MODES OF TORTURE. 51 



intense pain ; but if this be insufficient to pro- 

 duce confession, water is thrown upon the ropes, 

 which causes them to shrink to such a degree 

 that they cut the unhappy sufferer to the bone, 

 causing so much agony that the poor wretch 

 at once gives up his money, or confesses to 

 what is required from him ; occasionally, it is 

 supposed, confessing to a crime that he never 

 committed, through sheer physical inability 

 to support the agony inflicted. Another mode 

 of torture is placing an iron ramrod, burning 

 hot, between a man's thighs whilst he is hung by 

 his thumbs from a beam. 



The more common practice, however, is to 

 jAace some beetles of a peculiar kind in a saucer 

 upon the navel of the victim, binding it tightly 

 on with a cummerbund. The beetles immediate- 

 ly begin to gnaw the part, seeming to the wretcli- 

 ed sufferer to be eating into his very entrails, 

 and thereby causing him such intense agony 

 and terror that he in a few minutes gives in. 

 Monstrous as this appears, it is exactly what was 

 practised a few years ago in the late East India 

 Company's territories, as proved by the reports 

 of the torture commissioners. 



I myself witnessed a pretty specimen of the 



