THE INDIAN ROPE ILLUSION

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 100, 22 January 1935, Page 11

THE INDIAN ROPE ILLUSION

Wellington Man’s Story

MYSTERY THAT BAFFLES OBSERVERS

Pictures purporting to be genuine photographs of the Indian rope trick, performed on the lonely slopes of Dartmoor, behind Plymouth, are to be found on the illustrations page of to-day’s ‘‘Dominion.” These pictures were shown yesterday to a traveller, at present resident in Wellington, who claims to have actually seen the rope trick performed. He viewed the photograph with considerable scepticism.

“I am inclined to doubt, whether these photographs can be genuine,” he explained,” because In my own mind I am positive that the illusion is effected by hypnotism. I was in Colombo in 1913, when I had an opportunity of seeing this trick done by a native; I was young then, at a very impressionable age, and the details have always stuck in my memory. My parents and I were seated on a hotel veranda, fronting the open street. The illusion was worked, not in any private or obscure place, as appears to have been the case in these photographs, but in public. “The magician, a somewhat grubby snake-charmer, had performed a number of other effective feats of conjuring. These included the sword-and-basket trick, successfully emulated by European conjurors, in which Ills boy assistant was enclosed in a small wicker basket, through which swords were passed from all sides, until one would swear the boy had come to a bad end; yet he was released uninjured. The Mango Trick. "This Indian also demonstrated the mango trick. He scraped a hollow in the hard, sun-baked clay, which bad obviously not been tampered with, and into this shallow hole he placed a single seed. Over it he brushed earth, and then laid a wide scarf over all. lie sprinkled it with a little water, and as we watched, a bulge appeared over the seed, and increased perceptibly until the corners of the cloth alone trailed on the ground; when he whisked it away a small sturdy shrub stood rooted in the firm ground. The magician tore it from the ground, its roots splitting the earth, and having secreted it in his basket he smoothed over the disturbed soil. “Finally he performed the rope trick. Uncoiling a length of stout hemp, lie flung it into the air, and as it straightened upward it stiffened and stayed there. By this time a crowd had collected ; they stood all round him, with their gaze riveted on the same spot, and so my father photographed them, but the camera recorded no rope. The conjurer’s boy then swarmed up the rope, and as he climbed it swung and yielded to his movements, almost as if suspended from above. But above there was only the sky. “The boy stayed there for some moments; finally he slid down, sailorfashion ; the conjurer tweaked the line, and it came tumbling at his feet. I don’t think anybody present doubted that he had actually done the thing; it was only afterward that one could realise the impossibility of it. A Watch Thrown Overboard. “At another time I saw an Oriental conjurer do a thing which cau hardly be explained by leger-de-main. Standing on a steamer’s deck, he borrowed a watch, which he took from the passenger, its owner, one of my shipmates on the voyage. The man at no time touched the watch itself; he held it suspended by the chain, and without preamble swung it round twice or thrice and sent it whirling over the side. One could clearly see watch and chain strike the water, and could follow its movement for several fathoms as it sank into the clear depths. There was no possibility of that man’s secreting or exchanging the watch: it had definitely been thrown overboard. Yet later he produced it on deck, and returned it to its relieved owner. “It seems to me that the only reasonable and convincing explanation of these tricks is that the Indian lias the ability to hypnotise, not only me but all his watchers. By a number of feats of sleight-of-hand be can induce the necessary mood, and can then obtain sufficient mastery over the audience to create whatever impression he desires. “Sceptics are always inclined to ridicule this trick as being merely a traveller’s tale, because it is a. thing that one can only describe as one has seen it—there are no concrete proofs to show. But I have seen it, and am convinced ; and I know of at least one other person in Wellington who has shared my good fortune.”