IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. LXI.
CONJURING EXTRAORDINARI'
317
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of astonishment, not conceiving what was to come of this ; when lo ! a leg cause tumbling down out of the air. One of the conjuring company instantly snatched it up and threw it into the basket whereof I have formerly spoken. A moment later a hand came down, and immediately on that another leg. And in short all the members of the body came thus successively tumbling from the air and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs ar d put them in the basket turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straight" ay we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a whk,le
man, who at once . could stand and go just as before, without showing the least damage ! Never in my life was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful performance, and I doubted now no longer that these misguided men did it by the help of the Devil. For it seems to me totally impossible that such things should be accomplished by natural means." The same performance is spoken of by Valentyn, in a passage also containing curious notices of the basket-murder trick, the mango trick, the sitting in the air (quoted above), and others ; but he refers to Melton, and I am not sure whether he had any other authority for it. The cut on this page is taken from Melton's plate.
Again we have in the Memoirs of the Emperor Jahángir a detail of the wonderful performances of seven jugglers from Bengal who exhibited before him. Two of their
Chinese Conjuring Extraordinary.
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