THEY have many fine carts — and many of them carved and gilded with gold — with two wheels, which be drawn with two little Bulls about the bigness of our great dogs in England,* and they will run with any horse and carry two or three men in one of these carts; they are covered with silk or very fine cloth, and be used here as our coaches be in England.
Hither is great resort of merchants from Persia and out of India, and very much merchandise of silk and cloth and of precious stones, both Rubies, Diamonds and Pearls. The King is apparelled in a white Cabie* made like a shirt, tied with strings on the one side, and a little cloth on his head coloured oftentimes with red or yellow. None come into his house but his eunuchs, which keep his women.
I left William Leedes,* the jeweller, in service with the king, Zelabdim Echebar, in Fatepore, who did entertain him very well and gave him an house and five slaves, an horse and every day six shillings in money.*
abridged
* The largest English dog breed is said to be the English mastiff.
* “The long muslin tunic still general in India” explains editor J. Courtenay Locke, writing in 1930. “It is the Portuguese cabaya, probably from the Arabic kaba, ‘a garment’.”
* The adventure was led by four Englishmen, the merchants Ralph Fitch and John Newbery, with jeweller William Leedes and artist James Story. As far as we know, neither Leedes nor Newbery, the latter last heard of setting out for Lahore, returned to England. (The brand of Indian tonic known as Fitch & Leedes is named in honour of Ralph Fitch and William Leedes.)
* Six shillings a day (there were twenty shillings to the English pound sterling) was a considerable sum of money. According to Jeffrey L. Forgeng in Daily Life in Elizabethan England (2010), a craftsman in Elizabethan England might expect only one shilling a day.