The external aspect of Ceuta is not unpleasing. It is built on seven hills, the highest of which is topped by the fortress, and in the word "septem" we may trace the name Ceuta. It still possesses a few Moorish remains, for it was once an important Moorish city. Some of the streets show a tesselated pavement of red, white and green tiles, and house fronts are to be seen in white, black and serpentine marble with decorated scroll work running in a pattern below the gutter. It has some claims to be picturesque and possesses certain artistic architectural features. An imposing barrack, that called Del Valle, built by prison labour, is considered one of the finest Spanish military edifices. It has also a cathedral dedicated to Our Lady of Africa, engineering and artillery yards, a military hospital, another church, public offices, and above all a palace of the governor and general commanding. The latter in particular, with its extensive grounds, handsome façade, and suites of fine rooms, the whole well mounted and served by a large staff of convict attendants, is the envy of all other government officials. One wide street traverses the city from west to east crossed by a network of smaller ways, all airy and well ventilated by sea breezes and constantly illuminated by a brilliant sun. From time to time convicts in their distinctive dress pass along, but scarcely cast a shadow upon the scene, showing few signs of their thraldom and passing along with light-hearted freedom, smoking excellent tobacco or singing a gay song. No beggars offend the eye, for to solicit public charity is strictly forbidden. Generally a contented well-to-do air is worn by the crowd, and even the convicts are decently dressed. Other inhabitants, Moors from the mainland, and Jews long established in commerce seem prosperous and evidently possess ample means gained by their industry and thrift.
The presidio or prison proper of Ceuta covers a large part of the peninsula or promontory and embraces four distinct districts; the first is situated in the new or modern town; the second lies just outside it; the third is within the old town and the fourth is beyond the outer line of walls. The first part is connected with the third by a drawbridge called boquete de la sardina or the "sardine's entrance"; the second with the third by a portcullis; the third with the fourth and last by the outer gate of the city.
In the first are the artisans' quarters, situated in the cloisters of an ancient monastery, that of San Francisco, and but for the patching and whitewashing would look quite ruinous. It is neither secure nor of sufficient size. The night guards are posted in the old mortuary house, the bars to many windows are of wood. The building contains offices, schoolhouse, store for clothing and the workshops, these being in a sort of patio or courtyard, or in hollow spaces in the cloisters, and are simply dens and rookeries, in part exactly over the old burial ground. The handicrafts pursued when I visited it were various: men were making shoes; fourteen tailors were at work; a blacksmith with a life sentence constantly hammered out the red hot iron; a tinsmith produced many useful articles; a turner at his lathe worked admirably in the old meat bones and fashioned handles for walking sticks and umbrellas. This turner earned much money and was comfortably lodged. Convicts at Ceuta are not deprived of their profits and spend their money buying better food, superior clothing and aguardiente and using it to bribe their overseers, or they cleverly conceal it, adding constantly to their store. Industry is a chief source of wealth, but many political prisoners bring large sums in with them, or it is smuggled in to them, and a successful hit with the "buried treasure fraud" will supply plenty of cash.
Other industries followed are carpentering and the construction of trunks and boxes which sell well. A number of looms are engaged in weaving canvas for the manufacture of sails for the local shipping, rough material for sacking and clothing of the convicts, all in large quantities and to a really valuable extent. These workshops are filled by the prisoners in the first stage of their detention. The water-carriers and clerks in the government office are in the second period, and on reaching the third the convicts obtain the privilege of going at large to accept employment in the town "from gun to gun."
The prison hospital is situated in this first district, an ancient edifice erected with part of the funds subscribed in times past to purchase freedom for Christian captives enslaved by the Barbary Moors. The building is of good size, well ventilated, and enjoys good hygienic conditions. But the defects and shortcomings in Spanish administration extend even to Ceuta and the prison hospital, which a local authority says "is detestably organised and mounted miserably." The roof is so slight that it affords no proper protection in summer and the intense heat of the blazing sun striking through is very injurious to the patients. The medical resources are small and inferior; the beds few and unclean; the whole of the interior arrangements, furniture fittings and appliances, insufficient and worn out. There is no mortuary and to add a small detail in proof of the imperfections, autopsies were performed in a small den, part of the hospital proper, without disinfectants and the essential appliances for carrying out post mortems. Patients seldom made a long stay in the hospital, for they were rarely admitted until they had reached the last stages of an illness and came in as a rule only to die.
The second district contains the principal quarters for convicts. One is in the chief barrack called cuartel principal and another in the fortress el Hacho.[17] Some further evidence of their evil condition may be extracted from an account given by Salillas. "It is impossible to conceive," he writes, "a more unsuitable, unsavoury place for a prison. The rooms and dormitories occupied by the convicts are dark and gloomy, always damp, full of pestilential odours and dirty beyond description. The floors are of beaten earth, ever secure hiding places for all forbidden articles, weapons, tools for compassing escape, jars of drink, the fiery and poisonous aguardiente. It seems to me extraordinary," he goes on to say, "that life under such conditions is possible. A thousand and odd men who seldom if ever wash, who never change their clothes, are crowded together promiscuously in small, unclean, ill-ventilated, noisome dens and must surely engender and propagate loathsome epidemic disease." The fetid air is foul with the noisome exhalations of many generations of pestiferous people. It is one sink of concentrated malaria—a reeking hot bed of infection. The services of supply are carried out with abominable carelessness: the kitchen is an abode of nastiness: the cooking is performed by repulsive looking convicts in greasy rags who plunge their dirty arms deep into the seething mess of soup which they bail out into buckets, a malodorous compound of the colour and consistency of the mortar used in building a wall.
