436 Experiences of HascMsch. 



I might not be tempted to take a second dose, and waited 

 anxiously to feel its effects. 



I soon became conscious of a sense of disappointment. I 

 said ' ' That was not Haschisch, but some preparation of choco- 

 late." I took my pen to write an indignant letter to my friend, 

 that he might know I had not become an easy dupe to his plan 

 for deceiving me. I was at a loss how to begin the letter, 

 though otherwise always ready at writing, even when fatigued. 

 For a moment I paused, considering, and then the parietal 

 bones of my head expanded widely, as if parting at the sutures, 

 and again collapsed with a sort of shuffling sound. I said, 

 " This is the result of fatigue ; I have read too hard, I will go 

 to bed." As I rose from my table I became conscious of an 

 agreeable state of warmth and lightness ; I felt as if I had taken 

 Scotch whisky. The room seemed larger than usual, and 

 getting larger and larger still ; some skulls of animals on the 

 walls acquired colossal proportions, and the conviction entered 

 my mind that I had realized an old dream of living in the midst 

 of the monsters of the Oolitic period, and that I had been awe- 

 struck for years, immoveable, paralyzed, and with every faculty 

 benumbed, except the faculty of wonder. I caught sight of my 

 watch hanging in front of some papers on the wall, it at once 

 dispelled the illusion. I calmly looked at it, and found it was 

 just twenty minutes since I swallowed the Haschisch. Imme- 

 diately the watch expanded to vast dimensions, and its ticking 

 sounded through my head like the pulsation of a world. I 

 knew now for the first time that I was under the influence of 

 the drug, and began to make a few notes in pencil. Suddenly 

 my limbs seemed benumbed, my toes shrunk within my slippers, 

 my fingers became like the long legs of a convulsed spider, I 

 dropped the pencil, and walked to the window. The landscape 

 was so sublime that I forgot the cause of the illusion in my 

 admiration of the magical scene. The horizon was removed to 

 an infinite distance, but was still discernible, and the sunset 

 had marked it out with myriads of fiery circles all revolving, 

 mingling together, expanding and then changing to an aurora, 

 which shot up to the zenith, and fell down in sparks and 

 splashes among the trees, which at once became illuminated, 

 and the whole scene was grand beyond description, with fires of 

 every conceivable colour. 



All this time the landscape continued to expand, everything 

 grew as I looked on to greater and greater proportions. Trees 

 shot up higher and higher ; their branches overspread the sky ; 

 they met together, and became a confused mass ; the lights, 

 which just before had glowed on every hand, changed to a gene- 

 ral purple haze, a sense of twitching in every limb, coupled with 

 a feeling of weariness and depression, caused me to turn aside 



