of blue overalls and caps shaped like a low fez. Inside, a "preso de
confianza" serving as turnkey led the way along a great stone corridor
to a little central patio with flowers and a central fountain babbling
merrily. From this radiated fifteen other long-vaulted passages,
seeming each fully a half mile in length; for with Latin love of the
theatrical the farther ends had been painted to resemble an endless
array of cells, even the numbers being continued above the false doors
to minute infinity. Besides these imaginary ones there were some forty
real places of confinement on each side of each corridor,
three-cornered, stone rooms with a comfortable cot and noticeable
cleanliness. The hundred or more convicts, wandering about or sitting in
the sun of the patio, were only locked in them by night. Whenever we
entered a corridor or a room, two strokes were sounded on a bell and all
arose and stood at attention until we had passed. Yet the discipline was
not oppressive, petty matters being disregarded. The corridor of those
condemned to be shot was closed with an iron-barred gate, but the
inmates obeyed with alacrity when my guide ordered them to step forth to
be photographed.

One of the passageways led to the _talleres_ or workshops, also
long and vaulted and well-lighted by windows high up in the curve of the
arched roof.

These showed the stone walls to be at least four feet thick, yet the
floor was of earth. On it along the walls sat men weaving straw ribbons
to be sewn into hats on the American sewing-machines beyond. In side
rooms were blacksmith, carpenter, and tinsmith shops in which all work
was done by hand, the absence of machinery suggesting to the trusty in
charge that Mexico is "muy pobre" as compared with other lands. Convicts
were obliged to work seven hours a day. Scattered through the building