A juggler, he says, one of the Kaan’s slaves, made his appearance, and at the Amir’s bidding, began to display his surprising accomplishments. Taking a wooden ball, with several holes in it, through which long thongs were passed, he laid hold of one of these, and slung the ball into the air. It went so high, that the spectators wholly lost sight of it. Observe, that the scene was the palace-court, _sub Jove_. There remained only a little of the end of the thong in the juggler’s hand, and of this he desired a juvenile assistant to lay hold, and mount. He did so, climbing by the thong, and was speedily lost to sight also. The conjuror called him thrice, but receiving no answer, snatched up a knife, as if in a great rage, laid hold of the thong, and in _his_ turn disappeared. By-and-by he threw down one of the boy’s hands, then a foot, then the other hand, the other foot, the trunk, and lastly, the head! Finally, he himself came down, all puffing and panting, and with blood-besmeared clothes kissed the ground before the Amir, addressing him in Chinese. The Amir made some reply; and straightway the juggler took the boy’s _disjecta membra_, laid them in their places, gave a kick, and lo and behold, the boy arose and stood erect, “clothed and in his right mind.” “All this,” says Ibn Batuta, “astonished me beyond measure,”--and no wonder!--“and I had an attack of palpitation like that which overcame me once before in the presence of the Sultan of India, when he showed me something of the same kind. They gave me a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The Kazi Afkharuddin was next to me, and quoth he, ‘Wallah! ’tis my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down, neither maiming nor mending; ’tis all hocus pocus!’” Impartial scientific observers have passed a similar verdict on the proceedings of the “mediums,” who, however, have never achieved anything so surprising as the feat here recorded. Before we incredulously reject the Arab traveller’s narrative, let us compare it with an account furnished by Edward Melton, an Anglo-Dutch traveller, of the performances of some Chinese conjurors, which he saw at Batavia. Passing over the basket-murder trick, which Houdin and others have made familiar to the English public, we come to “a thing which surpasses all belief;” which, indeed, Mr. Melton would scarcely have ventured to relate had not thousands witnessed it at the same time as himself.