se caged wretches caught a glimpse of us they rushed to the door,
and on bended knees, or with hands uplifted, or with pinched cheeks
pressed against the bars, raised a clamour of entreaty. We drew back as
the rancid plague-current smote our faces, and questioned Mahomet by our
looks as to what all this meant.

"They want food," he explained.

These prisoners are allowed two loaves a day out of the revenues of the
Mosques; but two loaves, even if scrupulously given, which I doubt, are
but irritating pittance. They may make cushions or baskets, but their
remuneration is uncertain and slender. Those who are lucky get
sustenance from relatives in the town, but the majority are
half-starving, and are dependent for a full meal on the bounty of chance
visitors. We poked a loaf through the bars. It was ravenously snapped
at, torn into little bits, and devoured amid the howls of those who were
disappointed. Then a loaf was cast over the door. What a savage
scramble! The bread was caught, tossed in the air, jumped at, and
finally the emaciated rivals fell upon one another as in a football
scrimmage, and there was a moving huddle of limbs and a diabolical
chorus of shrieks and yells. That could not be done again; it was too
painful in result Mahomet undertook to distribute the remainder of our
stock through an inlet in the wall, and we drew away sick in head and
heart from that den of repulsive degradation, greed, brutality, cruelty,
selfishness, and all infuriate and debased passion--that damnable
magazine of disease physical and moral. It is undeniable that there were
many there whose faces were passport to the Court of Lucifer--murderers,
and dire malefactors; but better to have decapitated them than to have
committed them to the slow torture of this citadel of woe. There were
inmates who had been immured for years--inmates for debt whose hair had
whitened in the fetid imprisonment, whose laugh had in it a harsh
hollow-sounding jangle, and whose brows had fixed themselves into the
puckers of a sullen, hopeless, apathetic submission to fate. Their lack
of intelligence was a blessing. Had they been more sensitive they would
have been goaded into raging lunacy.

Let us to the outer freshness and make bold endeavour to fling off this
weight of nightmare which oppresses us. Passing by the ruinous gate
yonder with its wild-looking sentry, we reach the open space where
crouching hill-men are reposing on the stunted grass, and ungai