persuaded to admit of the abolition of an usage, which had 
existed from time immemorial, and whose unerring efficacy 
in the detection and punishment of crime, had never been 
questioned, until Mr. Hasty, our Government agent, had 
acquired such an influence with Rapama and his court, as 
to admit of the exposure of its fallacy. But this was the 
work of years ; and although Rapama was at length him- 
self convinced that nothing could be more unjust, than the 
continuance of the practice, he dared not so far shock the 
prejudices of his people, as to order that it should cease. 
Even the chief performers in the ceremony, the “ Skids,” 
as they are called at Tanararissoo, who unite in their own 
persons the offices of priests and physicians, and who ad- 
minister the poisonous kernel to the victims, never doubt 
its power of revealing guilt or clearing innocence ; the last 
occasion on which it was practiced in Rapama’s reign, and 
of which he availed himself to effect its discontinuance, 
personally regarded his court and attendants. The king 
was affected with a complaint of the liver, for which the 
“ Skid” prescribed some ineflicacious remedies, and as the 
disease became worse, Mr. Hasty gave him some calomel 
in doses, which he had found by experience to relieve him- 
self under similar symptoms. The disease disappeared, but 
Ptyalism was produced, and alarmed the king’s family, who 
believed that he was poisoned, and insisted that all his im- 
mediate attendants should be put to the ordeal of the 
Tanghin; and the royal Skid was most earnest im pressing 
to have it performed, although he himself, from his rank 
and place, was among the first to whom it would be ad- 
ministered. In vain the king protested that he felt himself 
cured, and that the indisposition and soreness of the mouth 
was caused by the medicine that had relieved him, and 
which would pass off in a few days. The Skid insisted, the 
ministers and principal chieftains joined with the family in 
requiring the ordeal ; to which the king, in spite of his 
Convictions, was compelled to consent ; but at the same 
time, he made it a condition that this should be the last 
exibition of the kind, and he bewailed the necessity which 
deprived him of so many attached dependants, whose fate 
he had predicted, while he protested his conviction of their 
Innocence. : 
The king’s servants, including the Skid, were more than 
twenty in number; they were shut up at night separately, 
and not allowed to taste food ; the next morning they _ 
tought out in procession, and paraded before the assemble 
people; 
