ABSTRACT
There is a great variety of instruments of torture and flagellation in active use in Russia other than those we have indicated. There is, for instance, the plit, which is a piece of iron made hot and put into a heated iron box to be taken up and held by the victim. There is also a tourniquet or thumbscrew, made out of the twigs of trees, twisted till the parts are compressed; and for flagellation the Russians have the stick, the plêt, and the knout. The plêt is a whip made of strips of raw hide, and having three lashes tipped with small leaden balls; but the principal instrument of punishment is the knout, a Tartar invention, as the name denotes, and the most formidable punisher ever invented by the ingenuity of man.
