large prisons, but the cells and the vagrants' rooms in the police stations. There the vagrant is given a sloping board and no ventilation. In Tangier he is given straw and an opening in the roof. To be fair, you must compare a prisoner's condition in jail with that which he is accustomed to in his own home, and the homes of the Moors of the lower class are as much like stables as their stables are like pigsties. The poor of Tangier are allowed, through the kindness of the Sultan, to sleep on the bare stones around the entrance to one of the mosques. For the poor sick there has been built a portico, about as large as a Fifth Avenue omnibus, opposite this same mosque. This is called the hospital of Tangier. It is considered quite good enough for sick people and for those who have no homes.