Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/152

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148
EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

comes with his buckler and sword, the former "set all over with great diamonds and rubies" and the latter being fixed to a belt of gold similarly embellished with precious stones, A third tenders a quiver with thirty arrows and his bow in a case. On the Mogul's head was set "a red turban with a plume of horse tops, not many but long; on one side of the turban was a ruby unset as big as a walnut, on the other side a diamond as great; in the middle an emerald like a heart, much bigger. His sash was wreathed with a chain of great pearls, rubies and diamonds drilled. About his neck he carried a chain of gold ... as great as I ever saw. On his elbows were armlets set with diamonds and on his wrists were three great rows of diamonds of several sorts. His hands bore on almost every finger a ring. ... On his feet were a pair of embroidered buskins (adorned) with pearls, the toes sharp and turning up." On each side of the Emperor were two eunuchs, carrying small gold maces, and equipped also with a long bunch of white horse hair to drive away the flies from the imperial face. Before the Mogul "went drums, ill trumpets and loud music and many canopies with strange ensignes of majesty of cloth of gold set in many places with great rubies."

Jehangir took his seat in the first of two coaches which were drawn up outside the entrance to the imperial apartments. The vehicle was the one which had been made by his order in imitation of the coach forwarded by the Company a year previously and upon the box was the English coachman, "clothed as rich as any player and more gaudy," sitting up in all the dignified majesty of his class. The second coach, the presentation one, was allotted to Noor Mahal, and into it that imperious lady stepped, with