d and pregnant with these poisonous vapours.

I am the more convinced of this, as the worthy ecclesiastick assured me,
that a dead calm is always attended with the greatest danger, as there is
a continual perspiration issuing from the tree, which is seen to rise and
spread in the air, like the putrid steam of a marshy cavern.

_Experiments made with the Gum of the UPAS TREE._

In the year 1776, in the month of February, I was present at the
execution of thirteen of the Emperor's concubines, at _Soura-Charta,_
who were convicted of infidelity to the Emperor's bed. It was in the
forenoon, about eleven o'clock, when the fair criminals were led into
an open space within the walls of the Emperor's palace. There the judge
passed sentence upon them, by which they are doomed to suffer death by a
lancet poisoned with Upas. After this the Alcoran was presented to them,
and they were, according to the law of their great prophet Mahomet, to
acknowledge and to affirm by oath, that the charges brought against them,
together with the sentence and their punishment, were fair and equitable.
This they did, by laying their right hand upon the Alcoran, their left
hands upon their breast, and their eyes lifted towards heaven; the judge
then held the Alcoran to their lips, and they kissed it.

These ceremonies over, the executioner proceeded on his business in the
following manner:--Thirteen posts, each about five feet high, had been
previously erected. To these the delinquents were fastened, and their
breasts stripped naked. In this situation they remained a short time in
continual prayers, attended by several priests, until a signal was
given by the judge to the executioner; on which the latter produced an
instrument, much like the spring lancet used by farriers for bleeding
horses. With this instrument, it being poisoned with the gum of the Upas,
the unhappy wretches were lanced in the middle of their breasts, and the
operation was performed upon them all in less than two minutes.

My astonishment was raised to the highest degree, when I beheld the
sudden effects of that poison, for in about five minutes after they were
lanced, they were taken with a _tremor,_ attended with a _subsultus
tendinum,_ after which they died in the greatest agonies, crying out to
God and Mahomet for mercy. In sixteen minutes by my watch, which I held
in my hand, all the criminals were no more. Some hours after their death,
I observed their bodies full of l