Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/517

Rh God! such a place to immure a human being in! It makes one shudder to think of it, after looking at those dark, noisome caverns; what must it be to enter there with the word "perpetua" entered on the books against one's name! Death at once, would be a mercy beside it.

The number of these low, vaulted cells, connecting one with another, is hardly less than sixty to eighty, all told, and the best of them is but a little, less horrible than the worst. The roof is low, and arched in each, the walls, roof and floor of one piece, as it were, and in most of them the only ventilation is through a small opening in the top, so slight as to admit of the entrance of but a mere glimmer of light at midday. A few have small, narrow, port-holes, or slits, through the outer walls looking seaward, but they are so cunningly contrived, being bent or curved as they pass through the thick stone-work, that the poor wretches inside can never see through them and get even a glimpse of a sail or the sea outside.

What fearful tales of hopeless misery, despair, and lingering but welcome death, could those damp, dripping walls tell if they had tongues. The damp sea-air collects in the the roofs of all of them, and falls, year after year, with a steady, unceasing drip, drip, drip, to the paved floor. This water is charged heavily with lime, and stalactites, three and four feet in length, hang from the ceiling, like slender icicles, by thousands. On the cold stone floor the dropping water forms large buttons of fine lime deposits, which give it the appearance at a casual glance, of having been laid in fancy mosaic. Remember that Vera Cruz is worse cursed with yellow fever, or vomito and malarious diseases of all kinds,