Tales from The Terrific Register: The Book of Wonders E-Book

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 217

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

From strange medical afflictions, including crumbling skeletons and 'mortifying' limbs, to miraculous escapes and singular preservations, wonderful beasts such as the vast guardian snake of Nurrah, and all manner of plagues, earthquakes and disasters, the Terrific Register was an essential purchase for lovers of strange tales across England. This selection contains the most startling tales from this 185-year-old publication. Amongst the prodigious marvels contained herein you will find giants, children with horns and babies brought up by wolves, uncanny dreams, devils, and attacks by everything from cannibals to buffalos, snakes, sharks, wolves, rats, crocodiles, bears, 'the ferocious attack of a lioness on the Exeter mail', and a man bitten twenty times by a shark whilst fishing in Yorkshire. Richly illustrated with original woodcuts, this volume will delight lovers of the Fortean everywhere.

Leseprobe

Tales from the

TERRIFICREGISTER

The Book of Wonders

First published 1825

This edition first published 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2014

All rights reserved© Cate Ludlow, 2009, 2014

The right of Cate Ludlow to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 6172 1

Original typesetting by The History Press

Tales from the

TERRIFICREGISTER

The Book of Wonders

EDITED BY

CATE LUDLOW

An Engagement Between A Sailor And A Shark

In the latter part of Queen Anne’s reign, the sailors on board the York-Merchant, a collier, having disembarked the last part of their landing, at Barbadoes, those who had been employed in that dirty work, ventured into the sea to wash themselves, but had not been long there before a person on board observed a large shark making towards them, and gave them notice of their danger: upon which they swam back, and all but one reached the boat; him the shark overtook almost within reach of the oars, and gripping him by the small of the back, his devouring jaws soon cut him asunder, and as soon as he had swallowed the lower part of his body the remaining part was taken up, and carried on board, where his comrade was. The friendship between him and the deceased had long been distinguished by a reciprocal discharge of all such endearing offices as implied a union and sympathy of souls. On seeing the severed trunk of his friend, he was filled with horror and emotion, too great to be expressed by words. During this affecting scene, the insatiable shark was observed traversing the bloody surface, searching after the remainder of his prey. The rest of the crew thought themselves happy in being on board; he alone was unhappy, at his not being within reach of the destroyer. Fired at the sight, and vowing that he would make the devourer disgorge, or be swallowed himself, he plunged into the deep, armed with a sharp pointed knife. The shark no sooner saw him, but he made furiously towards him; both equally eager, the one for his prey, the other for revenge. The moment the shark opened his rapacious jaws, his adversary dexterously diving and grasping him with his left hand, somewhat below the upper fins, successfully employed his knife in his right hand, giving him repeated stabs in the belly. The enraged shark, after many unavailing efforts, finding himself overmatched in his own element, endeavoured to disengage himself, sometimes plunging to the bottom, then mad with pain rearing his uncouth form above the foaming waves, stained with his own streaming blood. The shark, much weakened by the loss of blood, made towards the shore, and with him his conqueror, who, flushed with an assurance of victory, pushed his foe with redoubled ardour, and by the help of an ebbing tide, dragged him on shore, ripped up his bowels, and united, and buried the severed body of his friend in one grave.

