In Bengal it appears that no distinction is attached to the Umbrella, since the poorer classes there use a cháta or small Umbrella, made of leaves of the _Licerata peltata_. These are of conical form and have numerous ribs and stretchers. The higher class in Assam use a similar Umbrella. In China the use of the Umbrella does not appear to have been confined, as in India and Persia, to royalty; but it was always, as it is now, a mark of high rank, though not exclusively so. There seems to have been no particular rule about it, but it carried with it some peculiar distinction; for, on one occasion at least, we hear of twenty-four Umbrellas being carried before the Emperor when he went out hunting. Here it is, what it appears to be in no other Eastern country, a defence against rain rather than sun, and while the richer people do not go out much while it is wet, the poorer classes wear a dress that protects them from the weather. In the rainy season, for instance, a Chinese boatman wears a coat of straw, and a hat of straw and bamboo. Such a dress, of course, renders an Umbrella superfluous, and it matters little to the wearer how hard the rain may pelt. Nevertheless great numbers of Umbrellas are exported from China to India, the Indian Archipelago, and even South America. In the 1851 Exhibition two only were shown. Of them the report says, "They present nothing remarkable beyond the great number of ribs, which amount to forty-two. The ribs are formed of wood; and instead of being embraced by the fork of the stretcher, as in the case of European Umbrellas, they have a groove cut out in the middle of their lengths, into which the stretcher is secured by a stud of wood. The head of each rib fits into a notch formed in the ring of wood, which is fastened on to the top of the stick, there being a separate, notch for each rib. The slide is of wood, and has forty-two notches, namely, one for each stretcher, which like the ribs, is formed of wood. The covering of the Umbrellas exhibited is of oiled paper coarsely painted." But the use of the Umbrella travelled westward, and with it the custom of regarding it as a mark of dignity. Amongst the Arabs the Umbrella was a mark of distinction. Niebuhr, who travelled in Southern Arabia, describes a procession of the Iman of Sanah. In it the Iman and each of the princes of his numerous family, caused a _madalla,_ or large Umbrella, to be carried by his side; and it is a privilege which, in this country, is appropriated to princes of the blood, just as the Sultan of Constantinople permits none but his vizier to have his caique, or gondola, covered behind, to keep him from the heat of the sun. The same writer goes on to say that many independent chiefs of Yemen carried _madallas_ as a mark of their independence.