A yoke of
this description varies in weight from fifty to a hundred pounds,
and presses so heavily upon the neck and shoulders of the poor
wretch who bears it, that he is unable to convey his victuals to his
mouth himself, and is compelled to wait till some compassionate soul
feeds him. This punishment lasts from a few days to several months;
in the latter case the prisoner generally dies.
Another description of punishment is the bastinado with the bamboo,
which, when applied to the more tender parts of the body, very
often, as early as the fifteenth blow, frees its victim for ever
from all his earthly sufferings. Other more severe punishments,
which in no way yield the palm to those of the Holy Inquisition,
consist in flaying the prisoner alive, crushing his limbs, cutting
the sinews out of his feet, and so on. Their modes of carrying out
the sentence of death appear to be mild in comparison, and are
generally confined to strangling and decapitation, although, as I
was informed, in certain extraordinary cases, the prisoner is
executed by being sawed in two, or left to die of starvation.
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