talk her out, for th’ auld man’ll be on the scent.”  At this, one of the confined stewards, a tall, good-looking mulatto man, ran his hand into a large opening in the wall, and drew forth a little soda-bottle filled with Monongahela whisky.  Without giving reasonable time for politeness, Daley seized the bottle, and putting it to his mouth, gauged about half its contents into his homony dep“t, smacked his lips, wiped his mouth with his cuff, and, passing the balance back, shut and rebolted the door, after saying, “Good luck till yees, an’ I wish yees a merry time.”  The reader may imagine what provision the State or the sheriff had made for the comfort of these poor men, one of whom was imprisoned because it was “contrary to law” to be driven into the port of Charleston in distress, and the rest, peaceable, unoffending citizens belonging to distant States and countries, and guilty of no crime, when we describe the room and regimen to which they were subjected.  The room was about twenty-six feet long and ten feet wide.  The brick walls were plastered and colored with some kind of blue wash, which, however, was so nearly obliterated with dirt and the damp of a southern climate, as to leave but little to show what its original color was.  The walls were covered with the condensed moisture of the atmosphere, spiders hung their festooned network overhead, and cockroaches and ants, those domesticated pests of South Carolina, were running about the floor in swarms, and holding all legal rights to rations in superlative contempt.  Two small apertures in the wall, about fourteen inches square, and double-barred with heavy flat iron, served to admit light and air.  The reader may thus judge of its gloomy appearance, and what a miserable unhealthy cell it must have been in which to place men just arrived from sea.  There was not the first vestige of furniture in the room, not; even a bench to sit upon, for the State, with its gracious hospitality, forgot that men in jail ever sit down; but it was in keeping with all other things that the State left to the control of its officials.

“Am I to be punished in this miserable place?  Why, I cannot see where I’m going; and have I nothing to lay down upon but the floor, and that creeping with live creatures?” inquired Manuel of those who were already inured to the hardship.

“Nothing! nothing!  Bring your mind to realize the worst, and forget the cruelty while you are suffering it; they let us out a part of the day.  We are locked up to-day because one of the assistants stole my friend’s liquor, and he dared to accuse him of the theft, because he was a white man,” said a tall, fine-looking mulatto man by the name of James Redman, who was steward on board a Thomastown (Maine) ship, and declared that he had visited Charleston on a former occasion, and by paying five dollars to one of the officers, remained on board of the ship unmolested.

“And how long shall I have to suffer in this manner?” inquired Manuel.  “Can I not have my own bed and clothing?”