Part 1
THE PENNY MAGAZINE
OF THE
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
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29.] PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. [September 15, 1832
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THE WARWICK VASE.
[Illustration: A large, wide vase with two handles and a number of sculpted heads.]
In an account which we recently gave of Warwick Castle, we mentioned the beautiful and celebrated specimen of Grecian art, which now embellishes the grounds of one of the finest monuments of the feudal grandeur of England. There is something extremely captivating to the imagination to witness one of the most exquisite pieces of ancient workmanship, said to be the production of Lysippus, a statuary of the age of Alexander the Great, thus preserved from the ravages of time, amidst the scenes which tell their story of a past age, not so far removed from the present day, but equally recalling lives and actors essentially different from our present habits and modes of thinking. ‘The Warwick Vase’ was dug up from the ruins of the Emperor Adrian’s villa at Tivoli, and was sent to England by the late Sir William Hamilton, in 1774. It is probably one of the most entire, and, to a certain extent, the most beautiful specimen of ancient sculpture which this country possesses. The material of which it is made is white marble. Its form is nearly spherical, with a deep reverted rim. Two interlacing vines, whose stems run into and constitute the handles, wreathe their tendrils, with fruit and foliage, round the upper part. The centre is composed of antique heads, which stand forward in grand relief. A panther’s skin, with the thyrsus of Bacchus (a favourite antique ornament) and other embellishments, complete the composition. This vase is of very large size, as it is capable of containing a hundred and sixty-three gallons. We have seen a copy of this vase, of the original dimensions, at Birmingham, executed in bronze; which work is one of the many proofs which exist in this country of the intimate union between the manufacturing arts and those which are connected with the highest display of taste. The importance of this union ought never to be lost sight of.
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ESCAPE OF DE LATUDE FROM THE BASTILLE.
(Concluded from the last Number.)
De Latude goes on to detail the precautions which he and his companion in misfortune took, in case any of the jailers should be listening, to give feigned names for every thing they used in their work, and states the names used by them for each article. He then proceeds with his narrative: “These things being complete, we set about our principal ladder, which was to be at least eighty feet long. We began by unravelling our linen, shirts, napkins, nightcaps, stockings, drawers, pocket handkerchiefs--every thing which could supply thread or silk. As we made a ball we concealed it in Polyphemus, (the name they called the hiding-place,) and when we had a sufficient quantity we employed a whole night in twisting it into a rope; and I defy a rope-maker to have done it better.[1] The upper part of the building of the Bastille overhangs three or four feet. This would necessarily occasion our ladder to wave and swing about as we came down it, enough to turn the strongest head. To obviate this, and to prevent our fall, we made a second rope 160 feet long. This rope was to be reeved through a kind of double block without sheaves, in case the person descending should be suspended in the air without being able to get down lower.[2] Besides these we made several other ropes of shorter lengths, to fasten our ladder to a cannon, and for other unforeseen occasions. When all these ropes were finished, we measured them--they amounted to 1400 feet. We then made 208 rounds for the rope and wooden ladders. To prevent the noise which the rounds would make against the wall during our descent, we gave them coverings formed of pieces of the linings of our morning gowns, of our waistcoats, and our under-waistcoats. In all these preparations we employed eighteen months, but still they were incomplete. We had provided means to get to the top of the tower, to get into and out of the fossé: two more were wanting--one to climb up on the parapet; from the parapet into the governor’s garden; from thence to get down into the fossé of the Port St. Antoine; but the parapet which we had to cross was always well furnished with sentinels. We might fix on a dark and rainy night, when the sentinels did not go their rounds, and escape by those means, but it might rain when we climbed our chimney, and might clear up at the very moment when we arrived at the parapet: we should then meet with the chief of the rounds, who constantly inspected the parapet, and he being always provided with lights, it would be impossible to conceal ourselves, and we should be inevitably ruined. The other plan increased our labours, but was the less dangerous of the two. It consisted in making a way through the wall which separates the fossé of the Bastille from that of the Port St. Antoine. I considered that in the numerous floods, during which the Seine had filled this fossé, the water must have injured the mortar, and rendered it less difficult, and so we should be enabled to break a passage through the wall. For this purpose we should require an augur to make holes in the mortar, so as to insert the points of the two iron bars to be taken out of our chimney, and with them force out the stones, and so make our way through. Accordingly we made an augur with one of the feet of our bedsteads, and fastened a handle to it in the form of a cross. We fixed on Wednesday the 25th February, 1756, for our flight: the river had overflowed its banks: there were four feet of water in the fossé of the Bastille, as well as in that of the Port St. Antoine, by which we hoped to effect our deliverance. I filled a leathern portmanteau with a change of clothes for both, in case we were so fortunate as to escape.