An Account Of A Family Who Were All Afflicted With the Loss Of Their Limbs

John Dowling, a poor labouring man, living at Wattisham, had a wife and six children, the eldest a girl, fifteen years of age, the youngest about four months. They were all at that time very healthy, and one of them had been ill for some time before. On Sunday the 10th of January, 1762, the eldest girl complained, in the morning, of a pain in her leg; particularly in the calf of her leg; towards the evening the pain grew exceedingly violent. The same evening, another girl complained of the same violent pain in the same leg. On the Monday, the mother and another child; and on Tuesday, all the rest of the family were afflicted in the same manner, some in one leg and some in both legs. The little infant was taken from the mother’s breast; it seemed to be in pain, but the limbs did not mortify: it lived a few weeks. The mother and the other five children continued in violent pain a considerable time. In about four or five days, the diseased leg began to turn black gradually, appearing at first covered with blue spots, as if it had been bruised. The other leg of those who were affected at first only in one leg about that time was also affected with the same excruciating pain, and in a few days the leg also began to mortify. The mortified parts separated gradually from the sound parts, and the surgeon had, in most of the cases, no trouble other than to cut through the bone, which was black and almost dry. The state of the limbs was thus: Mary, the mother, aged 40 years, has lost the right foot at the ankle; the left foot is also cut off, and the two bones of the leg remain almost dry, with only some little putrid flesh adhering in the same places. The flesh is sound to about two inches below the knee. The bones would have been sawn through that place, if she would have consented to it.

Mary, aged fifteen years, both legs off below the knees – Elizabeth, aged thirteen years, both legs off below the knees. Sarah, aged ten years, one foot off at the ankle: the other foot was affected, but not in so great a degree, and was now sound again.–Robert, aged eight, both legs off below the knees.– Edward, aged four years, both feet off.– An infant, four months old, dead.

The father was attacked about a fortnight after the rest of the family, and in a slight degree; the pain being confined to his fingers. Two fingers of the right hand continued for a long time discoloured, and partly shrunk and contracted; but he subsequently had some use of them.– The nails of the other hand were also discoloured; he lost two of them.

It is remarkable, that during all the time of this misfortune, the whole family are said to have appeared well, in other respects, ate heartily, and slept well when the violence of the pain began to abate. The mother was quite emaciated, and had very little use of her hands. The eldest girl had a superficial ulcer in one thigh. The rest of the family were pretty well. The stumps of some of them perfectly healed.

A Brand From The Burning

John Wesley’s favourite phrase, that ‘he was a brand plucked out of the burning’, had a literal as well as a figurative meaning. Mr Wesley’s father was rector of Ebworth, a market-town in the Lindsay division of Lincolnshire, irregularly built, and containing at that time in its parish about two thousand persons. The inhabitants are chiefly employed in the culture and preparation of hemp and flax, in spinning these articles, and in the manufactory of sacking and bagging. Mr Wesley found his parishioners in a profligate state; and the zeal with which he discharged his duty in admonishing them of their sins, excited a spirit of diabolical hatred in those whom it failed to reclaim. Some of these wretches twice attempted to set his house on fire, without success: they succeeded in a third attempt. At midnight some pieces of burning wood fell from the roof upon the bed in which one of the children lay, and burnt her feet. Before she could give the alarm, Mr Wesley was roused by a cry of fire from the street: little imagining it was his own house, he opened the door, and found it full of smoke, and that the roof was already burnt through. His wife being ill at the time, slept apart from him, and in a separate room. Bidding her and the eldest two girls rise and shift for their lives, he burst open the nursery-door, where the maid was sleeping with five children. He snatched up the youngest, and bade the others follow her; the eldest three did so, but John, who was then six years old, was not awakened by all this, and in the alarm and confusion he was forgotten.

By the time they reached the hall, the flames has spread every where around them, and Mr Wesley then found that the keys of the house-door were above stairs. He ran and recovered them, a minute before the staircase took fire. When the door was opened, a strong north-east wind drove in the flames with such violence from the side of the house, that it was impossible to stand against them. Some of the children got through the windows, and others through a little door, into the garden. Mrs Wesley could not reach the garden-door, and was not in a condition to climb to the window: after three times attempting to face the flames, and shrinking as often from their force, she besought Christ to preserve her, if it was his will, from that dreadful death: she then, to use her own expression, ‘waded’ through the fire, and escaped into the street naked as she was, with some slight scorching of the hands and face.

