332 



Dreadful as must have been this sort of captivity to a free- 

 born Briton, even without the severities of a dungeon, or any ad- 

 ditional torture, it would have been impossible for a reflecting 

 mind not to have foreboded something worse. We are but too 

 well acquainted with the cruelties inflicted by Asiatic despots 

 from the earliest annals, to those recorded of the late tyrants of My- 

 sore. The poisoned coffee, the crush of an elephant, or any kind 

 of speedy death, is a merciful dispensation when compared wiih 

 the refinements in cruelty often made use of by these adepts in 

 human misery. A poison has been often administered to the ill- 

 fated princes of the house of Timur, and prisoners of rank in Hin- 

 dostan, which I should more have dreaded than the baneful cup, 

 or the mute and bow-string. They speedily transmit the prisoner 

 before the tribunal of a more merciful judge ; but for the victim of 

 imperial jealousy or revenge, certain poisonous drugs are mingled 

 with his food, which by imperceptible degrees undermine his con- 

 stitution, and deprive him of life in the course of a few days, a 

 few weeks, or during a longer period of months, and even of years, 

 as may be most gratifying to the will of a capricious tyrant. 



Shocking as these relations are, my imagination would have 

 recurred to one mode of destruction still more dreadful. The 

 wretched agents of these royal murderers have the art of infusing 

 deleterious ingredients into the sustenance of the prisoner, which 

 tends to destroy the mental faculties, and by a gradual progress of 

 imbecility terminate in complete idiotism. This Dr. Fryer con- 

 firms by a very curious description of these state prisoners ; who, 

 on committing any offence which subjects them to this destiny, 

 " are sent by the king's order to a place of punishment, where the 



