sister. This we concluded all the best newest and my Lord Bruncker and
myself did give Sir G. Carteret our sixpence a-piece, which he did give
Mr. Smith to give the poor. Thus we made ourselves mighty merry.

17th. Up and betimes with Captain Erwin down by water to Woolwich, I
walking alone from Greenwich thither, making an end of the "Adventures of
Five Hours," which when all is done is the best play that ever I read in
my life. Being come thither I did some business there and at the Rope
Yarde, and had a piece of bride-cake sent me by Mrs. Barbary into the
boate after me, she being here at her uncle's, with her husband, Mr.
Wood's son, the mast-maker, and mighty nobly married, they say, she was,
very fine, and he very rich, a strange fortune for so odd a looked mayde,
though her hands and body be good, and nature very good, I think. Back
with Captain Erwin, discoursing about the East Indys, where he hath often
been. And among other things he tells me how the King of Syam seldom goes
out without thirty or forty thousand people with him, and not a word
spoke, nor a hum or cough in the whole company to be heard. He tells me
the punishment frequently there for malefactors is cutting off the crowne
of their head, which they do very dexterously, leaving their brains bare,
which kills them presently. He told me what I remember he hath once done
heretofore: that every body is to lie flat down at the coming by of the
King, and nobody to look upon him upon pain of death. And that he and his
fellows, being strangers, were invited to see the sport of taking of a
wild elephant, and they did only kneel, and look toward the King. Their
druggerman did desire them to fall down, for otherwise he should suffer
for their contempt of the King. The sport being ended, a messenger comes
from the King, which the druggerman thought had been to have taken away
his life; but it was to enquire how the strangers liked the sport. The
druggerman answered that they did cry it up to be the best that ever they
saw, and that they never heard of any Prince so great in every thing as