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 erous with untimely, wretched and appalling deaths, manifest to the eyes of the world; when we shall have departed this life from earth cause us to be sent and all to be born in the great hell, where we shall burn with quenchless fire for tens and hundreds of thousands of ages and limitless transmigrations; and when we have expiated our penalty there, and are again born into any world, we pray we may fail to find the least happiness in worlds of pleasurable enjoyments; let us not meet the god Buddha, the sacred teachings, the sacred priests that come to be gracious to animals, helping them escape misery, reach heaven and attain a succession of births and deaths; should we meet them, let them grant us no gracious assistance." This is not all, but it is enough to show the fearfulness of the oath, to which the officials listened with apparent indifference.

The governor of the province, sitting upon his mat, with his vessels and ornaments of gold spread out before him, seemed the most indifferent of them all, and spent the greater portion of the time occupied by reading the oath in picking fleas from his favorite dog and in cracking them over his thumb. After the reading of the oath the various weapons were dipped into the water, which exercise was accompanied by the chanting of the priests and the blowing of conch-shells, after which all in authority drank of the water