The mandarin's daughter, accompanied by her amah, rode in a palanquin borne by four sturdy coolies. The group travelled along the bank of a river, on which floated a number of Chinese junks, and through a bamboo grove, whose leaves rustled with the first stirrings of the coming monsoon. At last they approached the pagoda, its spire towering high above the surrounding banyan trees. Princess and maid completed their journey on foot, and made an offering of five taels of silver in a laquered vessel of indigo hue.

Seemingly, a typical Oriental scene; yet it does not contain any words of Chinese origin.

It does, however, contain a number of words borrowed into English from another foreign language.

What is the language, and what are the words?