212 TREE OF DEATH. 
see the place is swept clean underneath its boughs 
This is clone every day, and by the executioner 
alone: no other person dare go there, for if he do he 
must die !" I certainly began to feel sick myself at 
the recital of various horrors perpetrated at this 
place by the executioner, and don't know whether, 
if any one had offered me some great reward, I 
would have ventured to place my feet upon this 
accursed spot of mother earth. Never in my life 
did I feel so sick at heart — so revolted at man's 
crimes and cruelties. The tree itself was a true 
picture of death — a tree of dark, impenetrable 
foliage, with a great head, or upper part larger than 
the lower one, and this head crowned with fifty 
filthy vultures, the ministers of the executioner, 
"which eat the bodies of the criminals! The number 
of executions here performed is very great — some 
two or three hundred in a year. Since we have 
been here a man has been butchered in the night, 
scarcely a hundred yards from my house ; so that 
I am in a pleasant neighbourhood, what with the 
executions and what with the hysenas. The people 
pretend that for a small offence the Sultan inflicts 
capital punishments: for example, merely speaking 
bad language. 
Turning from these disagreeable scenes, we went 
to see the dens of the hyaenas, which are beneath 
the rocks, extending far under ground. Here we 
saw bones and dung enough. The scavengers of 
Zinder are, therefore, the vultures and hysenas: the 
