In the hot weather a boy sits outside and pulls the punkah to and fro with a rope.

Prince Kumal Khan received me in his father's durbar-chamber, a cheerless, whitewashed apartment, bare of furniture save for a somewhat rickety "throne" of painted wood, and a huge white linen punkah, overlooking a dreary landscape of barren desert and mud roofs.

How significant it is that among the emblems of royalty in the East the three chiefest are an umbrella-bearer, two men who stand behind and swing great punkahs modelled on the elephant's ear, and two others carrying yak's tails wherewith to scare the flies from the royal person!

Chantel, in the lamplight, watched the punkahs with a hateful smile.

Besides this, there are at least six horses, to every one of which there is a separate groom; two coachmen, two gardeners, a nurse and servant for each child, a lady's maid, a girl to wait on the nurses, two tailors, two men to work the punkahs, and one porter.