in height above the sea. In this tower, which contains six chambers,
one above another, prisoners for life are confined; and thither I was
accordingly conveyed. It is the policy of the Spanish laws, to render
the punishment of criminals subservient to public utility; and this is
in some degree effected even by solitary confinement. The prisoners
confined in these towers are employed in turns, night by night, in
trimming the lamps--which are a beacon to the vessels at sea. From each
chamber, there is a separate ascent to the summit of the tower; so that
the prisoners never see each other, and each in his turn is obliged to
remain from night until day-break upon the summit,--part of his
punishment for the destruction of human life, being thus made
subservient to its preservation.


[3] A town in the straits of Gibraltar, the most southern point of
the continent of Europe.


From these towers there are no visible means of escape: in the chambers,
the windows are merely circular holes in walls at least six feet in
thickness; and the outside walls being entirely smooth, there are no means
of descent from the summit unless by a fearful leap of a hundred and sixty
feet into the sea; for on the side towards the town, a wall of twenty
feet high shuts out the prospect of land; serving at the same time as a
hindrance to any communication, and as an aggravation of punishment, by
shutting out from the eye of the prisoner, the cheerful lights of human
habitations, or perhaps even, it might be, the dim view of human forms. It
only requires to be added to this description, that a ponderous iron chain
stretches from one tower to the other, across the mouth of the port,
depending from fastenings situated about two feet below the summit of each,