At Calcutta, the Prince's next bourne. the first great event was a reception of some of the foremost native Princes, cluding Scindia, the great warrior harajah of Gwalior; Holkar, Maharajal: of Indore, who had begged for permission to present the Prince with a gift valued at £50,000 the Maharajah of Patiala, blazing with diamonds, some of which had been bought from the ex-Empress of the Freud with the Maharajahs of Cashmere, J pore, Judpore, and many other chieftains of the land—all followed by suites of lesser nobles gorgeous with silks, and scimitars, and sparkling gems. A few days Jater the Prince held a grand chapter of the Star of India at which he conferred knighthood on several who had not hitherto received it. The chapter tent was carpeted with cloth of gold with the royal arms emblazoned in the centre, and the Prince wore the uniform of a Field-Marsha] almost concealed beneath the folds of his sky-blue satin mantle of which the train' was carried by two naval cadets wearing cocked hats over their powdered wigs, blue satin cloaks, trunk hose and rosetted those. The Begum of Bhopal—a lady whose'mother had been of the greatest service to us during the Mutiny =-was the junior of the. Companions of the Order, who appeared in the Durbar tent with a procession all to herself; and among those present were Lord Napier of Magdala,. "Political" Maitland, the Maharajah of Cashmere and the Rajah of Patiala, wearing the great Sancy diamond in his turban. As each investiture took place seventeen guns were fired, and altogether the pageant-was of an incomparably where with deep emotion he read aloud the in prion on the monument erected on the site of the fatal well; to Delhi, where he held at once a grand levéeand a great review of 20,000 troops, followed by a ball in the Qld Palace with all its memories of the terrible scenes which had been enacted there but a score of years before; and then to Lahore where a camp of native chiefs lay stretched for miles around the city in magnificently martial array.
From Lahore the Prince pushed north-{ward as far as Jumnoo, a border-town of Casimir at the foot of the snow-clad Himalayas, whence he looked into the vast mysterious country beyond; and then returned south, after a visit'to Amritsir and the Maharajah of Patiala, to Agra and the capitals of various other rulers including Gwalior, where Scindia treated him to a grand review and sham fight of 20,000 native warriors, Another excursion," writes a'chronicler of the tour, "from the central point of Agra was that to Jeypore, where " torch light procession—as wild' and picturesque as anything the Prince can have seen in Indin—conveyed him to the city. The Nagas, savage warriors clad in tiger skins, or almost naked, danced or fought—for that more nearly describes their performanee—round the Royal elephant, waving their great swords, five feet long, smiting their large shields with them, and making music with the bells on their ankles which jangled as they leapt."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.