A Woman's Journey Round The World, From Vienna To Brazil, Chili, Tahiti, China, Hindostan, Persia, And Asia Minor By Ida Pfeiffer
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This Punishment Lasts From A Few Days To Several Months;
In The Latter Case The Prisoner Generally Dies.
Another description of punishment is the bastinado with the bamboo,
which, when applied to the more tender parts of the body, very
often, as early as the fifteenth blow, frees its victim for ever
from all his earthly sufferings.
Other more severe punishments,
which in no way yield the palm to those of the Holy Inquisition,
consist in flaying the prisoner alive, crushing his limbs, cutting
the sinews out of his feet, and so on. Their modes of carrying out
the sentence of death appear to be mild in comparison, and are
generally confined to strangling and decapitation, although, as I
was informed, in certain extraordinary cases, the prisoner is
executed by being sawed in two, or left to die of starvation. In
the first case, the unhappy victim is made fast between two planks,
and sawed in two longitudinally, beginning with the head; and, in
the second, he is either buried up to his head in the ground, and
thus left to perish of want, or else is fastened in one of the
wooden yokes I have described, while his food is gradually reduced
in quantity every day, until at last it consists of only a few
grains of rice. In spite of the horrible and cruel nature of these
punishments, it is said that individuals are found ready, for a sum
of money, to undergo them all, death even included, instead of the
person condemned.
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