At this time John, who had not been remembered ‘til that moment, was heard crying in the nursery. The father ran to the stairs, but they were so nearly consumed, that they could not bear his weight, and being utterly in despair, he fell upon his knees in the hall, and in agony commended the soul of the child to God. John had been awakened by the light, and thinking it was day, called to the maid to take him up; but as no one answered, he opened the curtains, and saw streaks of fire upon the top of the room. He ran to the door, and finding it impossible to escape that way, climbed upon a chest which stood near the window, and he was then seen from the yard. There was no time for procuring a ladder, but it was happily a low house; one man was hoisted upon the shoulders of another, and could then reach the window, so as to take him out: a moment later and it would have been too late: the whole roof fell in, and had it not fell inward, they must have all been crushed together. When the child was carried out to the house where his parents were, the father cried out, ‘Come, neighbours, let us kneel down; let us give thanks to God! He has given me all my eight children; let the house go, I am rich enough.’ John Wesley remembered this providential deliverance through life with the deepest gratitude. In reference to it he had a house in flames engraved as an emblem under one of his portraits, with these words for the motto, ‘Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?’

The Awful Death of Mr Munro

This dreadful event is thus related in a letter from a friend of the unfortunate gentleman, dated December 23, 1792.

‘To describe the awful, horrid, and lamentable accident I have just been an eye-witness of, is impossible. Yesterday morning, Mr Downey, of the Company’s troops, Lieutenant Pyefinch, and poor Mr Munro and I, went on shore on Saugur Island, to shoot deer; we saw innumerable tracks of tygers and deer, but still we were induced to pursue our sport, and did the whole day; about half past three we sat down on the jungle to eat some cold meat sent us from the ship, and had just commenced our meal, when Mr Pyefinch and a black servant told us there was a fine deer within six yards of us; Mr Downey and I immediately jumped up to take our guns – mine was the nearest; and I had just laid hold of it, when I heard a roar like thunder, and saw an immense royal tyger spring on the unfortunate Munro, who was sitting down; in a moment his head was in the beast’s mouth, and he rushed into the jungle with him with as much ease as I could lift a kitten, tearing him through the thickest bushes and trees – every thing yielding to his monstrous strength. The agonies of horror, regret, and I must say fear, (for there were two tygers, a male and a female), rushed on me at once; the only effort I cold make was to fire at him, though the poor youth was still in his mouth. I relied partly on Providence, partly on my own aim, and fired a musket. I saw the tyger stagger and agitated, and I cried out so immediately; Mr Downey then fired two shots, and I one more. We retired from the jungle, and a few minutes after, Mr Munro came up to us, all over blood, and fell; we took him on our backs to the boat, and got every medical assistance for him from the Valentine Indiaman, which lay at anchor near the island, but in vain. He lived twenty-four hours in the extreme of torture: his head and scull were all torn and broken to pieces, and he was wounded by the beast’s claws all over his neck and shoulders: but it was better to take him away, though irrecoverable, than leave him to be devoured limb by limb. We have just read the funeral service over his body, and committed it to the deep. He was an amiable and promising youth.

‘I must observe there was a large fire blazing close to us, composed of ten or a dozen whole trees: I made it myself on purpose to keep the tygers off, as I had always heard it would. There were eight or ten of the natives about us; many shots had been fired at the place, and much noise and laughing at the time, but the ferocious animal disregarded all.

‘The human mind cannot form an idea of the scene: it turned my very soul within me. The beast was about four feet and a half high, and nine long. His head first appeared as large as an ox’s, his eyes darting fire, and his roar, when he first seized his prey, will never be out of my recollection. We had scarcely pushed our boat from that cursed shore, when the tygress made her appearance, raging mad almost, and remained on the sand as long as the distance would allow me to see her.’

