THE MIND BETKAYED BY THE BODY. 147 



seeing ; a small stone, for instance, expands into a rock ; the rut of 

 a carriage-wheel enlarges into the furrow of a freshly ploughed field ; 

 a tuft of grass or a bush will assume the grand proportions of a 

 forest ; and, what is remarkable, these objects seem always close at 

 hand. Another frequent error is the elevation of horizontal surfaces ; 

 the horizon becomes a wall or a mountain. " It has happened to 

 myself," says M. d'Escayrac, " to meet with walls constantly reap- 

 pearing before me. My extended arm has plunged into the masonry, 

 but my body never encountered any obstacle ; the rampart opened 

 to give me a free passage." 



Hearing is, in its turn, affected. Then, any sound whatsoever, 

 such as a footfall, the blow of a stone, the whisper of the wind, is 

 changed into melodious sounds, keen cries of distress, the murmur of 

 woods, the harmony of familiar songs. 



One day, says M. d'Escayrac, I heard the click-clack of a village 

 mill. Endeavouring to collect my senses, and to obtain an explana- 

 tion of the sound, I perceived that it arose from the clink of my 

 sword-belt against the pommel of my saddle, to which I had buckled 

 my sabre. 



Jomard, the savant, who experienced the effects of the ragle 

 during his travels in Egypt, confirms in every respect the foregoing 

 description. On his way from Rosetta to Alexandria, he kept along 

 the border of the sea, and found his feet painfully staggering in the 

 thick fine sand. Such a journey is necessarily one of extreme 

 fatigue. After the first night, this fatigue grew overwhelming ; the 

 traveller lost all accurate perception of objects, or of the form of 

 places. The surface of the lake Medeah appeared not so much a 

 sheet of water as a monotonous plain. Constantly pressing forward, 

 he maintained a hard fight against the overpowering sense of slumber. 

 Half-asleep, half-awake, his brain was dazzled with the most fantastic 

 phantoms, and the hallucination was so great that he plunged into the 

 lake before him, without perceiving it, though the water was very 

 deep. But the freshness caused by the evaporation of the water 

 warned him of his error, and the vision suddenly passed away. 



