curious passage:--

After talking of fans he goes on to say, "And many of them doe carry
other fine things of a far greater price, that will cost at the least
a duckat, which they commonly call in the Italian tongue umbrellas,
that is, things which minister shadow veto them for shelter against
the scorching heate of the sunne. These are made of leather,
something answerable to the forme of a little cannopy, & hooped in
the inside with divers little wooden hoopes that extend the umbrella
in a pretty large cornpasse. They are used especially by horsemen,
who carry them in their hands when they ride, fastening the end of
the handle upon one of their thighs, and they impart so large a
shadow unto them, that it keepeth the heate of the sunne from the
upper parts of their bodies."

Reference to the same custom, of riders in Italy using umbrellas, is
made in Florio's "Worlde of Wordes" (1598), where we find "Ombrella,
a fan, a canopie, also a festoon or cloth of State for a prince, also
a kind of round fan or shadowing that they use to ride with in sommer
in Italy, a little shade."

In Cotgrave's "Dictionary of the French and English Tongues," the
French Ombrelle is translated, "An umbrello; a (fashion of) round and
broad fanne, wherewith the Indians (and from them our great ones)
preserve themselves from the heat of a scorching sunne; and hence any
little shadow, fanne, or thing, wherewith women hide their faces fro
the sunne."

In Fynes Moryson's "Itinerary" (1617) we find a similar allusion to
the habit of carrying Umbrellas in hot countries "to auoide the