The Seven Sisters of Sleep: Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the WorldCooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt)
History
The Seven Sisters of Sleep: Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World
Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt)
Drug abuse; Narcotics; Psychotropic drugs; Psychotropic plants; Tobacco use
These visions, and those of a like character, in which the Malay and
the outcast girl appear and re-appear, are almost repeated again in
a work of more recent years, the production of another mind and of a
widely different character. Whoever has read Kingsley’s “Alton Locke,”
cannot fail to have been struck with the vivid opium-like dreams which
pass through the brain of the hero when struck down by fever. One
could almost imagine that its author had himself suffered some of the
fearful experiences which De Quincey narrates. In these the place once
occupied by the two persons above named, are usurped by the cousin and
Lillian; change the names, and apart from the intimate connection of
the two with each other, one could almost believe himself reading a
continuation of those dreams which an unfortunate accident prevented
the English opium-eater giving to the world.
“I was wandering along the lower ridge of the Himalaya. On my right
the line of snow peaks showed like a rosy saw against the clear blue
morning sky. Raspberries and cyclamens were peeping through the snow
around me. As I looked down the abysses I could see far below, through
the thin veils of blue mist that wandered in the glens, the silver
spires of giant deodars, and huge rhododendrons, glowing like trees
of flame. The longing of my life to behold that cradle of mankind was
satisfied. My eyes revelled in vastness, as they swept over the broad
flat jungle at the mountain foot, a desolate sheet of dark gigantic
grasses, furrowed with the paths of the buffalo and rhinoceros, with
barren sandy water courses, desolate pools, and here and there a
single tree, stunted with malaria, shattered by mountain floods; and
far beyond the vast plains of Hindostan, enlaced with myriad silver
rivers and canals, tanks and rice fields, cities with their mosques and
minarets, gleaming among the stately palm-groves along the boundless
horizon. Above me was a Hindoo temple, cut out of the yellow sandstone.
I climbed up to the higher tier of pillars among monstrous shapes of
gods and fiends, that mouthed and writhed and mocked at me, struggling
to free themselves from their bed of rock. The bull Nundi rose and
tried to gore me; hundred-handed gods brandished quoits and sabres
around my head; and Kali dropped the skull from her gore-dripping
jaws to clutch me for her prey. Then my mother came, and seizing the
pillars of the portico, bent them like reeds; an earthquake shook the
hills—great sheets of woodland slid roaring and crashing into the
valleys. A tornado swept through the temple halls, which rocked and
tossed like a vessel in a storm: a crash—a cloud of yellow dust which
filled the air—choked me—blinded me—burned me—
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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