There Was The Boy, Who Got Up And Stood Before Us!

All this astonished me beyond measure, and I had an attack of palpitation like that which overcame me once before in the presence of the Sultan of India, when he showed me something of the same kind.

They gave me a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The Kazi Afkharuddin was next to me, and quoth he, 'Wallah! 'tis my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down, neither marring nor mending; 'tis all hocus pocus!'"

Now let us compare with this, which Ibn Batuta the Moor says he saw in China about the year 1348, the account which is given us by Edward Melton, an Anglo-Dutch traveller, of the performances of a Chinese gang of conjurors, which he witnessed at Batavia about the year 1670 (I have forgotten to note the year). After describing very vividly the basket- murder trick, which is well known in India, and now also in Europe, and some feats of bamboo balancing similar to those which were recently shown by Japanese performers in England, only more wonderful, he proceeds: "But now I am going to relate a thing which surpasses all belief, and which I should scarcely venture to insert here had it not been witnessed by thousands before my own eyes. One of the same gang took a ball of cord, and grasping one end of the cord in his hand slung the other up into the air with such force that its extremity was beyond reach of our sight. He then immediately climbed up the cord with indescribable swiftness, and got so high that we could no longer see him. I stood full of astonishment, not conceiving what was to come of this; when lo! a leg came tumbling down out of the air. One of the conjuring company instantly snatched it up and threw it into the basket whereof I have formerly spoken. A moment later a hand came down, and immediately on that another leg. And in short all the members of the body came thus successively tumbling from the air and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand and go just as before, without showing the least damage! Never in my life was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful performance, and I doubted now no longer that these misguided men did it by the help of the Devil. For it seems to me totally impossible that such things should be accomplished by natural means." The same performance is spoken of by Valentyn, in a passage also containing curious notices of the basket-murder trick, the mango trick, the sitting in the air (quoted above), and others; but he refers to Melton, and I am not sure whether he had any other authority for it.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 519 of 655
Words from 270942 to 271481 of 342071