" "It was to regain office, to satisfy the Irish irreconcilables, to secure the Pope's brass band, and not to pursue 'the glorious traditions of English Liberalism,' that Mr. Gladstone struck his two blows at the Upas tree."—Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, in Fort. Rev. Sept. pp. 289-90.
1876.—"... the Upas-tree superstition."—Contemp. Rev. May.
1880.—"Lord Crichton, M.P. ... last night said ... there was one topic which was holding all their minds at present ... what was this conspiracy which, like the Upas-tree of fable, was spreading over the land, and poisoning it?..."—In St. James's Gazette, Nov. 11, p. 7.
1885.—"The dread Upas dropped its fruits.
"Beneath the shady canopy of this tall fig no native will, if he knows it, dare to rest, nor will he pass between its stem and the wind, so strong is his belief in its evil influence.
"In the centre of a tea estate, not far off from my encampment, stood, because no one could be found daring enough to cut it down, an immense specimen, which had long been a nuisance to the proprietor on account of the lightning every now and then striking off, to the damage of the shrubs below, large branches, which none of his servants could be induced to remove. One day, having been pitchforked together and burned, they were considered disposed of: but next morning the whole of his labourers awoke, to their intense alarm, afflicted with a painful eruption.... It was then remembered that the smoke of the burning branches had been blown by the wind through the village...." (Two Chinamen were engaged to cut down and remove the tree, and did not suffer; it was ascertained that they had smeared their bodies with coco-nut oil.)—H. O. Forbes, A Naturalist's Wanderings, 112-113.
[Mr. Bent (Southern Arabia, 72, 89) tells a similar story about the collection of frankincense, and suggests that it was based on the custom of employing slaves in this work, and on an interpretation of the name Hadrimaut, said to mean 'valley of death.']
UPPER ROGER, s. This happy example of the Hobson-Jobson dialect occurs in a letter dated 1755, from Capt. Jackson at Syrian in Burma, which is given in Dalrymple's Oriental Repertory, i. 192. It is a corruption of the Skt. yuva-rāja, 'young King,' the Caesar or Heir-Apparent, a title borrowed from ancient India by most of the Indo-Chinese monarchies, and which we generally render in Siam as the 'Second King.'
URZ, URZEE, and vulgarly URJEE, s. P.—H. 'arẓ and 'arẓī, from Ar. 'arẓ, the latter a word having an extraordinary variety of uses even for Arabic. A petition or humble representation either oral or in writing; the technical term for a request from an inferior to a superior; 'a sifflication' as one of Sir Walter Scott's characters calls it. A more elaborate form is 'arẓ-dāsht, 'memorializing.' This is used in a very barbarous form of Hobson-Jobson below.
1606.—"Every day I went to the Court, and in every eighteen or twentie dayes I put up Ars or Petitions, and still he put mee off with good words...."—John Mildenhall, in Purchas, i. (Bk. iii.) 115.