“Dinner was scarcely over when we set up our great ladder of ropes, that is, we put the rounds to it, and hid it under our beds; then we arranged our wooden ladder in three pieces. We put our iron bars in their cases to prevent their making a noise; and we packed up our bottle of usquebaugh to warm us, and restore our strength during our work in the water, up to the neck, for nine hours. These precautions taken, we waited till our supper was brought up. I first got up the chimney. I had the rheumatism in my left arm, but I thought little of the pain: I soon experienced one much more severe. I had taken none of the precautions used by chimney-sweepers. I was nearly choked by the soot; and having no guards on my knees and elbows, they were so excoriated that the blood ran down on my legs and hands. As soon as I got to the top of the chimney I let down a piece of twine to D’Alegre: to this he attached the end of the rope to which our portmanteau was fastened. I drew it up, unfastened it, and threw it on the platform of the Bastille. In the same way we hoisted up the wooden ladder, the two iron bars, and all our other articles: we finished by the ladder of ropes, the end of which I allowed to hang down to aid D’Alegre in getting up, while I held the upper part by means of a large wooden peg which we had prepared on purpose. I passed it through the cord and placed it across the funnel of the chimney. By these means my companion avoided suffering what I did. This done, I came down from the top of the chimney, where I had been in a very painful position, and both of us were on the platform of the Bastille. We now arranged our different articles. We began by making a roll of our ladder of ropes, of about four feet diameter, and one thick. We rolled it to the tower called La Tour du Treson, which appeared to us the most favourable for our descent. We fastened one end of the ladder of ropes to a piece of cannon, and then lowered it down the wall; then we fastened the block, and passed the rope of 160 feet long through it. This I tied round my body, and D’Alegre slackened it as I went down. Notwithstanding this precaution I swung about in the air at every step I made. Judge what my situation was, when one shudders at the recital of it. At length I landed without accident in the fossé. Immediately D’Alegre lowered my portmanteau and other things. I found a little spot uncovered by water, on which I put them. Then my companion followed my example; but he had an advantage which I had not had, for I held the ladder for him with all my strength, which greatly prevented its swinging. It did not rain; and we heard the sentinel marching at about four toises distance; and we were therefore forced to give up our plan of escaping by the parapet and the governor’s garden. We resolved to use our iron bars. We crossed the fossé straight over to the wall which divides it from the Port St. Antoine, and went to work sturdily. Just at this point there was a small ditch about six feet broad and one deep, which increased the depth of the water. Elsewhere it was about up to our middles; here, to our armpits. It had thawed only a few days, so that the water had yet floating ice in it: we were nine hours in it, exhausted by fatigue, and benumbed by the cold. We had hardly begun our work before the chief of the watch came round with his lantern, which cast a light on the place we were in: we had no alternative but to put our heads under water as he passed, which was every half-hour. At length, after nine hours of incessant alarm and exertion; after having worked out the stones one by one, we succeeded in making, in a wall of four feet six inches thick, a hole sufficiently wide, and we both crept through. We were giving way to our transports when we fell into a danger which we had not foreseen, and which had nearly been fatal to us. In crossing the fossé St. Antoine, to get into the road to Berey, we fell into the aqueduct which was in the middle. This aqueduct had ten feet water over our heads, and two feet of mud on the side. D’Alegre fell on me, and had nearly thrown me down: had that misfortune happened we were lost, for we had not strength enough left to get up again, and we must have been smothered. Finding myself laid hold of by D’Alegre, I gave him a blow with my fist, which made him let go; and at the same instant throwing myself forward I got out of the aqueduct. I then felt for D’Alegre, and getting hold of his hair, drew him to me; we were soon out of the fossé, and just as the clock struck five were on the high road. Penetrated by the same feeling, we threw ourselves into each other’s arms, and after a long embrace we fell on our knees to offer our thanks to the Almighty, who had snatched us from so many dangers.”
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Footnote 1:
This is really no exaggeration.
Footnote 2:
This part of the narrative is by no means clear.
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VENOMOUS SERPENTS.
⁂ We have received the following interesting communication from a gentleman who has spent much of a valuable life in Africa.
