1873.—"He is no favourite with the pure native, whose language he speaks as his own in addition to the hybrid minced English (known as chee-chee), which he also employs."—Fraser's Magazine, Oct., 437.
1880.—"The Eurasian girl is often pretty and graceful.... 'What though upon her lips there hung The accents of her tchi-tchi tongue.'"—Sir Ali Baba, 122.
1881.—"There is no doubt that the 'Chee Chee twang,' which becomes so objectionable to every Englishman before he has been long in the East, was originally learned in the convent and the Brothers' school, and will be clung to as firmly as the queer turns of speech learned in the same place."—St. James's Gazette, Aug. 26.
CHEENAR, s. P. chīnār, the Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) and platanus of the ancients; native from Greece to Persia. It is often by English travellers in Persia miscalled sycamore from confusion with the common British tree (Acer pseudoplatanus), which English people also habitually miscall sycamore, and Scotch people miscall plane-tree! Our quotations show how old the confusion is. The tree is not a native of India, though there are fine chīnārs in Kashmere, and a few in old native gardens in the Punjab, introduced in the days of the Moghul emperors. The tree is the Arbre Sec of Marco Polo (see 2nd ed. vol. i. 131, 132). Chīnārs of especial vastness and beauty are described by Herodotus and Pliny, by Chardin and others. At Buyukdereh near Constantinople, is still shown the Plane under which Godfrey of Boulogne is said to have encamped. At Tejrīsh, N. of Teheran, Sir H. Rawlinson tells us that he measured a great chīnār which has a girth of 108 feet at 5 feet from the ground.
c. 1628.—"The gardens here are many ... abounding in lofty pyramidall cypresses, broad-spreading Chenawrs...."—Sir T. Herbert, 136.
1677.—"We had a fair Prospect of the City (Ispahan) filling the one half of an ample Plain, few Buildings ... shewing themselves by reason of the high Chinors, or Sicamores shading the choicest of them...."—Fryer, 259.
" "We in our Return cannot but take notice of the famous Walk between the two Cities of Jelfa and Ispahaun; it is planted with two rows of Sycamores (which is the tall Maple, not the Sycamore of Alkair)."—Ibid. 286.
1682.—"At the elegant villa and garden at Mr. Bohun's at Lee. He shewed me the Zinnar tree or platanus, and told me that since they had planted this kind of tree about the Citty of Ispahan ... the plague ... had exceedingly abated of its mortal effects."—Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 16.
1726.—"... the finest road that you can imagine ... planted in the middle with 135 Sennaar trees on one side and 132 on the other."—Valentijn, v. 208.
1783.—"This tree, which in most parts of Asia is called the Chinaur, grows to the size of an oak, and has a taper straight trunk, with a silver-coloured bark, and its leaf, not unlike an expanded hand, is of a pale green."—G. Forster's Journey, ii. 17.