for their inveterate
hatred of the Americans, as we shall see in the course of this
narrative.

As to the inside of the prison at Melville Island, if the American
reader expects to hear it represented as a place resembling the large
prisons for criminals in the United States, such as those at Boston,
Charlestown, New York, or Philadelphia, he will be sadly disappointed.
Some of these prisons are as clean and nearly as comfortable, as some
of the monasteries and convents in Europe. Our new prisons in the
United States reflect great honor on the nation. They speak loudly
that we are a considerate and humane people; whereas the prison at
Halifax, erected solely for the safe keeping of prisoners of war,
resembles an horse stable, with stalls or stanchions, for separating
the cattle from each other. It is to a contrivance of this sort that
they attach the cords that support those canvass bags, or cradles,
called hammocks. Four tier of these hanging-nests were made to swing
one above another, between these stalls or stanchions. To those unused
to these lofty sleeping-births, they were rather unpleasant situations
for repose. But use makes every thing easy.

The first time I was shut up for the night, in this prison, it
distressed me too much to close my eyes. Its closeness and smell were,
in a degree, disagreeable, but this was trifling to what I experienced
afterwards, in another place. The general hum and confused noise from
almost every hammock, was at first, very distressing. Some would be
lamenting their hard fate at being shut up like negro slaves in a
Guinea ship, or like fowls in a hen coop, for no crime, but for
fighting the battles of their country. Some were cursing and
execrating their oppressors; others, late at night, were relating
their adventures to a new prisoner; others lamenting their aberrations
from rectitude, and disobedience of parents, and head strong
wilfulness, that drove them to sea, contrary to their parents' wish,
while others of the younger class, were sobbing out their lamentations
at the thoughts of what their mothers and sisters suffered, after
knowing of their imprisonment. Not unfrequently the whole night was
spent in this way, and when, about day break, the weary prisoner fell
into a dose, he was waked from his slumber by the grinding noise of
the locks, and the unbarring of the doors, with the cry of "_turn
out--all out_," when each man took down his hammock and lashed it up,
and slung