sed 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 patchwork
made by the ladies in England, only that mine were all of a color.

[Illustration: "THREE HUNDRED TAILORS WERE EMPLOYED TO MAKE ME CLOTHES"
P. 74.]

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; an hundred more attended below on the ground,
some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and other
liquors, flung on their shoulders; all of 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
eat at a mouthful, and I must 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 eat more than usual,
in honor to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with
admiration. I have some private reasons to believe that this visit from
his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his
master. That minister had always been my secret enemy, though he
outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the