30 
DEATH BY PRECIPITATION. 
of the sacred family, that they believed a curse must follow the 
abettors of such a man. The next step, in their minds, was to 
appease heaven by the immolation of the offender; and, in the 
course of that very night, a band of his servants cut the cords of 
his tent, which instantly falling in upon him, afforded them a 
secure opportunity of burying their poniards in his body. The 
first strokes were followed by thousands : so detested was the 
wretch, that in a few minutes his remains were hewn and torn to 
pieces. It does not become men to lift the veil which lies over 
the whole doom of a ruthless murderer; but there is something 
in the last mortal yell of a tyrant, whether it be a Robespierre 
or a Nackee Khan, which sounds as if mingled with a dreadful 
echo from the eternal shore. 
While the above particulars were relating, it was a shuddering 
glance that looked down from the open side of the Ketkhoda’s 
saloon, on almost the very spot where the unhappy victims had 
breathed their last. It recalled to my remembrance a similar 
window, for similar purposes, at Erivan, where the governor of 
that place used to dispose his malefactors the moment sentence 
* 
was pronounced. And, while listening to the hideous details of a 
sort of punishment so common in the East, I could not but 
recal similar descriptions in ancient writers on these countries, 
which showed how old had been the practice of taking offenders 
to a height, and casting them headlong; sometimes from a rock, 
at others from high battlements, and often from a window which 
commanded a sufficient steep. We have a dreadful picture of v 
this most tremendous mode of punishment, in the second book 
of Kings. It describes the death of Jezebel, when, by the 
command of Jehu, she was thrown from the palace-window 
of Jezreel, during his triumphal entry, and her blood was 
