During meal-times, a large punkah is employed to diffuse an
agreeable degree of coolness through the apartment. The punkah is a
large frame, from eight to ten feet long, and three feet high,
covered with white Indian cloth, and fastened to the ceiling. A
rope communicates, through the wall, like a bell-pull, with the next
room, or the ground floor, where a servant is stationed to keep it
constantly in motion, and thus maintain a pleasing draught.
As may be seen from what I have said, the living here is very dear
for Europeans. The expense of keeping a house may be reckoned at
30,000 francs (6,000 dollars--1,200 pounds) at the lowest; a very
considerable sum, when we reflect how little it procures, neither
including a carriage nor horses. There is nothing in the way of
amusement, or places of public recreation; the only pleasure many
gentlemen indulge in, is keeping a boat, for which they pay 28s. a-
month, or they walk in the evenings in a small garden, which the
European inhabitants have laid out at their own cost. This garden
faces the factory, surrounded on three sides by a wall, and, on the
fourth, washed by the Pearl stream.
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