Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
I was now startled to observe that some of the natives carried at their girdles a human skull, but I subsequently learned that these trophies were not, as I had at first supposed, the result of a massacre, but were the drinking-cups of these people, who appeared to be the most debased in the scale of humanity I had ever encountered.
Then wine was brought, and emptied into drinking-cups of silver or bronze, and even of porcelain, beautifully engraved, one of which was exclusively reserved for the master of the house. While at dinner the party were enlivened with musical instruments, the chief of which were the harp, the lyre, the guitar, the tambourine, the pipe, the flute, and the cymbal.
Æneas also and the men of Troy lay on coverlets of purple, to whom serving-men brought water and bread in baskets and napkins; and within fifty handmaids were ready to replenish the store of victual and to fan the fire; and a hundred others, with pages as many, loaded the tables with dishes and drinking-cups. Many men of Tyre also were bidden to the feast.
As we passed along we found on the ground a number of woody vessels, which had evidently contained seeds. Duppo picked up one of them, and found another piece close by which fitted on to it, and then told us that they were called monkeys' drinking-cups; the Portuguese call them cuyas de macaco. These shells had contained nuts.
There, under beautiful glass cases, sparkled all the glittering display and showy luxury of the Church, golden tabernacles where the Paschal Lamb reposed in a flaming triangle, censers with quadruple chains, stoles and chasubles, heavy with embroidery, enormous candelabra, ostensories and drinking-cups incrusted with enamel and false precious stones-before all these splendors the child, who had read the Arabian Nights, believed that he had entered Aladdin's cave, or Aboul-Cassem's pit.
The furniture of the house consisted of a number of large sleeping-mats, five or six carved wooden stools, and two narrow tables, or rather shelves, of wicker-work, fastened against the wall at opposite sides of the room. Upon one of these were arranged a number of calabashes, carved wooden dishes, cocoa-nut drinking-cups, and other domestic utensils.
Then she struck the steps of her throne, and all the nobles of her court, headed by her bards, took their places at the festive board. The feast went on right merrily, and when the tiny jeweled drinking-cups were placed upon the table, the queen ordered the harpers to play.
Our first day's dinner was some cold meat and bread, eaten in a wood, our horse eating his oats by our side; and we made drinking-cups, in Indian fashion, of birch-tree bark cups of Tantalus, properly speaking, for very little of the water reached our lips.
Why should we forget a set of most curious and antique drinking-cups of painted glass, on whose rare surfaces were emblazoned the Kaiser and ten electors of the old Empire? Vivian bowed to the party and stood in silence, while they stared a scrutinising examination. At length the master of the feast spoke.
Then she struck the steps of her throne, and all the nobles of her court, headed by her bards, took their places at the festive board. The feast went on right merrily, and when the tiny jewelled drinking-cups were placed upon the table, the queen ordered the harpers to play.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking