They were made to work diligently all day, but in perfect silence, no recognition by word, look, or gesture, being allowed among them. The adoption of this system, in 1823, rendered the prison accommodation insufficient, and a new establishment was authorised in 1824. Mount Pleasant, near Sing Sing, was purchased, and in May, 1826, Captain Lynds, a farm agent of the Auburn prison, proceeded with one hundred felons from that, establishment to erect the new penitentiary. They quarried and wrought diligently among the marble rocks at Mount Pleasant, and the prison for

THE HUDSON.

men was completed in 1829, wlien the convicts in the old State prison in the city of New York were removed to it. It had eight hundred cells, but these were found to be too few, and in 1831 another story was added to the building, and with it two hundred more cells, making one thousand in all, the present number. More are needed, for the number of convicts in the men's prison, at the beginning of 1861, was a little more than thirteen hundred. In the prison for women there were only

ATE l>iiISO> AT &IN& SI^&.

one hundred cells, while the number of convicts was one hundred and fifty at that time.

The ground occupied by the prisons is about ten feet above high-water mark. The main building, in which are the cells, is four hundred and eighty feet in length, forty-four feet in width, and five stories in height. Between the outside walls and the cells there is a space of about twelve feet, open from floor to roof. A part of it is occupied by a series of