Dung heap

“ In the next dungeon dwell the misers in awful torment, being linked by their hearts to chests of burning coin, the rust of which was consuming them without end, just as they had never thought of an end to the piling of them, and now they were tearing themselves to pieces with more than madness through grief and remorse. Below this was a charnel vault where some of the apothecaries had been ground down and stuffed into earthenware pots with Album graecum, dung, and many a stale ointment. ”

“ Ducket's system of dunging. He conceives, and I apprehend very justly, that the more dunghills are stirred and turned over, and rotted, the more of their virtue is lost. It is not a question of straw merely wetted; but good long dung he esteems more than that quantity of short dung, which time will convert the former to. Two loads of long may become one of short ”

“ One in fire, and two in field, Their belief with blood have sealed! Dying as their father died, For the God their foes denied; Three were in a dungeon cast, Of whom this wreck is left the last.
[Pg 90] There are seven pillars of Gothic mould In Chillon's dungeons deep and old, There are seven columns, massy and gray, Dim with a dull imprisoned ray,— A sunbeam which hath lost its way, And through the crevice and the cleft Of the thick wall is fallen and left, Creeping o'er the floor so damp, Like a marsh's meteor lamp,— And in each pillar there is a ring, And in each ring there is a chain ”

“ Some people throw a newly-born child on a dung-hill and take it back, saying that they found it on the dung-hill, with the belief that a child of such low origin cannot be snatched away from them by Fate. ”

“ Under that building which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking vessel from which a sharp fragment may be shattered, shall by any chance be seen. There is nothing for it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling of its wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and silence them with one crash. ”

“ At the street corners, at the bends of heavy little stone bridges, in niches behind iron bars, dwarfish idols can be seen between two red candles. After a long progress under the rain, in the darkness and filth, we find ourselves suddenly in a yellow blind alley which a big lantern lights with a brutal flare. Color of blood, color of pestilence, the high walls of the dungeon where we are have been daubed with an ocher so red that it seems of itself to irradiate light. The door at our left is simply a round hole. ”

“ After that, I went about gathering all the dung I could find, and then, returning, piled it up all over the fire to make it last the whole night — a precaution which was necessary to keep off snow-leopards, which often prove to be dangerous nocturnal enemies of man in these parts. ”

“ It was one of those constructed for malefactors of the deepest cast, being partially under the ground, and partaking of the nature of a dungeon. The mighty stones of the walls were green and damp, and together with the cold, clay floor, were sufficient of themselves to suggest speedy illness, and perhaps death, to the occupant. Its only furniture consisted of a single wooden stool, a pallet of straw, and a rude table.
On the pallet alluded to lay a man in the prime of life, his eyes closed in sleep, and the wan hue of death upon his countenance. ”

“ Without the Trenching-plough, however, his opinion would be different. If long dung is ploughed in, in the common manner, with lumps and bundles sticking out at many places along every furrow, which lets the sun and air into the rest that seems covered, he thinks, so used, it is mostly lost, or given to the winds: in such a case, short rotted manure will be better covered, and should be preferred. But with his plough nothing of this happens; and it enables him to use his dung in such a state as gives him a large quantity instead of a small one. ”

“ It was winter weather, and the frost is sometimes shrewd even in a California winter. We had no blankets in the dungeons. Please know that it is very cold to stretch bruised human flesh on frosty stone. In the end they did give us water. Jeering and cursing us, the guards ran in the fire-hoses and played the fierce streams on us, dungeon by dungeon, hour after hour, until our bruised flesh was battered all anew by the violence with which the water smote us, until we stood knee-deep in the water which we had raved for and for which now we raved to cease. ”

“ In the midst of each dark and filthy dungeon is fixed a stone, with two iron chains, to which one or two of these wretched creatures are attached by an iron ring fastened round the neck. There they sit staring with fearfully distorted faces, their hair and beard unkempt, their bodies emaciated, and the marrow of life drying up within them. ”

“ One degree darker, and more horrible, are the dungeons, which receive no light whatever, save from a jet of gas without the gratings of the doors; into these refractory guests are stowed, that their rebellious sounds may not disturb the ears of any passers-by above ground.
“Deeper, and deeper still,” down beneath the very foundations of the building, at the foot of a dark narrow winding stair, fast crumbling to decay, is yet another dungeon, long since closed for any practical purposes; the eye of curiosity alone happily is permitted to penetrate its depths. ”

“ Six inches of common dunghill manure, eight inches of turf, six inches of dung as before, six inches of sifted earth, eight inches of turf, six inches of very rotten dung, eight inches of the best of earth. The last layer of earth must then be well mixed with the last of dung. ”

“ Wolf’s dung is mentioned as good for cataract.— (Idem, c. 11.)
Hen’s dung, the white part, prescribed for the cure of poisonous mushrooms; also to cure flatulence (but in any living creature it causes flatulence, says Pliny) . Ashes of horse-dung fresh made and burned, the urine of a wild boar, the green dung of an ass, are among the medicaments mentioned for ear-ache (idem, c. 11) ; also “Urine of a Bul or a Goat, or stale chamber lye made hotte;” also “Calfe’s Pisse, Calfe’s dung.” Goat and horse dung were employed to drive away snakes.— (Idem, c. 110.) ”

“ From the armoury you proceed round a curvature in the rock, which conducts you into the open air, and gives you a view of the opposite fells, to the dungeon,—a melancholy place, bearing to this hour numberless records of the sufferings and the patience, and even the ingenuity, of those by whom, in old times, it was tenanted. The late Count Kinsky, the proprietor of the castle, caused a breach to be made in the side of the dungeon, which you now enter through an arched passage in the rock, though originally the captive was let down by a rope from above. ”

