Page 312 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat
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312 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

                the factors and writers and others in their due positions at
                a lower table. The various dishes were washed down with          1
                Spanish or Shiraz wine with, as a welcome accompaniment
                on most days, pale punch made of brandy, rose water, citron
                juice and sugar. Tea was also served at the meals and
                                                                                 ;
                extensively consumed. On Sundays and days of high
                festival game was added to the menu and the toasts of
                the King and the Company were given, followed by the
                healths of every one present, down to the most junior
                official. The evening meal was on more frugal lines. It
                was followed by conversation, which sometimes became so
                animated as to call for the intervention of the seniors.
                At nine o’clock the gates of the factory were closed. An
                hour later the entire establishment was wrapped in
                slumber.
                  A great deal of pomp marked the incoming and out­
                going of those in authority in the factory. As early as 1623
                the agent at Surat, when he made his public appearances,
                was preceded by a banner and a saddle horse and was
                attended by a native company composed of men armed
                with swords and bows and arrows and bearing shields.
                Later the practice was improved upon, and the merchant
                adventurers when they went abroad did so in regular
                procession. At the head of the line went a silk flag—the
                national emblem—followed by a body of musicians and
                the chief agent’s Arab horses in state trappings. Then
                came the great man himself, reclining in luxurious ease
                in a palankeen borne upon the shoulders of four orderlies
                with two others as reliefs behind. A considerable body
                of native servants in scarlet uniforms followed. Behind
                them were the members of council in large coaches drawn
                by oxen. The tail of the procession was formed by the
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