A Morocco Prison. Scenes in a Wretched Pen Where Death is Welcome.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 378, 19 June 1889, Page 6

A Morocco Prison. Scenes in a Wretched Pen Where Death is Welcome.

Ik a sordid vestibule, whose walls are covered with torn matting, the gaoler smokes his pipe filled with kitt", that slightly opiated plant which takes the place of tobacco in these parts. Three women, draped in their haik, are weeping near a giated opening in the prison door, and in the interior darkness a human face is scarcely discernible. As we approach the women stand aside, and a lean arm is passed through the grating and stretched towards us snppliantly, without a word being uttered. I put a silver piece in the hand ; immediately one of the women takes the money and hurries away toward the town, doubtless to buy bread. I look through the grating and distinguish a vast, foul smelling, and sombre room, without air, in which are human forms, crowding and crouching, with the noise of chains and the lamentable and sinister murmur of words uttered in a low voice. The criminals *,in this prison are, perhaps, none but people accused of possessing a few douros which they never even caw, and who are now vvaiting in the horror of this, black hell until the efforts ,of their parents, or the charity of some traveller like myself, 'shall help them, by degrees, to make up the sum of their ransom. In the presence of such miseiy as this one can understand hew the ardent imagination of these nations is exalted by leligion, and how they seek in religion comfort, consolation and hope o£ justice , hereafter which will compensate terrestrial woes by celestial joys arid requite their sufferings in chains and dungeons by the delights of paradise. One can' comprehend these people attaching themselves with fierce faith to their belief in God and in a future life, and being proof against the atheistic scepticism which hovers over the western world. They have need of God more than the citizens of Europe; they want a master and a judge above their earthly judges and masters. I wished to see, also, the man under whose authority these victims groan, and I saw the Pasha. In an Arab portico he is seated on a carpet, cross-legged, motionless, clad in-white woollen. He is fingering the ebony beads ot a chaplet, and in the midst of his prayers he seems to be listening attentively to the story, of a tall soldier, a black-faced Hercules, who is perorating with a profusion of gestures and much, volubility as he points to a poor fellow crouching at his side in a posture of terror that does not even dare to take the form of a prayer for mercy. What can he hope for ? The least possible number of lashes, the least number of days or of months to live in irons, the smallest tale of douros to redeem his life. He does not even try to defend himself against the soldier's charges. In his Oriental iatalism he waits with resignation. — "Harper's Magazine" for April.