The serpents of South Africa, commonly accounted the most dangerous, are the Cobra-Capello, (or hooded snake,) the Puff-Adder, and the Berg-Adder (or mountain snake.) The first of these is exceedingly fierce and active, and sometimes, it is said, attains the formidable length of ten feet; I have, however, never met with any of much more than half that size. The Cobra has been known to spring at a man on horseback, and to dart himself with such force as to overshoot his aim. The Puff-Adder, on the other hand, is a heavy and sluggish animal, very thick in proportion to its length, and incapable, when attacked in front, of projecting itself upon its enemy. To make amends, however, it possesses the faculty of throwing itself backward with perilous and unexpected effect; but its disposition is inert, and unless accidentally trod upon or otherwise provoked, it will seldom attack mankind. The Berg-Adder, though much smaller in size than either of the preceding, is generally considered not less deadly, and it is the more dangerous from its being less easily discovered and avoided.
During a residence of six years in the interior of the Cape Colony, and in the course of various journeys through the interior, (extending to upwards of three thousand miles,) I have met with a considerable number of snakes; yet I do not recollect of ever being exposed, except in one instance, to any imminent hazard of being bit by any of them. On the occasion referred to I was superintending some Hottentots, whom I had employed to clear away a patch of thicket from a spot selected for cultivation, when one of the men, suddenly recoiling, with signs of great alarm, exclaimed that there was a Cobra-Capello in the bush. Not being at that time fully aware of the dangerous character of this species of snake, I approached to look at him. The Hottentots called out to me to take care, for he was going to spring. Before they had well spoken, or I had caught a view of the reptile, I heard him hiss fiercely, and then dart himself towards me amidst the underwood. At the same instant, instinctively springing backward to avoid him, I fell over a steep bank into the dry stony bed of a torrent; by which I suffered some severe bruises, but fortunately escaped the more formidable danger to which I had too incautiously exposed myself. The Hottentots then assailed the snake with sticks and stones, and forced him (though not before he had made another spring and missed one of them still more narrowly than myself) to take refuge up a mimosa tree. Here he became a safe and easy mark to their missiles, and was speedily beaten down, with a broken back, and consequently rendered incapable of farther mischief. The Hottentots having cut off his head, carefully buried it in the ground, a practice which they never omit on such occasions, and which arises from their apprehension of some one incautiously treading on the head of the dead snake, and sustaining injury from its fangs; for they believe that the deathful virus, far from being extinguished with life, retains its fatal energy for weeks, and even months afterwards. This snake measured nearly six feet in length, and was the largest Cobra I have met with.
My little Hottentot corporal, Piet (or Peter) Spandilly, who assisted in killing this Cobra, had a still narrower escape from a small but venomous snake of which I have forgotten the colonial appellation. Piet and his men (six soldiers of the Cape corps, placed at that time under my direction for the protection of our remote settlement against the Caffres) slept in a tent adjoining to mine, pitched in a grove of mimosas on the brink of the Bavian’s river; and one morning when he rose from his couch of dry grass, Piet felt some living creature moving about his thigh in the inside of his leathern trowsers. Thinking it was only one of the harmless lizards which swarm in every part of South Africa, he did not at first much mind it, but came out to the open air laughing, and shaking his limb to dislodge the vermin. But when a black wriggling snake came tumbling down about his naked ancles, poor Spandilly uttered a cry of horror, kicked the reptile off, springing at the same moment nearly his own height from the ground; and though he had in reality sustained no injury, could scarcely for some time be persuaded that he was not “a gone man.”
It is, in fact, from apprehensions of danger, or the instinct of self-defence, far more than from any peculiar fierceness or innate malignity, that the serpent race ever assail man or any of the larger animals. They turn, of course, against the foot that tramples or the hand that threatens them; but happily nature has not armed them, in addition to their formidable powers of destruction, with the disposition of exerting these powers from motives of mere wanton cruelty, or for purposes unconnected with their own subsistence or security. Were it otherwise, countries like the Cape would be altogether uninhabitable. As it is, the annoyance experienced from the numerous poisonous snakes is not such as, on the whole, to affect in any considerable degree the comfort of those accustomed to them.
Conversing on this subject one day with my friend Captain Harding, who had been for many years a resident and magistrate in the interior, I inquired whether he had ever, in the course of his campaigns on the Caffer and Bushman frontiers, and when necessarily obliged to sleep in the desert or jungle in the open air, suffered injury or incurred danger from serpents--he replied, that the only occasion he recollected of incurring any great hazard of this sort, was the following:--
“Being upon a military expedition across the frontier,” said he, “I had slept one night, as usual, wrapt in my cloak, beneath a tree. On awaking at daybreak, the first object I perceived on raising my head from the saddle, which served for my pillow, was the tail of an enormous Puff-Adder lying across my breast, the head of the reptile being muffled under the folds of the cloak close to my body, whither it had betaken itself, apparently for warmth, during the chillness of the night. There was extreme hazard that if I alarmed it by moving, it might bite me in a vital part;--seizing it therefore softly by the tail, I pulled it out with a sudden jerk, and threw it violently to a distance. By this means I escaped without injury; but had I happened to have unwittingly offended this uninvited bedfellow before I was aware of his presence, I might in all probability have fatally atoned for my heedlessness.”
