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