The Guardian Snake

On a journey from Baroche to Dhuboy, a Mr Forbes stopped at Nurrah, a large ruined town, which had been plundered and burnt by the Mahrattas. The principle house had belonged to an opulent man, who emigrated during the war, and died in a distant country. Mr Forbes was privately informed that under one of the towers there was a secret cell, formed to contain his treasure; the information could not be doubted, because it came from the mason, who constructed the cell. Accordingly, the man accompanied him through several spacious courts and apartments, to a dark closet in that tower; the room was about eight feet square, being the whole size of the interior of the tower; and it was some stories above the place where the treasure was said to be deposited. In the floor there was a hole large enough for a slender person to pass through: they enlarged it and sent two men down by a ladder. After descending several feet, they came to another floor, composed in a like manner of bricks and channam, and here also was a similar aperture. This also was enlarged, torches were procured, and by their light Mr Forbes perceived from the upper apartment a dungeon of great depth below, as the mason had described.

He desired the men to descend and search for the treasure; but they refused, declaring that wherever the money was concealed in Hindostan, there was also a demon, in the shape of a serpent, to guard it. He laughed at their superstition, and repeated his orders in such a manner as to enforce obedience, though his attendants sympathised with the men, and seemed to expect the event with more of fear and awe than of curiosity. The ladder was too short to reach the dungeon; strong ropes therefore were sent for, and more torches. The men reluctantly obeyed, and as they were lowered, the dark sides and the moist floor of the dungeon extinguished the light which they carried in their hands. But they had not been many seconds on the ground, before they screamed out that they were enclosed with a large snake. In spite of their screams, Mr Forbes was incredulous, and declared that the ropes should not be let down until he had seen the creature; their cries were dreadful; he however was inflexible; and the upper lights were held steadily, to give him as distinct as view as possible into the dungeon. There he perceived something like billets of wood, or rather, he says, like a ship’s cable seen from the deck, coiled up in a dark hole; but no language can express his sensation of astonishment and terror, when he saw a serpent actually rear his head over an immense length of body, coiled in volumes on the ground, and working itself into an exertion by a sort of sluggish motion. ‘What I felt,’ he continues, ‘on seeing two fellow-creatures exposed by my orders to this fiend, I must leave to the reader’s imagination.’ To his inexpressible joy they were drawn up unhurt, but almost lifeless with fear.

Hay was then thrown down upon the lighted torches which they had dropped.– When the flames had expired, a large snake was found scorched and dead, but no money. Mr Forbes supposes that the owner had carried away the treasure with him, but forgotten to liberate the snake placed there as its keeper. Whether the snake was venomous or not, he has omitted to mention, or perhaps to observe; if he were not, it would be no defence for the treasure: and if it were, it seems to have become too torpid with inaction, confinement, and darkness, to exercise its powers of destruction. Where the popular beliefs prevails that snakes are the guardians of hidden treasure, and where the art of charming serpents is commonly practiced, there is no difficulty in supposing that they who conceal a treasure (as is frequently done under the oppressive government of the East) would sometimes place it under such protection.

Horrors Of The Plague At Marseilles, 1720

Which way soever one turns, the streets appear strowed on both sides with dead bodies close by each other, most of which being putrefied, are insupportably hideous to behold.

As the numbers of slaves employed to take them out of the houses, is very insufficient to be able to carry all off daily, some frequently remain there whole weeks; and would remain longer, if the stench they emit, which poisons the neighbours, did not compel them for their own preservation, to overcome all aversion to such horrid work, and go into the apartments where they lie, to drag them down into the streets: they pull them out with hooks, and hawl them by ropes fastened to the staves of those hooks into the streets: this they do in the night, that they may draw them to some distance from their own houses; they leave them extended before another’s door, who at opening it the next morning is frightened at the sight of such an object, which generally infects him and gives him death.

The Ring, and all public walks, squares, and market-places, the key of the port, are spread with dead bodies, some lying in heaps: the square before the building called the Loge, and the pallisadoes of the port, are filled with the continual number of dead bodies that are brought ashore from the ships and vessels, which are crowded with families, whom fear induced to take refuge there, in a false persuasion that he plague would not reach them upon the water.

