lined on both sides by
plain brick warehouses and tobacco factories, four and five stories high,
which were now used by the Rebel Government as prisons and military
storehouses.

The first we passed was Castle Thunder, of bloody repute. This occupied
the same place in Confederate history, that, the dungeons beneath the
level of the water did in the annals of the Venetian Council of Ten.
It was believed that if the bricks in its somber, dirt-grimed walls could
speak, each could tell a separate story of a life deemed dangerous to the
State that had gone down in night, at the behest of the ruthless
Confederate authorities. It was confidently asserted that among the
commoner occurrences within its confines was the stationing of a doomed
prisoner against a certain bit of blood-stained, bullet-chipped wall,
and relieving the Confederacy of all farther fear of him by the rifles of
a firing party. How well this dark reputation was deserved, no one but
those inside the inner circle of the Davis Government can say. It is
safe to believe that more tragedies were enacted there than the archives
of the Rebel civil or military judicature give any account of. The
prison was employed for the detention of spies, and those charged with
the convenient allegation of "treason against the Confederate States of
America." It is probable that many of these were sent out of the world
with as little respect for the formalities of law as was exhibited with
regard to the 'suspects' during the French Revolution.

Next we came to Castle Lightning, and here I bade adieu to my Tennessee
companions.

A few squares more and we arrived at a warehouse larger than any of the
others. Over the door was a sign

THOMAS LIBBY & SON,
SHIP CHANDLERS AND GROCERS.

This was the notorious "Libby Prison," whose name was painfully familiar
to every Union man in the land. Under the sign was a broad entrance way,
large enough to admit a dray or a small wagon. On one side of this was
the prison office, in which were a number of dapper, feeble-faced clerks
at work on the prison records.

As I entered this space a squad of newly arrived prisoners were being
searched for valuables, and having their names, rank and regiment
recorded in the books. Presently a clerk addressed as "Majah Tunnah,"
the man who was superintending these operations, and I scanned him with
increased interest, as I knew then that he was the ill-fame