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thickest was some degrees finer than lawn. Their linen is usually
three inches wide, and three feet make a piece. The sempstresses
took my measure as I lay on the ground, one standing at my neck,
and another at my mid-leg, with a strong cord extended, that each
held by the end, while a third measured the length of the cord with
a rule of an inch long. Then they measured my right thumb, and
desired no more; for by a mathematical computation, that twice
round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so on to the neck and
the waist, and by the help of my old shirt, which I displayed on
the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly.
Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me
clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. I
kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck;
upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line
from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my
coat: but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes
were finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of
theirs would not have been able to hold them), they looked like the
patch-work made by the ladies in England, only that mine were all
of a colour.

I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little
convenient huts built about my house, where they and their families
lived, and prepared me two dishes a-piece. I took up twenty
waiters in my hand, and placed them on the table: a hundred more
attended below on the ground, some with dishes of meat, and some
with barrels of wine and other liquors slung on their shoulders;
all which the waiters above drew up, as I wanted, in a very
ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we draw the bucket up a well
in Europe. A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel
of their liquor a reasonable draught. Their mutton yields to ours,
but their beef is excellent. I have had a sirloin so large, that I
have been forced to make three bites of it; but this is rare. My
servants were astonished to see me eat it, bones and all, as in our
country we do the leg of a lark. Their geese and turkeys I usually
ate at a mouthful, and I confess they far exceed ours. Of their
smaller fowl I could take up twenty or thirty at the end of my
knife.

One day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living,
desired "that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes
of the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness," as he was
pleased to call it, "of dining with me." They came accordingly,
and I placed them in chairs of state, upon my table, just over
against me, with their guards about them. Flimnap, the lord high
treasurer, attended there likewise with his white staff; and I
observed he often looked on me with a sour countenance, which I
would not seem to regard, but ate more than usual, in honour to my
dear country, as well as to fill the court with admiration.

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