544 MESCAL: A NEW ARTIFICIAL PARADISE. 



flashed before my closed (or nearly closed) eyes, in all tlie hues of the 

 rainbow, of my arm separated from ray body, and serving me with 

 coffee from out of dark and indefinite space. On another occasion, as 

 I was seeking to relieve slight nausea by taking a piece of biscuit 

 passed to me by H. E., it suddenly streamed out into blue flame. For 

 an instant I held the biscuit close to my leg. Immediately my trousers 

 caught alight, and then the whole of the right side of my body, from 

 the foot to the shoulder, was enveloped in waving blue flame. It was 

 a sight of wonderful beauty. But this was not all. As I placed the 

 biscuit in my mouth it burst out again into the same colored fire 

 and illuminated the interior of my mouth, casting a blue reflection on 

 the roof. The light in the Blue Grotto at Capri, I am able to affirm, 

 is not nearly as blue as seemed for a short space of time the interior of 

 my mouth. There were many visioES of which I could not trace the 

 origin. There were spirals and arabesques and flowers, and sometimes 

 objects more trivial and j)rosaic in character. In one vision I saw a 

 row of small white flowers, one against the other like pearls of a 

 necklace, begin to revolve in the form of a spiral. Every flower, 

 I observed, had the texture of j)orcelain. It was at a moment when I 

 had the sensation of my cheeks growing hot and feverish that I 

 experienced the strangest of all the color visions. It began with feeling 

 that the skin of my face was becoming quite thin and of no stouter 

 consistency than tissue paj)er, and the feeling was suddenly enhanced 

 by a vision of my face, paper-like and semitransparent and some- 

 what reddish in color. To my amazement I saw myself as though 

 I were inside a Chinese lantern, looking out through my cheek into 

 the room. Not long after this I became conscious of a change in the 

 visions. Their tempo was more moderate, they were less frequent, 

 and they were losing somewhat in distinctness. At the same time 

 the feeling of nausea and of numbness was departing. A short 

 period followed in which I had no visions at all, and experienced 

 merely a sensation of heaviness and torpor. I found that I was able 

 to open my eyes again and keep them fixed on any object in the room 

 without observing the faintest blue halo or prism, or bar of glowing 

 color, and that, moreover, no visions appeared on closing them. It 

 was now twilight, but beyond the fact of not seeing light or color, 

 either without or within, I had a distinct feeling that the action of the 

 drug was at an end and that my body had become sober suddenly. I 

 had no more visions, though I was not wholly free from abnormal sen- 

 sations, and I retired to rest. I lay awake till the morning, and with 

 the exception of the following night I scarcely slept for the next three 

 days, but I can not say that I felt any signs of fatigue, unless, per- 

 haps, on one of the days when my eyes, I noticed, became very sus- 

 cej)tible to any indications of blue in an object. Of color visions, or of 

 any approach to color visions, there was no further trace; but all sorts 

 of odd and grotesque images passed in succession through my mind 



