ns twenty night camp couches, called bancs (benches,) on
which lie six hundred fettered convicts, in long rows, with
red garbs, heads shorn, eyes haggard, dejected countenances,
whilst the perpetual clank of fetters conspires to fill the
soul with horror. But this impression on the convict soon
passes away, who, feeling that he has here no reason to blush
at the presence of any one, soon identifies himself with his
situation. That he may not be the butt of the gross jests and
filthy buffoonery of his fellows, he affects to participate in
them; and soon, in tone and gesture, this conventional
depravity gets hold of his heart. Thus, at Anvers, an ex-bishop
experienced, at first, all the outpourings of the riotous jests
of his companions; they always addressed him as _monseigneur_,
and asked his blessing in their obscenities; at every moment
they constrained him to profane his former character by
blasphemous words, and, by dint of reiterating these impieties,
he contrived to shake off their attacks. At a subsequent
period, he became the public-house keeper at the Bagne, and was
always styled _monseigneur,_ but he was no longer asked for
absolution, for he would have answered with the grossest
blasphemies."

To complete the picture, we shall now transcribe Vaux's account of his
being on board a prison-ship, with what he witnessed there.--

"I had now a new scene of misery to contemplate; and, of all
the shocking scenes I had ever beheld, this was the most
distressing. There were confined in this floating dungeon,
nearly six hundred men, most of them double ironed; and the
reader may conceive the horrible effects arising from the
continual rattling of chains, the filth and vermin naturally
produced by such a crowd of miserable inhabitants, the oaths
and execrations constantly heard amongst them; and above all,
from the shocking necessity of associating and communicating
more or less with so depraved a set of beings. On arriving on
board, we were all immediately stripped, and washed in large
tubs of water; then, after putting on each a suit of coarse
slop-clothing, we were ironed and sent below; our own clothes
being taken from us, and detained, till we could sell, or
otherwise dispose of them, as no person is exempted from the
obligation to wear