THE CHURCHES
pallankeen which is of satin or brocade; and when the sun shines on one side, an attendant, who walks near the pallankeen, takes care to lower the covering. There is another, who carries at the end of a stick a kind of basketwork shield, covered with some sort of beautiful stuff, in order to promptly shelter the occupant of the pallankeen from the heat of the sun when it turns and strikes him on the face. The two ends of the bamboo are attached on both sides to the body of the pallankeen, between two poles joined together in a saltier or St. Andrew's cross; and each of these poles is five or six feet long. Three men at most place themselves at each of these two ends, to carry the pallankeen on the shoulder, the one on the right, the other on the left, and they travel in this way faster than our chairmen in Paris, and with an easier pace, being trained to the trade from an early age.
This was the sort of palanquin which was considered by the East India Company to be a "piece of eastern luxury," in which they forbid their junior servants to indulge; and Ives records that they—
"gave the strictest orders that none of these young gentlemen should be allowed even to hire a roundel-boy whose business it is to walk by his master and defend him with his roundel, or
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