“ In this Horrible Dungeon did I continue for seven days more, mostly grovelling on the ground, my face downwards, and praying for Deliverance or Death. I had a mind to dash my Brains out against the slimy walls of the Cell, but was only stayed by the thought of my Lilias. 'Twas always night in the abominable Hole, which was lighted only by a hole in the roof, about four inches square, and which gave not into the open air, but into a Corridor above. ”

“ In the formation of the bed different methods are practised; but I never found more than one to be good and successful. Some are made by a layer of dung a foot thick, and a layer of earth, alternately; but beds made entirely of dung are what I recommend; dung and earth together rarely succeed, notwithstanding this method is recommended by some eminent writers, who however appear to have been totally unacquainted with the proper management. ”

“ These dense gate-towers of Philippe le Bel struck me, however, as peculiarly wicked and grim. Their capacity is of the largest, and they contain ever so many devilish little dungeons, lighted by the narrowest slit in the prodigious wall, where it comes over one with a good deal of vividness and still more horror that wretched human beings once lay there rotting in the dark. The dungeons of Villeneuve made a particular impression on me—greater than any except those of Loches, which must surely be the most gruesome in Europe. I hasten to add that every dark hole at Villeneuve is called a dungeon ”

“ A survivor has left an account of horrible happenings within the dungeon, of terrible stragglings of a steaming mass of sentient human bodies for the insufficient air. Within a few minutes after entrance every man was bathed in a wet perspiration and was searching for ways to escape from the stifling heat. ”

“ Each of these dungeons has the remains of an iron door, a vault, and a grated opening which, on the outside, is two feet above the level of the river, and on the inside, six feet above the level of the ground. Four feet of river flow past along the outside wall. The ground is always soaked. The occupant of the in pace had this wet soil for his bed. In one of these dungeons, there is a fragment of an iron necklet riveted to the wall; in another, there can be seen a square box made of four slabs of granite, too short for a person to lie down in, too low for him to stand upright in. ”

“ You shortly reach the labyrinthine ways, totally excluded from external light and air, and enter, one after another, confined dungeons, little more than six feet square, cased with oak to deaden sounds, and to increase the difficulty of attempted escape. To make these narrow places even more horrible, strong wooden stocks are in some, and day and night prisoners were secured in total darkness, in an atmosphere which seems even now too oppressive to bear. ”

“ And now I must tell how entered the forty lifers upon my dungeon stillness. I was asleep when the outer door to the corridor of dungeons clanged open and aroused me. “Some poor devil,” was my thought; and my next thought was that he was surely getting his, as I listened to the scuffling of feet, the dull impact of blows on flesh, the sudden cries of pain, the filth of curses, and the sounds of dragging bodies. For, you see, every man was man-handled all the length of the way. ”

“ Partly, however, to be prepared for instant flight, should he hear his dungeon door open, and still more for the sake of inhaling the warm and aromatic breeze, which blew over to him from the neighbouring woods and fields, he seated himself upon the top of his casks, his head just on a level with the window, and, cautiously making a small opening in the matted vegetable screen that grew before it, gazed out upon the face of nature with a feeling of enjoyment, only to be appreciated by those who, like him, have passed five weeks in a cold, gloomy, subterranean dungeon. ”

“ Underneath the armoury, and on the ground floor of the tower are the solitary dungeons. They are entered mostly by narrow doors, and are utterly dark, no narrow chink of any kind communicating with the sweet upper air. The bare damp clay is all that is at the bottom of them, all round them at regular intervals are horizontal apertures, where we were told rings had once been to tie the prisoners up to, and the sad fact seemed but too conspicuously apparent for any less barbarous explanation. ”

“ There were in this place of terror dungeons under dungeons, some of them unknown even to the keepers themselves, living graves, to which men were consigned with little hope of farther employment during the rest of their life than to breathe impure air, and feed on bread and water. ”

“ The rooms that the water filled are like damp caves. Mud lies thick on the floors, the walls are streaked with slime, and the paper hangs down in dismal festoons. Some pictures may remain hanging, but they are all twisted and tarnished. The furniture is a tumbled mass of confusion and filth. ”

“ The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, I knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss; and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me. Milder! I half smiled in my agony as I thought of such application of such a term.
What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the rushing vibrations of the steel! ”

“ Two glittering javelins lighten in my hand;
Prepared to whirl the whizzing spear I stay,
Till the fell fiend arise to seize her prey.
Around the dungeon, studious to behold
The hideous pest, my labouring eyes I roll’d;
In vain! the dismal dungeon, dark as night,
Veils the dire monster, and confounds the sight.
“Now through the rocks, appall’d with deep dismay,
We bend our course, and stem the desperate way;
Dire Scylla there a scene of horror forms,
And here Charybdis fills the deep with storms. ”

“ Deep down in the dungeon underground perchance some penitent wonders if the spring will ever come—for there are dungeons still in the castles of Karabag, though the lords there have no longer the right of life and death. ”

“ We were expected by a dozen lean, bronze men, who squatted in a row on one mat with expressionless faces. They were not wearing masks, but they looked as if they might have been.
This last cavern was certainly a blow-hole. Its round roof, blackened with smoke, was like the underside of a cathedral dome. No effort seemed to have been made to trim the walls, and the floor, too, had been left as nature made it, shaped something like a hollow dish by the pressure of expanding gases millions of years ago when the rock was molten. ”