s are riveted to the
chain, it has been impossible to remove them, so when two fell sick by
the way the drivers cut off their heads to effect the release of their
bodies, and to prove, by presenting those ghastly trophies at their
journey's end, that none had escaped.

Many of the prisoners are busy about the floor, where they squat in
groups, plaiting baskets and satchels of palmetto leaves, while many
appear too weak and disheartened even to earn a subsistence in this
way. One poor fellow, who has been a courier, was employed one day
twenty-five years since to carry a despatch to Court, complaining of
the misdeeds of a governor. That official himself intercepted the
letter, and promptly despatched the bearer to Tangier as a Sultan's
prisoner. He then arrested the writer of the letter, who, on paying
a heavy fine, regained his liberty, but the courier remained unasked
for. In course of time the kaid was called to his account, and his
son, who succeeded him in office, having died too, a stranger ruled in
their stead. The forgotten courier had by this time lost his reason,
fancying himself once more in his goat-hair tent on the southern
plains, and with unconscious irony he still gives every new arrival
the Arab greeting, "Welcome to thee, a thousand welcomes! Make thyself
at home and comfortable. All before thee is thine, and what thou seest
not, be sure we don't possess."

Some few, in better garments, hold themselves aloof from the others,
and converse together with all the nonchalance of gossip in the
streets, for they are well-to-do, arrested on some trivial charge
which a few dollars apiece will soon dispose of, but they are
exceptions. A quieter group occupies one corner, members of a party
of no less than sixty-two brought in together from Fez, on claims
made against them by a European Power. A sympathetic inquiry soon
elicits their histories.[19] The first man to speak is hoary and
bent with years; he was arrested several years ago, on the death of
a brother who had owed some $50 to a European. The second had
borrowed $900 in exchange for a bond for twice that amount; he had
paid off half of this, and having been unable to do more, had been
arrested eighteen months before. The third had similarly received
$80 for a promise to pay $160; he had been in prison five years and
three months. Another had borrowed $100, and knew not the sum which
stood yet against him. Another had been in prison five years for a
debt