My First Voyage to Southern SeasKingston, William Henry Giles
General
My First Voyage to Southern Seas
Kingston, William Henry Giles
Oceania -- Juvenile fiction; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile fiction
After we had taken possession of our mansion we strolled out to see what
was going forward. We could not help stopping to watch the feats of a
juggler. First, he jumped upon a pole six feet from the ground, on
which he placed a cross bar, and balancing himself on it made prodigious
leaps from side to side. He had a companion, who assisted him in his
feats, but how they were done it seemed impossible to discover. After
leaping along to some distance, he returned to the centre of the
admiring circle of spectators. Steadying himself on his pole, he caught
a handful of pebbles thrown up to him by his companion. He held his
hand up, and away flew a number of small birds. Next, an egg was thrown
up to him. Holding it in his two hands, he broke it, when out fell a
serpent and glided away among the crowd. After watching the serpent
till it had disappeared, we found that he was keeping a number of brass
balls in constant motion by striking them with his elbows and then with
his hands. He next performed a still more difficult feat. He balanced
on his nose a small stick, which had at the top of it an inverted ball
or cup. From the rim of the cup were suspended by silken threads twelve
balls with holes in them. He next placed in his mouth twelve rods of
ivory, and while the balls were made to fly round, by managing the rods
with his lips and tongue, he contrived to fit a rod into every ball,
when, letting the centre stick fall, they remained suspended by the
twelve rods. A ball of granite being thrown him, fully seven inches in
diameter, and not less than fourteen pounds' weight, he took it in one
hand, when, extending his arms in a line, he rolled it backwards and
forwards from wrist to wrist, across his shoulders, by some scarcely
perceptible exercise of muscular power. This done, grasping it in both
hands, he threw it up to the height of twenty feet or more, and watching
as it came down till it was close to his head, he bent forward and
caught it between his shoulders. Then, as if this last performance had
afforded him intense pleasure, he jumped forward for fifty yards or
more, returning as before. All this time, it must be remembered, he was
balancing himself on the horizontal bar placed across his single pole.
Those I have mentioned are only some of the extraordinary feats the
juggler performed. What suppleness of limb he must have possessed, and
what an immense amount of practice he must have gone through before he
could have accomplished any one of the feats he performed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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