A MARVELLOUS FEAT.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 261, 13 April 1875, Page 3

A MARVELLOUS FEAT.

The writer of a late work, * Travels in Siam,’ recounts the following extraordinary feat of Siamese juggling;—One trick which Minhman performed was a very superior version of the mango-tree feat of the Indian jugglers. He took an orange, cut it out, and produced a serpent. This he took down into the audience, and, borrowing a robe from one, out the snake’s head oft’, and covered it with a robe. When the robe was lifted again a fox was in the place of the snake. The fox’s head was cut off, two robes borrowed, and when they were raised there was a wolf, which was killed with a sword. Three robes, and a leopard appeared ;it was slain with a javelin. Four robes covered a most savage-looking buffalo ; that was killed with an axe. Five robes covered in part, but not altogether, a most lordly elephant, who, when the sword was pointed at him, seized Minhman by the neck, and tossed him violently up. He mounted feet foremost, and finally clung by his toes to the capital of one of the columns. Tepada now leaped from the stage and alighted upon the elephant’s shoulders. With a short sword he goaded the beast on the head until, shrieking, the unwieldy animal reared upon his hind feet, twined his trunk about one of the great columns, and seemed trying to lift itself from the ground and wrap its body around the great pillar. The music clashed out barbarously. Norodom Hashed forth a dazzling firework of some sort, and the elephant had disappeared, and Tepada lay upon the stage writhing in the folds of a great boa-constrictor, and holding up Minhman upon his feet.