FURLONG DESCRIBES HORRORS OF FRENCH PENAL COLONIES

"A dry guillotine, where men are sent to a known death and soon lose at hope" such is the penal colony of Cayenne, according to Colonel C. W. Furlong, speaking at the Union last night on "The Wild River Lands of the Guianas."

"Few men ever make their way back to civilization after living under such horrible conditions. Even if a few do not succumb before the end of their term to the many tropical fevers that infest the colony, when released, they are obliged to pass under parole a corresponding number of years. Thus, in whatever way, the primary object of the colony is accomplished: that no convict should come back alive to tell the tale."

Colonel Furlong then described in striking words the horrible conditions under which the convicts have to labor. "But the most terrible part of it all is the condition of the men after a few years there--their wasted and diseased bodies and their pathetic faces, from which hope has long disappeared. Ev-everything about them is expressive of gloom and tragedy, from the sharks that gather about the island when the death of a convict is announced by the tolling of the bell, to the dead convicts found outside the dormitories after the night brawls, in which the guards don't dare to interfere. I was quite glad", concluded Colonel Furlong, "when I finally left this gloomy place."