5. Striking the arm, causing the blood to flow, and stopping it instantaneously.
6. Eating pounded glass.
7. Swallowing pebbles, bottle-heels, &c.
8. Walking on red-hot iron, or passing the tongue over a white-hot plate of iron.
Let us begin with the most simple trick, that of thrusting a dagger into the cheek.
The Arab who performed this trick turned his back on me; hence I could get very near him and watch his movements. He placed against his cheek the point of a dagger, which was round and blunt as that of a paper-knife. The flesh, instead of being pierced, went in for about two inches between the molars, which were kept apart, exactly as a cake of india-rubber would do.
This trick is best performed by thin and aged persons, because the flesh of their cheeks is peculiarly elastic. Now, the Aïssaoua fulfilled these conditions in every respect.
The Arab who ate the prickly pear leaves gave us no opportunity of inspecting them, and I am inclined to believe that the leaves had been prepared so as to do him no injury, otherwise he would not have neglected this important point, which would have doubled the merit of the miracle. But even had he shown them to us, this man went through so many unneccessary manœuvres, that he could very easily have changed them for harmless leaves. In that case, it would be a fifteenth-rate trick of conjuring.
In the following experiment, two Arabs held a sabre, one by the hilt, the other by the point; a third then came forward, and after raising his clothes so as to leave the abdomen quite bare, laid himself flat on the edge of the blade, while a fourth mounted on his back, and seemed to press the whole weight of his body on him.
This trick may be easily explained.