ing is a trade unknown in this
empire.

And here it may, perhaps, divert the curious reader, to give some account
of my domestics, and my manner of living in this country, during a
residence of nine months, and thirteen days. Having a head mechanically
turned, and being likewise forced by necessity, I had made for myself a
table and chair convenient enough, out of the largest trees in the royal
park. Two hundred sempstresses were employed to make me shirts, and
linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and coarsest kind they
could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in several
folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than lawn. Their linen is
usually three inches wide, and three feet make a piece. The sempstresses
took my measure as I lay on the ground, one standing at my neck, and
another at my mid-leg, with a strong cord extended, that each held by the
end, while a third measured the length of the cord with a rule of an inch
long. Then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for by a
mathematical computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the
wrist, and so on to the neck and the waist, and by the help of my old
shirt, which I displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they
fitted me exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same
manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my
measure. I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my
neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line
from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat:
but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished,
which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been
able to hold them), they looked like the patch-work made by the ladies in
England, only that mine were all of a colour.

I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient huts
built about my house, where they and their families lived, and prepared
me two dishes a-piece. I took up twenty waiters in my hand, and placed
them on the table: a hundred more attended below on the ground, some with
dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and other liquors slung on
their shoulders; all which the waiters above drew up, as I wanted, in a
very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we draw the bucket up a well
in Europe. A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel