The duties of the principal officers are defined by law, and are such as the good government and welfare of the institution require.
"In this prison the convicts are compelled to labor in silence ; no conversation by word, look or gesture being allowed between or amongst them. If any information is needed by the prisoner in regard to his business, he modestly applies to and obtains it of his keeper, one of whom is always near him in each department of labor.
" The utmost harmony of movement in the various businesses conducted, and the most perfect order reigns. The whole internal machinery of the prison, with its more than eight hundred hardy convict laborers, resembles more the quiet industry and subordination to authority of a well regulated family, than an institution for the punishment of hardened odenders.
*' The hours of labor are not more than laboring men out of prison generally labor. The food afi'orded is ample. The ration
508 HISTORY OF THE
for each dny consists of either sixteen ounces of good prime beef, or twelve ounces of prime pork, eight ounces of rye flour, twelve ounces of sifted Indian meal and half a gill of molasses per man ; and three bushels of potatoes, or forty pounds of rice, four quarts of rye in the grain for coffee, two quarts of vinegar, and two ounces of pepper to every hundred rations. This is all weighed or measured out each day by the superintendent of the kitchen. The bread is well baked, and the provisions well cooked by some of the convicts employed for that purpose. Their provisions are put in small wooden vessels called kids, which are placed on racks, one of which each prisoner takes as he retires from labor to his cell, in which he is locked, and where silently he eats his repast.