Close by is another quarter in which convicts are lodged, el Hacho, or the hilly ground or topmost point of Ceuta on which is placed the citadel which crowns the fortifications. It takes the overflow from the principal barrack and is moreover generally occupied by the worst characters, the most insubordinate and incorrigible members of the prison population. The rooms, as in the barrack below, are dirty, overcrowded and insecure, but a few windows of the upper story open on to the Mediterranean and are not always protected by either wooden or iron bars. El Hacho contains within its limits a certain number of solitary cells, well known and much dreaded by the habitual criminals of Spain. They are essentially punishment cells used in the coercion of the incorrigible and are just as dark, damp and wretched as the larger rooms. But the solitary inmate in each cell is generally kept chained to the wall or is as it is styled amarrado en blanca, nearly naked and heavily ironed. The treatment is exemplary in its cruelty, but does not necessarily cure the subject. There was one irreclaimable upon whom several years of the calabozo had had no effect. He had been sentenced to be thus chained up as the penalty for murderously wounding an overseer in el Hacho, but he did not mend his manners. On one occasion on the arrival of a new governor all under punishment were pardoned. This convict when sent out forthwith furiously attacked the first warder he met and was again condemned to be locked up as a ceaseless danger to the presidio. He is remembered as little more than a youth, but with a diabolical countenance and indomitable air.
The district of the Barcas does not contain a barrack properly speaking, but there is a space cut in the thickness of the line wall entering a patio or courtyard which gives upon seven rooms, some high, some low; of these three and part of the yard were filled with munitions of war, and a battery of artillery was placed over the dormitories on their upper floor. Many of the convicts are employed as boatmen and watchmen in the port, others have charge of the walls and carry water up to the guardhouses on the higher level. They also attend to the service of the drawbridge between the old and new town. One who was employed as gatekeeper at the drawbridge was well remembered. He was trusted to call on all convicts who passed to produce their permits of free circulation or to enter and leave the fortress. He had a pleasant rubicund face, was one armed, a little deaf, but with very sharp eyes, not easily hoodwinked. He was a confirmed gossip who picked up all the news which he retailed to all who passed in and out. Escapes were of constant occurrence at Ceuta, but few occurred by the drawbridge of the Barcas.
Half way up the road from the town to the citadel and the fort of the Seraglio was the Jadu barrack which was occupied by the convicts who were engaged in agricultural work, in making tiles and burning charcoal. Many of these were foreigners and negroes. The bulk of the residents was made up of those who had completed three fourths of their sentences and lived "under conditions," or in a state of conditional or semi-freedom. There was little wrong-doing in Jadu, thefts were rare, fights and quarrels seldom took place. The Seraglio was a fortified barrack of rectangular shape occupied by troops of the garrison and lodging an odd hundred convicts labouring on adjacent farms in private hands.
It will be observed that the convicts established in these last-named quarters beyond the walls do not appear to exhibit all the unpleasant features attributed to them by some writers in recording their experiences of Ceuta.[18] No doubt the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes but it is certain that the chief penal colony of Spain shares to a marked extent the drawbacks inseparable from all forms of penal colonisation. We may see, beyond all question, that at Ceuta no beneficial results are achieved by the system. Criminals who undergo the penalty are not improved by it; their reformation, too generally a will-o'-the-wisp under the very best auspices, is not even attempted, much less assured. On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that evil is perpetually in the ascendent, that criminal tendencies are largely encouraged by the facilities given in the education and practice of wrong doing; that the presidio itself is a criminal centre where the seeds of crime are sown and their growth fostered despite the difficulties of distance and inconvenience. The fear of penal exile is no deterrent to crime for the simple reason that life in Ceuta is not particularly irksome and that the convict finds many compensations there. The obligation to hard labour is not strictly enforced. Man must work, but not hard and chiefly for his own advantage, to gain the means of softening and bettering his lot. He passes his time very much as he pleases. Though he rises with the sun, as is the universal custom of his country, he turns out of bed without giving a thought to personal cleanliness and proceeds to his appointed labour leisurely, after disposing of his breakfast, adding perhaps more toothsome articles of food, including a morning drink of aguardiente bought from the hawkers and hucksters awaiting him at the prison gates. He is dressed in prison uniform, but it is sufficient and suitably varied with the season. He is not hampered by fetters, as the ancient practice of chaining convicts together in couplets has long since ceased. The wearing of irons fell into disuse years ago at the building of the great barrack del Valle, when several deplorable accidents occurred and it was found that chains interfered with the free movement of workmen on scaffolding and so forth. The idea was that irons should again be imposed at the conclusion of the building; "but all who thought so did not know Spanish ways, nor the despotism of custom when once established."[19] "To-day (1873)," says same writer, "there are not fifty suits of chains in the storehouse and not more than twenty are worn by special penalty and