A TERRIFYING OPERATION.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 362, 24 April 1889, Page 5

A TERRIFYING OPERATION.

The fate of some regicides is nob pleasant to contemplate. Respecting the death of Damiens, who attempted the life of Louis XV. of France, an old chronicler says : ' I can scarcely guide my pen to tell you what that insane and wretched mortal endured belore, as well as on the day of, his execution. 1 will pass over the trifling tortures he was put to in private, and come to the day of his public sufferings, first desiring the reader to lay down bhia paper it he be not well prepared to hear related the sad dest tale of truth that ever pen or press produced.' It can be imagined that the horrors were something frightful, when it is said that even tour wild horses driven to four contrary points did nob free the victim from his sufferings. The old chronicler says of this execution : *Ib was observed thab during that last and

terrifying operation all the men's heads were turned away from the horrid sight, but all the women's immovably fixed on the criminal. ' Some popular ancient methods of slaying criminals were the crushing of the bones by having- a spiked roller dragged over them by horses, or by means of sharp spiked harrows dragged by spirited steeds, the placing: of thorns upon the victim's body and then letting a huge stone fall upon them. A favourite method practised in India up to a recent date was the employment of elephants as executioners, either by trampling the victims to death or by having the huge creature do it as gently as possible by pressing his ponderous paw upon the head. The Sultan of Zanzibar has recently held high carnage of executions in the street of his capital by lopping off the heads of his people by wholesale, until stopped bj' the interrentipn of European Powers.