It is not very unusual for snakes of various sorts to be found in the houses at the Cape, nor does it, in ordinary cases, excite any violent alarm when such inmates are discovered. They make their way both through the roofs and under the walls, in search of food and shelter, and especially in pursuit of mice, which many of them chiefly subsist upon. During my residence in the interior, however, I recollect only two instances of their being found in my own cabin. On one of these occasions I had sent a servant girl (a bare-legged Hottentot) to bring me some article from a neighbouring hut. It was after night-fall; and on returning with it, she cried out before entering the cabin--“Oh, Mynheer! Mynheer! what shall I do? A snake has twined itself round my ancles, and if I open the door he will come into the house.” “Never mind,” I replied. “open the door, and let him come if he dare.” She obeyed, and in glided the snake, luckily without having harmed the poor girl. I stood prepared and instantly smote him dead; and afterwards found him to be one of the very venomous sort called _Nachtslang_.
People get used to these things, and even Europeans by degrees come to regard them with much indifference. Just before leaving the colony, I spent a week or two with my friend Major Pigot, at his residence near Graham’s Town; and going one day to take a book from some shelves in the drawing-room, I found a beautiful yellow snake, about five feet long, lying asleep upon the uppermost range of books. It lay so still that I at first thought it was a stuffed specimen; but perceiving a slight movement in its tail, I lent him such a thwack with a quarto volume as broke the poor fellow’s back, and enabled me to demolish him at my leisure. I afterwards learned that another snake had been killed a few days previously in the very same spot, and a third in Major P.’s dressing-room. They had all entered through a loop-hole which had casually been left open, and apparently had no other object in coming there (mousing apart) than literary seclusion.
Such as these are no very uncommon occurrences, and as such pass even for subjects of jocularity amidst the adventures of a wild country. Instances, however, both frightful and revolting, sometimes occur.
It is well known that the Bushmen, a tribe of wild Hottentots who inhabit the mountains and deserts of South Africa, imbue the points of their arrows in a strong and subtle poison, and that the venom of the most dangerous serpents to be found in that country forms a principal ingredient in its composition. The boldness and dexterity displayed by these wild huntsmen, and by many also of the colonial Hottentots, in searching out and seizing alive the formidable Cobra-Capello and Puff-Adder, are truly astonishing. Still more surprising is it to witness the snake-hunter extracting from the yet living and writhing reptile, held fast by his naked foot planted on its neck, the little bag containing the secreted venom, which the rage of the animal injects into the wound made by its fangs at the moment it strikes its victim--to see him take this, and fearlessly drink its contents, as school-boys in England would suck the blob of the honey-bee! The swallowing of this venom, they conceive, renders them in time proof against its deleterious effects, when it is brought into immediate contact with the blood, whether by the bite of a snake or the barb of an arrow.
[Illustration: Cobra-Capello.]
Several of the most respectable Dutch colonists assured me, as a fact which had come within their own knowledge, that there are to be found among the wandering Bushmen persons whom they term _slang-meesters_ (snake-masters,) who actually possess the power of charming the fiercest serpents, and of readily curing their bite; and who pretend that they can communicate to others their mysterious powers and invulnerability, by putting them through a regular course of _poison-eating_.
The more usual object, however, of the Bushman in catching serpents (exclusive of their value to him as an article of food,) is to procure poison for his arrows. The animal venom, too thin and volatile to preserve its efficacy long unimpaired when used alone, is skilfully concocted into a black glutinous consistency, by the admixture of powerful vegetable and mineral poisons; the former being generally the juice of the root of a species of amaryllis, called by the boors, from this circumstance, the _gift-bol_, or poison-bulb; the latter, a bituminous or unctuous substance which is said to exude from certain rocks and caverns. With this deadly mixture the dwarfish and despised African anoints the desperate weapons with which he resists (though unavailingly) the aggressions of the colonists, and sometimes cruelly revenges the injuries they have inflicted.
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FINGAL’S CAVE.
[Illustration: Distant View of Staffa.]