The Brownsville Daily Herald

In an entertaining article upon Corea—the country which Russia covets and which Japan must have—Rev. Robert E. Speer has this to say upon the prisons of that half-barbarous land: The gate was wide open and the courtyard was full of prisoners, and the surrounding buildings were old and tottering. I asked the chief, whom one of the two or three listless attendants called for us, why the prisoners did not run away. "Oh," he replied, "they would be caught and beaten again and kept longer. Now they will get out soon." But as I looked at them I saw they did not run because they could not. The life was beaten out of them. The keepers brought the heavy red cord with a brass hook at the end and trussed up a man with it to show how the beating was done, and then brought us the stiff rods with which the victims were pounded over the shins and thighs until the beaten rottenness. There was a room, black, spots were simply masses of festering foul and leprous, in which the men were fastened in the stocks. The Black Hole of Calcutta was scarcely less merciful than this.—Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly.