It was at once seen that the Prince's visit to Her Majesty's dominions in the East, if properly managed, would be ap event of vast political import for the future of our relations to India, and Parliament voted a sum of £60,000 for his personal expenses (he had, for.one thing, to take £40,000 worth of presents with him wherewith to return the offerings of native chiefs) as well as £52,000 for naval outlay in connection with the voyage, while the' Indian treasury was asked to contribute £30,000 towards the cost of the Prince's reception. In the House of Commons Messrs. McDonald and Burt who, on behalf of the by ons! classes, objected to the vote, were literally "howled - down while the Press, too, was very hard on the resolutions of a large protest- meeting in Hyde Park, which had failed to see that a vote for a State-pageant calculated to individualise the monarchy to the Indian mind was-not a grant to the Prince as a private individual.
The Prince was accompanied by a very carefully selected suite which was headed by Sir Battle Frere, whose name was a -household word to the natives of India, and included the Duke of Sutherland, the Earl of -Aylesford, Lord Carrington, Colonel Owen Williams, Lord: Charles Beresford, Lord; Suffield, Colonel "Ellis, Sir Dighton Canon-Duckworth (as ~chaplain), Sir Joseph Fayrer (as physician), whilst Mr. S. P. Hall was attached as artist to the suite, and Dr. W. H. Russell (the Times correspondent) was appointed honorary private secretary to the Prince in order that, in addition to his journalistic duties, he might act as historiographer of the tour. It is needless to say that all the great London. dailies.were also represented by special correspondents who sent home detailed and glowing accounts of the most gorgeous. progress which had ever been made by the heir to any crown, or, indeed, by any crowned head.
It was felt throughout the country, that, in undertaking this tour in India, the Prince of Wales was rendering an immense service to the consolidation of British power, and on his departure from London—11th October, 1875—he was loudly cheered by the vast crowds which had gathered at Charing Cross. A day or two before he had gone to take leave of Dean Stanley, who wrote that the Prince looked inexpressibly sad... He spoke of the dangers, but calmly and rationally, saying that, of course, the precautions must be left to those xbout him." The Princess accompanied him to Calnis, and at Brindisi, where he was joined by his suite, he embarked on board the Serapis, He first proceeded to Athens with a number of valuable live-stock presents for his brothorin-law, the King of Greece, whence he steamed to Egypt where he invested Tewfik Pasha, the Khedive's eldest son, with the Star of India (an act, perhaps, intended to remind him of the importance of Exypt_ as the key of our' communications with the East), and so on to Bombay which
birthday.
on the eve of his thirty-fourth INDIA'S WELCOME, Bombay was a blaze of festive colour by night and day, and almost wild with excitement. Tell'Biamma we're happy was one of the festooned mottoes which met the party's sight. As soon as the Prince landed the news was telegraphed to every station in the country in order that a simultaneous salute of welcome might be fired throughout the length and breadth of India, The Prince was received by the Governor-General, Lord- North-brook, and at once plunged into an exhausting whirl of receptions, return visite, and banquets, A crowd of native Princes, gorgeously accoutred and attended, had come to pay their respects to the Queen's eldest son, who, surrounded by all his suite in full uniform, and sitting on a silver throne, with a portrait of his royal mother behind him, received the allegiance of such potentates as the Maharajas of Kutch, Mysore, and Kolapore, and the Gaikwar of Baroda, with an immense number of other Princes and Rajas; and it was on his return visits to these dusky and gem-encrusted potentates. that the Prince of Wales was able to excite their admiration and surprise by showing that he had already made himself acquainted with their family histories and exploits. A festival feed" to twelve thousand children—Hindu, Mahommedan, Parsee, and_Christian—a fairy-like banquet to the Prince in. the fabled caves of Elephanta, vast and mystic as those in: Rider Haggard's She, and lit up by thousands of twinkling lamps, which shed the lustre of their dim religious light on the huge bust of the Indian Trinity—Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Shiva, the Destroyer, to.whom the three caves form a temple made with hands—was this not calculated to impress the natives of India with the religious toperance of their.future Ruler?
Next day the Prince went to Poona, a great Brahminical centre, and visited, on elephant hack, the temple of Parbuttee, wife of Shiva, after which he repaired to the Court of the Gaikwar of Baroda—a twelve-year-old potentate whose father had been dethroned the British Government
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.