frequent involuntary fits of absence, which made me insensible, for the
time, to all that was passing around me. I walked the streets of Damascus
with a strange consciousness that I was in some other place at the same
time, and with a constant effort to reunite my divided perceptions.

Previous to the experiment, we had decided on making a bargain with the
shekh for the journey to Palmyra. The state, however, in which we now
found ourselves, obliged us to relinquish the plan. Perhaps the excitement
of a forced march across the desert, and a conflict with the hostile
Arabs, which was quite likely to happen, might have assisted us in
throwing off the baneful effects of the drug; but all the charm which lay
in the name of Palmyra and the romantic interest of the trip, was gone. I
was without courage and without energy, and nothing remained for me but to
leave Damascus.

Yet, fearful as my rash experiment proved to me, I did not regret having
made it. It revealed to me deeps of rapture and of suffering which my
natural faculties never could have sounded. It has taught me the majesty
of human reason and of human will, even in the weakest, and the awful
peril of tampering with that which assails their integrity. I have here
faithfully and fully written out my experience, on account of the lesson
which it may convey to others. If I have unfortunately failed in my
design, and have but awakened that restless curiosity which I have
endeavored to forestall, let me beg all who are thereby led to repeat the
experiment upon themselves, that they be content to take the portion of
hasheesh which is considered sufficient for one man, and not, like me,
swallow enough for six.