had been hanged, he was released, but his health was shattered, and he died a few years later. The food given by Government to the prisoners is bread, two nans (flat loaves weighing about half a pound each) being given daily, one in the morning and one at night. This is far from sufficient, and if a prisoner has no friends or relations to send him either food or money, he is in a bad way. Towards each other, however, the prisoners, and all the poor people generally, are very good, and a man who has food to eat, however little, will offer some of it to another who has none. Prisoners have leg-irons fastened round their ankles to hamper their movements and render any attempt at escape more difficult, but the hands, except in case of a man being taken to execution or as a special punishment, are free. In all cases prisoners are treated by their guards with great severity, and the prisoner who does not do at once as he is ordered, gets the butt-end of a rifle in the small of his back as a reminder. From what I have seen I should imagine that a street dog’s life is a happy one compared to theirs. Of all the prisons, the worst and most dreaded is the old well in Bala Hisar. This is an old well which has been excavated through rock, with the bottom part widened out to some fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, and having over the mouth of the well a hut, in which a guard of sepoys is kept. In this underground hole men are imprisoned for life for very heinous offences (in the eyes of the authorities), and live and die there, the bodies of the dead being left where they lie together with the living. There are no sanitary arrangements of course, for none but prisoners are lowered down, and those who are put down stop there. Food (bread and water) is lowered by a rope once a day to those below, but there are few whose minds or health do not give way in a short time, and most of the men imprisoned very soon end their days by dashing themselves against the rock, until they become unconscious and die, for the solitude and horror of it all drives them mad. The bottom of the well is dark, and the only light which penetrates is from the mouth above, and no sound from the outer world can reach those imprisoned there, while the stench and foulness of the atmosphere is horrible, and is itself sufficient to cause death. There is a man, however, who is said to have been there for fifteen years or more, but he is quite mad, and unconscious of his surroundings. When the Amir died, the present ruler gave orders that those in the well should be taken out, and brought before him. There were three who were alive, and their appearance was not prepossessing, for their faces had a dead, white look, and their eyes seemed to be blind in the daylight, while their hair and beards were long and matted, and the hair falling over their faces gave them a wild, animal look, which their finger-nails increased, for they were long and more like talons. The Amir