A sprightly youth above the topmast row
Paints the tall pyramid, and crowns the show.”
Addison.
In the thirteenth century, these performances were introduced at Constantinople, by a strolling company from Egypt, who afterwards travelled to Rome, and thence through great part of Europe. They could stand in various postures on horses while at full speed, and both mount and dismount without stopping them; and their rope-dancers sometimes extended the rope on which they poised themselves between the masts of ships.
It appears also that the ancients taught animals to perform many tricks that are still exhibited, and some even yet more extraordinary. In the year 543, a learned dog was shown at the Byzantine court, which not only selected, and returned to the several owners, the rings and ornaments of the spectators, which were thrown together before him, but on being asked his opinion respecting the character of some of the females who were present, he expressed it by signs at once so significant and correct, that the people were persuaded he possessed the spirit of divination. In the reign of Galba, an elephant was exhibited at Rome which walked upon a rope stretched across the theatre; and such was the confidence reposed in his dexterity, that a person was mounted on him while he performed the feat.
It must require the exercise not alone of vast patience, but also of extraordinary cruelty, mingled perhaps with much kindness, to train animals to exhibit a degree of intelligence approaching to that of human beings. It is said that bears are taught to dance by being placed in a den with a floor of heated iron: the animal, endeavouring to avoid the smart to which his paws are thus exposed, rears himself on his hind legs, and alternately raises them with the utmost rapidity, during all which time a flageolet is played to him; and after this lesson has been frequently repeated, he becomes so impressed with the associated recollection of the music and the pain, that, whenever he hears the same tune, he instinctively recurs to the same efforts, in order to escape the fancied danger.
In the middle of the last century, there was an Englishman, named Wildman, who excited great attention by the possession of a secret through the means of which he enticed bees to follow him, and to settle on his person without stinging him. A similar circumstance is related in Francis Bruce’s voyage to Africa in 1698, in which mention is made of a man who was constantly surrounded by a swarm of these insects, and who had thence obtained the title of “King of the bees.”
Only one instance is recorded in ancient history of the art of supplying the deficiency of hands by the use of toes; and that is of an Indian slave belonging to the emperor Augustus, who, being without arms, could, notwithstanding, wield a bow and arrows and put a trumpet to his mouth with his feet.
Of late years some persons have exhibited themselves in the character of stone-eaters; but although these are to be considered as mere jugglers, yet it would appear that there have been others who actually possessed the faculty of digesting similar substances. Of the instances on record we shall merely select one, from the “Dictionnaire Physique,” of father Paulian:—“The beginning of May 1760, there was brought to Avignon a true lithophagus, or stone-eater, who had been found, about three years before that time, in a northern island, by the crew of a Dutch ship. He not only swallowed flints of an inch and a half long, a full inch broad, and half an inch thick, but such stones as he could reduce to powder, such as marble, pebbles, &c., he made up into paste, which was to him a most agreeable and wholesome food. I examined this man with all the attention I possibly could; I found his gullet very large, his teeth exceedingly strong, his saliva very corrosive, and his stomach lower than ordinary, which I imputed to the vast quantity of flints he had swallowed, being about five and twenty, one day with another. His keeper made him eat raw flesh with the stones, but could never induce him to swallow bread; he would, however, drink water, wine, and brandy, which last liquor appeared to afford him infinite pleasure. He usually slept twelve hours a day, sitting on the ground, with one knee over the other, and his chin resting on it; and when not asleep he passed the greater part of his time in smoking.” In the year 1802, there was a Frenchman, who, indeed, did not profess to eat stones, but who publicly devoured at the amphitheatre, in the city of Lisbon, a side of raw mutton, with a rabbit and a fowl, both alive: he advertised a repetition of the experiment, with the addition of a live cat; but the magistrates, deeming the exhibition too brutal for the public eye, would not again allow its performance. Notwithstanding the public display of this man, and the extraordinary fact of his having appeared to swallow living animals, may rank him in the class of jugglers, it is still probable that he was no impostor; for instances of such uncommon powers of the stomach are by no means rare, and among others we read of another Frenchman who was in the constant habit, as an amateur, of eating cats alive, and was even strongly suspected of having devoured a child.