CONDITION OF THE ISLAND IN 1849.
We first went up to a bluff, about half a mile from the boat-landing, where we spent an hour in exploring the ruins of the fortifications built by the Chilians in 1767. There was nothing left but the foundation and a portion of the ramparts of the principal fort, partly imbedded in banks of clay, and neatly covered with moss and weeds. It was originally strongly built of large stones, which were cast down in every direction by the terrible earthquake of 1835; and now all that remained perfect was the front wall of the main rampart and the groundwork of the fort. Not far from these ruins we found the convict cells, which we explored to some extent.
PLAN OF THE CONVICT CELLS.
These cells are dug into the brow of a hill, facing the harbor, and extend underground to the distance of several hundred feet, in the form of passages and vaults, resembling somewhat the Catacombs of Rome. During the penal settlement established here by the Chilian government, the convicts, numbering sometimes many hundreds, were confined in these gloomy dungeons, where they were subjected to the most barbarous treatment. The gates or doors by which the entrances were secured had all been torn down and destroyed, and the excavations were now occupied by wild goats, bats, toads, and different sorts of vermin. Rank fern hung upon the sides; overhead was dripping with a cold and deathlike sweat, and slimy drops coursed down the weeds, and the air was damp and chilly; thick darkness was within in the depths beyond—darkness that no wandering gleam from the light of day ever reached, for heaven never smiled upon those dreary abodes of sin and sorrow. A few of the inner dungeons, for the worst criminals, were dug still deeper underground, and rough stairways of earth led down into them, which were shut out from the upper vaults by strong doors. The size of these lower dungeons was not more than five or six feet in length by four or five in height, from which some idea may be formed of the sufferings endured by the poor wretches confined in them, shut out from the light of heaven, loaded with heavy irons, crushed down by dank and impenetrable walls of earth, starved and beaten by their cruel guards, with no living soul to pity them in their woe, no hope of release save in death. We saw, by the aid of a torch, deep holes scratched in one of the walls, bearing the impression of human fingers. It might have been that some unhappy murderer, goaded to madness by such cruel tortures of body and terrible anguish of mind as drive men to tear even their own flesh when buried before the vital spark is extinct, had grasped out the earth in his desperation, and left the marks in his death agonies upon the clay that entombed him, to tell what no human heart but his had suffered there, no human ear had heard, no human eye had witnessed. The deep, startling echo breaking upon the heavy air, as we sounded the walls, seemed yet to mingle with his curses, and its last sepulchral throb was like the dying moan of the maniac.
CONVICT CELLS.