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292 of the difficulties in the way of prison reform. He said nothing, but shook his head doubtfully, as if he thought that my experience would not be complete until I had examined the prison at Algachí. We presently stopped in front of a high log stockade, and, alighting from our vehicle, were received by a sentry with presented arms and then admitted by the officer of the day to a spacious courtyard, in the middle of which stood the prison. It was a long, low, quadrangular building of squared logs, with a plain board roof, a small porch and a door at one end, and a long row of heavily grated windows. It seemed to me at first sight to be falling down. The wall on the side next to us had sunk into the ground until it was apparently two feet or more out of plumb, and, so far as I could see, nothing prevented it from giving way altogether except a row of logs braced against it nearly at a right angle on the side towards which it leaned. All of the walls, at some remote time in the past, had been covered with plaster or stucco and then whitewashed; but this superficial coating had fallen off here and there in patches, giving to the building a most dilapidated appearance. It was, manifestly, a very old prison; but exactly how old, Lieutenant-colonel Saltstein could not tell me. For aught that he knew to the contrary it might have been standing since the opening of the mine in 1817. We entered the door at one end of the building and found ourselves in a long, dark, foul-smelling corridor, which was lighted only at the ends, and which divided the prison longitudinally into halves. Immediately to the left of the door as we entered was the pharmacy, and next to it a large square kámera used as a hospital or lazaret. In the latter were eight or ten low beds, upon which, under dirty, and in some cases bloody, sheets, were lying eight or ten sick or wounded convicts, whose faces were whiter, more emaciated, and more ghastly than any I had yet seen. Two or three of them, the warden said, had just been torn and shattered by a premature explosion of dynamite in the mine. The atmosphere of the lazaret, polluted by