the factors and writers and others in their due positions at a lower table. The various dishes were washed down with 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 outgoing 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
