Atmospheric denudation and weathering have produced remarkable effects on the lower part of the Nonkreem valley, in the Khasia mountains, in India, which is blocked up by a pine-crested hill, 200 feet high, entirely formed of round blocks of granite, heaped up so as to resemble an old moraine; but, like the Nunklow boulders, these are not arranged as if by glacial action. The granite is very soft, decomposing into a course reddish sand, that colours the Boga-panee. To procure the iron sand, which is disseminated through it, the natives conduct water over the beds, and as the lighter particles are washed away, the remainder is removed to troughs, where the separation of the ore is completed. The smelting is very rudely carried on in charcoal fires, blown by enormous double-action bellows, worked by two persons, who stand on the machine, raising the flaps with their hands, and expanding them with their feet, as shown in our cut. There is neither furnace nor flux used in the reduction. The fire is kindled on one side of an upright stone (like the head-stone of a grave), with a small arched hole close to the ground: near this hole the bellows are suspended: and a bamboo tube from each of its compartments meets in a larger one, by which the draft is directed under the hole in the stone to the fire. The ore is run into lumps as large as two fists, with a rugged surface: these lumps are afterwards cleft nearly in two to show their purity.
PRESERVATION OF DEAD BODIES.
About a mile distant from Palermo in Sicily, is a celebrated Monastery of Capuchins, in which there is a vault made use of as a receptacle for the dead. It consists of four wide passages, each forty feet in length, into which the light is admitted by windows, placed at the ends. Along the sides of these subterraneous galleries are niches, in which the bodies are placed upright, and clothed in a coarse dress, with their heads, arms, and feet bare. They are prepared for this situation by broiling them six or seven months upon a gridiron, over a slow fire, till all the fat and moisture are consumed. The skin which looks like pale-coloured leather, remains entire, and the character of the countenance is, in some degree preserved.
THE CAGOTS.
In the Department of the Hautes Pyrénées in France is sometimes to be met with a creature about four feet high, with an enormous head, stiff, long hair, a pale countenance, a dead-looking eye, legs that have the appearance of being in the last stage of a dropsy, and an enormous goitre on the neck, which sometimes hangs down below the stomach. This unhappy being begs for charity by extending his hand, smiling vaguely, and by uttering inarticulate sounds or suppressed cries, which his desolate and degraded situation alone interprets. These Cagots, for so they are here called, live isolated from the rest of the world; twenty years ago, if any one of these unfortunate beings left his hut, and ventured into the towns or villages, the children would exclaim—Cagot! Cagot! and this cry would bring the smith from his forge, the shopkeeper from his counter, the private individual from his fireside; and, if the poor being did not hasten his flight, and slow was his progress, he not unfrequently lost his life by the stones that were flung after him. There was, however, one day in the week—Sunday, the Lord's day—and one asylum—the church, the Lord's house—that was free to them; yet man there made a distinction between him and his fellow man. A narrow door, through which no one passed but the Cagots, a chapel, which no one entered but these unhappy Cagots, was reserved for their sole use, where they offered up their imperfect prayers, without seeing or being seen by any one. Even in these days, they are still considered an outcast race; and an alliance of a peasant girl of the plains with a Cagot, would excite as much commotion among the inhabitants of the valleys of the Pyrénées, as the famed one between Idamore and Néala, in M. Delavigne's celebrated tragedy of the Paria. Yet it is strange that these deformities do not show themselves until a child has passed the age of six or seven: he is before this period like other healthy children; his complexion is fresh, his eye lively, and his limbs in proportion; but at twelve, his head has increased prodigiously, his complexion has become sallow, his teeth have lost their whiteness, his eye its fire. Three years later his skin is shrivelled, his teeth open with difficulty, and he pronounces all the consonants with a whistling indistinctness, that renders his language unintelligible to strangers. His mind partakes of the deformity and weakness of his body, for he is, at fifteen, little better than an idiot. Such are the Cagots of the Pyrénées.
DISCONTINUANCE OF TORTURE.
Torture had been applied, down to the close of Elizabeth, to the investigation of all kinds of crime; but after that time it was chiefly confined to state offences. Its favourite instrument was the dreadful rack, or break, traditionally said to have been introduced under Henry VI. by John, Duke of Exeter, constable of the Tower, whence it was called the Duke of Exeter's daughter. A milder punishment was inflicted by Skevington's gyves, which compressed the victim closely together, whilst the rack distended his whole frame in the most painful manner. In 1588 the manacles were introduced, and soon became the most usual mode of torture, but their precise character is not well understood. A variety of instruments of torture are still shown in the Tower, taken, it is said, out of the Spanish Armada, but at all events admirably suited to the gloomy dungeon wherein they appear, and in which half-starvation, and the horrid cells called Little Ease and Rat's Dungeon (the latter placed below high water mark, and totally dark, so that the rats crowded in as the tide rose,) added to the sufferings of the poor victim when released for a brief space from the fell grasp of the prison-ministers. Torture was not abolished in Scotland till 1708; in France till 1789; in Russia till 1801; in Bavaria and Wurtemberg till 1806; in Hanover till 1822; nor in the Grand Duchy of Baden till 1831.
THE MODERN NAMES OF REGIMENTS.
The modern names of regiments were first given to them in the reign of Charles II., the Coldstreams or Foot Guards being formed in 1660, when two regiments were added to one raised about ten years before by General Monk at Coldstream on the borders of Scotland; to these were added the 1st Royal Scots, brought over from France at the Restoration. The Life Guards were raised in 1661, with the Oxford Blues (so called from the first commander, Aubrey, Earl of Oxford); and also the 2nd or Queen's Foot. The 3rd or Old Buffs were raised in 1665, and the 21st Foot or Scotch Fusileers (from their carrying the fusil, which was lighter than the musket), in 1678. In that year the Grenadiers (so named from their original weapon, the hand grenade) were first brought into our service, and in 1680 the 4th or King's Own were raised. James II. added to the cavalry the 1st or King's Regiment of Dragoon's Guards, and the 2nd or Queen's ditto in 1685; and to the infantry, in the same year, the 5th and 7th, or Royal Fusileers; and in 1688 the 23rd or Welsh Fusileers.