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6 ences which might attend his death; bat,
7 on mentioning this intention to the patient, he preferred being
8 conveyed to a friend of his, who was living at the tower called
9 Shahbmj, where he himself hmi previously resided; which was
10 accordingly done. I gave him some remedies, and sent him
11 away ; but scarcely was lie removed from the stable, when the
12 payabs (armed attendants of the durbar) appeared, summoning
13 me to present myself with the faqueer to the durbar. I stated,
14 that lie had already received the reward of his insolence, and was
15 not expected to recover; but Sheer Sing, who was probably much
16 annoyed at the epithet, “ son of a laundress,’' despatched several
17 messengers, ordering me to bring him to the durbar on his bed ;
18 and I was obliged to obey. 1 arrived, however, too late, for the
19 assembly hud already left the durbar, and Sheer Sing bad departed
20 from the lu/.ooreebagh to the interior of the fortress. On the same
21 day, the faqueer had a swelling on his knee, and diarrluea ; but
22 he soon recovered, and afterwards proved very useful to me,
23 when l began to make my experiments wif i the serpents, which
24 produced so many curious results, that I sacrificed upwards of
25 two hundred fowls in less than six months. At that time poultry
26 was remarkably cheap at .Lahore, the English not having yet
27 occupied that country, and four couple could be purchased for
28 one rupee. The faqueer really possessed the secret of preventing
29 his blood being affected by the bites of venomous reptiles; and,
30 having at length succeeded in obtaining bis statement of it, I
31 now present it to the public. The faqueer was an arsenic-eater,
32 and to tin’s reason he ascribed the cause of his remaining unaffected
33 by any serpent s venom. Perhaps he was right, because in India
34 .arsenic is an ingredient in various compositions which arc recom¬
35 mended us remedies against the bite of serpents. He told mo,
36 that during lvis stay under my control, be could not procure the
37 poison, and that that was the reason why the viper's bite affected
38 him, which might possibly have been the case.
39 On my journey from Cabul to Bokhara, I met with an Affghan
40 physician and horse-dealer, travelling from Bokhara, who, it was
41 state'.!, consumed every day one drachm if arsenic, in order to