While the prisons of Cuba are not strictly within the scope of this work, one of historic and particular interest may be mentioned. This is Morro Castle, which still guards the Harbour of Havana. It was begun in 1589, soon after the unsuccessful attack on Havana by Drake, and was finished in 1597. In 1862 it was partly destroyed by the English who captured it and remained in possession of the city for a year. The arms of the city, granted by royal decree, were appropriately three castles of silver on a blue field, and a golden key. The castles were La Fuerza, El Morro and La Punta, guarding the harbour.
The ancient fortress has been described as a "great mass of dun coloured rock and tower and battlement and steep, of which the various parts seem to have grown into one another." It contains cells as damp, dark and unwholesome as those in the notorious dungeons of the old world. This is testified to by a California journalist, Charles Michelson, who was arrested by mistake and thrown into a cell in the castle just before the Spanish-American War. Although he was liberated in two days, his experience was not soon forgotten. The cell was an arch of heavy masonry, damp with the moisture of years. The only window was high up in the arch, and there was no furniture—no bed, blanket or chair. He was not without company of a kind, however, for the place was full of cockroaches and rats. When he clambered up and tried to look out of the window, which commands a fine view of the harbour, a guard outside poked at him with a bayonet. The soup brought him was, he said, "strong and scummy, and the can had been so recently emptied of its original contents that there was a film of oil over the top of it." His interpreter, who was arrested at the same time, fared worse, for he was bound and kept in even a fouler cell.
In the days of Spanish sovereignty, many Cuban prisoners were shot and their bodies were hurled from the outer wall of the castle to the sharks of the so-called "shark's nest," forty feet below, on the gulf side.
There are said to be many caverns in the castle through which the rush and noise of the waves make music, but this is probably due to the winds rather than the tides.
Spain maintains several presidios beyond sea, chiefly on the North African coast, and there is one also at Palma de Mallorca, one of the Balearic islands. Those in Africa are Alhucemas, Melilla, Peñon de Velez de la Gomera, Chaferinas and Ceuta, immediately opposite Gibraltar, which is no doubt the first and original of all Spanish presidios. The expression when first used was taken to convey the meaning of a penal settlement, established within a fortress under military rule and guardianship, with its personnel constantly employed on the fortifications, constructing, repairing and making good wear and tear, and answering, if need be, the call to arms in reinforcement of the regular garrison. The early records of Ceuta prove this. This stronghold, on one side rising out of the sea, with its landward defences ever confronting a fierce hostile power, was exposed at all times to siege and incursion. When the Moorish warriors became too bold the Spanish general sallied forth to beat up their quarters, destroy their batteries and drive them back into the mountains. Working parties of presidiarios, armed, accompanied the troops and did excellent service, eager, as the old chronicler puts it, to clear their characters by their heroism, "always supposing that blood may wash out crime."
Ceuta was a type of the military colony beyond sea, held by a strong garrison against warlike natives who resisted the invasion and would have driven out the intruders. The settlement was secured by continual fortification in which the abundant penal labour was constantly employed. Its social conditions were precisely similar to those which obtained in the early days of Australian transportation and such as prevail to-day in the French penal colony of New Caledonia. The population is made up of two principal classes, bond and free. The first are convicts serving their sentences and the second the officials who guard them. Ordinary colonists have not settled to any large extent in these North African possessions. A few traders and agriculturists have come seeking such fortune as offers and the number of residents is increased by released convicts, the counterpart of the emancipist class in the Antipodes, who remain with the prospect of earning a livelihood honestly, instead of lapsing into evil courses on their return to the mother country.
Ceuta is essentially a convict city, not exactly founded by penal labour but enlarged and improved by it and served by it in all the needs of daily domestic life. The first period of close confinement on arrival is comparatively brief and is spent in the prison proper outside the city at hard labour in association on the fortifications, in the workshops and quarries. In the second period the convicts are permitted to enter the city and are employed under supervision in warehouses, offices and in water carrying. In the third period, commonly called from "gun to gun," extending daily from the morning gun fire until the evening, the convicts are allowed to go freely into the city and work there on their own account. The fourth and last, entered when two thirds of the whole sentence has been completed, is called "under conditions," that is to say, in conditional freedom, and the convicts are let out to private employers precisely as they were "assigned" in old Australian days. They may live with their masters, sleep out, and are only obliged to report at the prison once a month for muster. More than a third of the total number are thus employed.
The result is that Ceuta offers the singular spectacle that it is nominally a prison, but the bulk of the prisoners live beyond the walls, quite unguarded and really in the streets forming part of the ordinary population. Convicts are to be met with at every corner, they go in and out through the front doors of houses, no one looks at them in surprise, no one draws aside to let them pass. The situation is described graphically by Salillas. "Who is the coachman on the box? A convict. Who is the man who waits at table? A convict. The cook in the kitchen? A convict. The nursemaid in charge of the children? A convict (male). Are their employers afraid of being robbed or murdered? Not in the least."
Another eye witness[11] writes:—