Under every tree in the Ring and walks, under every pent-house of the shops in the streets and on the port, one sees among the dead a number of poor sick, and even whole families, lying on a little straw, or on ragged mattresses; some are in a languishing condition, to be relieved only by death; others are light-headed by the force of the venom which rages in them; they implore the assistance of those who pass by; some in pitiful complaints, some in groans and outcries, which pain or frenzy draw from them. An intolerable stink exhales from among them: they not only endure the effects of distemper, but suffer equally by the public want of food and common necessaries: they die under rags that cover them, and every moment adds to the number of the dead that lie about them. It rends the heart, to behold on the pavement so many wretched mothers, who have lying by their sides the dead bodies of their children, whom they have seen expire, without being able to give them any relief; and so many poor infants still hanging at the breasts of the mothers, who died holding them in their arms, sucking in the rest of that venom which will soon put them in the same condition.

If any space be yet left in the streets, it is filled with infected household goods and clothes, which are thrown out of windows every where, so that one cannot find a void space to set one’s foot.

All the dogs and cats that are killed, lie putrefying every where among the dead bodies, the sick, and the infected clothes; all the port is filled with those thrown into it; and while they float, they add their stench to the general infection, which has spread all over the town, and preys among the vitals, the senses, and the mind.

Those one meets in the streets, are generally livid and drooping, as if their souls had begun to part from their bodies; or whom the violence of the distemper has made delirious, who wandering about they know not whither, as long as they can keep on their legs, soon drop through weakness; and, unable to get up again, expire on the spot; some writhed into strange postures, denoting the torturing venom which struck them to the heart; others are agitated by such disorders of the mind, that they cut their own throats, or leap into the sea, or throw themselves out of the window, to put an end to their misery, and prevent the death which was not far off. Nothing is to be heard or seen on all sides but distress, lamentation, tears, sighs, groans, affright, despair.

To conceive of so many horrors, one must figure to one’s self, in one view, all the miseries and calamities that human nature is subject to; and one cannot venture to draw near such a scene, without being struck dead, or seized with unutterable horrors of the mind.

Intrepid Encounter With A Wolf

Wolves were very numerous at Connecticut, in the United States of America, soon after General Putnam removed thither: they broke into a sheep fold, and killed upwards of seventy fine sheep and goats, besides wounding many others. This havoc was committed by an old she-wolf, which, with her annual whelps, had for many years been obnoxious in the country. The young were commonly destroyed by the vigilance of the hunters; but the old one was too sagacious to come within gun-shot. Upon being closely pursued, she would generally fly to the western woods, and return the following winter with another litter of whelps.

This wolf became, at length, such an intolerable nuisance, that Mr Putnam entered into a combination with five of his neighbours to hunt alternately until they could destroy her. Two, by rotation, were to be constantly in pursuit. It was known that, having lost the toes from one foot, by a steel trap, she made one track shorter than the other. By this vestige, the pursuers recognised, in a light snow, the route of this ferocious animal. Having followed her to Connecticut river, and found that she had turned back in a direct course towards Pomfref, they immediately returned, and by ten the next morning, the blood-hounds had driven her into a den about three miles distant from the house of Mr Putnam; the people soon collected with dogs, guns, straw, fire, and sulphur to attack the common enemy. With this apparatus, several unsuccessful efforts were made to force her from the den. The hounds came back badly wounded, and refused to return. The smoke of the blazing straw had no effect, nor did the fumes of burnt brimstone, with which the cavern was filled, compel her to quit the retirement. Wearied with such fruitless attempts (which had brought the time to ten o’clock at night), Mr Putnam tried once more to make his dog enter; but in vain: he proposed his man to go down into the cavern, and shoot the wolf; he declined the hazardous service. Then it was, that the General, angry at his disappointment, and declaring that he was ashamed to have a coward in his family, resolved himself to destroy the ferocious beast, lest she should escape through some unknown fissure of the rock. His neighbours strongly remonstrated against the perilous enterprise; but he, knowing that wild animals were intimidated by fire, had provided several strips of birch-bark, the only combustible material which he could obtain that would afford light in the darksome cave, prepared for his descent.