Page 167 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

A GROUP OF ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN INDIA 167
practicable, but Steele declined to accept bis verdict and
intrigued to secure a private audience of the Mogul. Event­
ually, through the agency of an English artist who had
been brought out for Jehangir’s service, he was admitted
to the interior of the palace. As soon as he had entered
the sacred precincts the chief eunuch “ put a cloth over his
head that he should not see the women,” and he missed
what would, no doubt, have been an interesting spectacle,
though he heard the fair ones as they passed close to him.
On another occasion the attendant, in an obliging
mood, used a very thin cloth to blind Steele, and he was
enabled to obtain a glimpse of the ladies, “ there being of
them some hundreds.” Possessing a knowledge of Per­
sian—the Court language—Steele was able to prosecute
his suit independently, but the project did not appeal to
Jehangir, and he was given to understand that it would not
be entertained. His wife, who had come out as a maid to
Mrs. Towerson, was befriended by a great lady who was
Jehangir’s hostess at Ahmedabad, and through her influ­
ence he secured such a strong position that Roe became
seriously alarmed for his own prestige. But his fickle
Court patrons eventually abandoned him, as they had done
others, and he was glad to take passage with Roe when he
returned to England in 1619. He did not again set foot in
the country, though he was employed for a time under the
Company in Java.
Strangest of this band of English adventurers who kept
Roe in countenance in his days of exile at the Mogul Court
was that amusing, eccentric Thomas Coryat, “ the Odcombe
leg stretcher,” who is famous in English literature as the
author of Coryat3s Crudities, the most whimsical book on
Continental travel that was probabty ever penned.

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