At 6.15 breakfast was served.  A number of tin dishes, containing one pound of mealie-meal porridge (ground maize) each were placed in a row on the ground in the yard in the same manner as a dog’s food might be set out.  A bucket near by contained some coarse salt in the condition in which it was collected in the natural salt pans, the cubes varying from the size of peas to the size of acorns.  No sugar, milk, tea, or coffee, was allowed.  In order to utilize the salt the prisoners were obliged to crush it with rough stones on the cement steps.  Needless to say, but few partook of this food.  To those who had not tasted it before in the course of prospecting or up-country travelling where conditions are sometimes very hard, it was no more possible to swallow it than to eat sawdust.

Dinner was at twelve o’clock, and it consisted of coarse meat boiled to that degree which was calculated to qualify the water in which it was boiled to be called soup, without depriving the meat of all title to be considered a separate dish.  With this meal was also served half a pound of bread.  Supper, which was provided at five o’clock, was exactly the same as breakfast.

Two days of this fare told very severely upon those whose physical condition was not of the best.  By the third day several of the older men and those in ill-health had broken down and were placed on hospital fare.  Matters were sufficiently serious to induce the authorities to allow gradual amelioration of the conditions, and by degrees food of a better class was introduced.  Mattresses and other articles of bedding were allowed, but stretchers although provided for in the prison regulations were denied to the men until a few hours before their release a month later, when the prisoners were permitted by the gaoler to purchase them, no doubt with an eye to reversion to him in the course of a few hours.  From time to time the regulations as to food were varied at the whim of the gaoler.  On one day only cooked food would be allowed in; on another only raw food; on a third nothing but tinned stuff; on a fourth all was turned back at the gates with the exception of that obtained by a few individuals at a heavy premium.

A day or two after the passing of sentence representations were made to the prisoners, excluding the four death-sentence men, that it would be advisable to appeal to the clemency of the Government for some mitigation.  In that case, it was stated, there was every reason to believe that the sentence of imprisonment would be entirely remitted and that the sentence of banishment would also be commuted.  The individuals from whom this suggestion first came were of the class which habitually trades between the Government and the public—­the gentlemen of the backstairs.  For this reason some of the prisoners gave considerable credence to the reports, whilst others for the very same reason would have nothing whatever to do with them.  Hence arose a condition of things very like a deadlock among