INDIA’S WELCOME TO THE PRINCE OF WALES.
ARRIVAL AT BOMBAY
ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION.
From PERCEVAL LANDON, BOMBAY, Thursday. To-day the Prince of Wales landed in Bombay, and once more took up the great Imperial service that has become his young life’s tradition. His progress in this huge sub-continent has begun, and well begun. If the reception here is any test of the future we need have no anxiety, though this present enterprise will present occasions that will try his known endurance and his ready tact more highly than any or all of his previous tours among those of his own blood and sympathies. For the next four months he will meet face to face the countless peoples who, at some distant date, will hail him with Oriental devotion as King of Kings; along his path he will find languages innumerable, and almost every religion that has ministered to the weakness or the ambition of man: he will find himself the centre of whatever remains of the splendour of the ancient East It has been a busy morning. Visits of ceremony were paid to the Prince on board the Renown by Admiral Tothill (Naval Commander-inchief), the Earl of Reading (the Viceroy), General Lord Rawlinson (Commander-in-chief), Sir George Lloyd (Governor of Bombay), and the seven Princes who will act as his Royal Highness’s attachés during his tour. The Prince himself, in naval uniform, left the Renown at ten o’clock and landed at the still halffinished gate of India upon the Apollo Bander, amid a scene of real and universal enthusiasm. Bombay had put on her best apparel for the occasion, and a spacious amphitheatre, fluttering with flags, had been set up beside the Yacht Club. Presentations were made to the Prince immediately after his landing, and a procession was formed to the dais of the amphitheatre, where a welcome was formally extended by the Bombay Municipality. But before this kindly ceremony was begun a message from the King-emperor himself was read by the Prince. In a few well-chosen sentences King George expressed his deep and continuing interest in all that concerned his Indian Empire: “Your anxieties and your rejoicings are my own,” and, after referring to the new responsibilities and the new privileges that the reforms had conferred, and, as he confidently believed, wisely conferred, closed with a phrase that will long be remembered: “The Empire for which I labour and for which, if it be the Divine will, my son shall labour after me.” An address from the Municipality of Bombay was then read by Sir David Sassoon, and in reply the Prince expressed his deep pleasure in having achieved his long-desired visit to India, and paid a deserved compliment to the world-famous enterprise of Bombay. He struck the note of the tour at once. He had, he said, amid ringing cheers, come to India to know and to be known. The scene at this moment was striking and significant. Besides the State uniforms and the military display the personalities of the seven Indian Princes lent especial interest to this first greeting. Foremost among them was Patiala – almost as well known in London streets as in his Northern capital; the young Nawab of Bahawalpur, from his long, dusty Principality beside the Indus; Jodhpur – recently invested with full powers, who, with his companion, Ratlam, represented the game of Kings – beyond all others the game of the Prince himself – polo; the Maharaja of Dhar, fresh from his magnificent palace cities of Mandu and Dhar, and his never-wearying work for his people, and his famous horse-breeding establishment in Central India; the Nawab of Palanpur, Bombay Mohammedan and philanthropist; and the Jats sent to this brilliant group their youngest and best – the Maharaja of Dholpur. That most popular of Indian Princes, Hari Singh, from far Kashmir, is to follow with other juniors; Hamidullah, son of the most famous woman in India; and, last but not least, the son of our old friend, the Maharaja of Bikaner. Immediately after the ceremony the Prince drove through the decorated streets of Bombay to Government House, on Malabar Point. The brilliancy of the day added to the gay avenues presented by the streets of Bombay.
THE MANY PEOPLES.
Bombay is a microcosm of India. It has been asserted that she has no soul of her own. But, on the other hand, she is the Mecca of almost every people, race, and tongue in the Middle East, and the Prince, during his five-mile drive, had, in full measure, the chance ho desired of meeting representatives of the many peoples within his father’s Empire. Grave Parsis, the Huguenots of the East, still as purely Persian as when they first came for refuge to English justice, with their terrible glazed black hats and their graceful, unveiled women, clad in the fine, faintly-tinted muslins of Benares or Ahmedabad; tall, hook-nosed, and bearded Pathans from the North-western frontier, undisputed lords of the pavement in this Kafir town; sleek, gold-spectacled Babus and Banias, in tightbuttoned frock-coats with salmon shawls over their shoulders; slim, straight Somalis and easygoing negroes from Africa; Rajputs, the aristocrats of India; Sikhs, with their beards rolled up and strong, nervous frames; Baluchis with their long, orange-dyed ringlets; Arabs, with the chafiyeh and agal – most becoming of all headdresses on earth; here and there the cocked toque of a Mahratta dignitary; Lascars in the blue clothes abhorred by your true Hindu; and always, though but one in a thousand, the thin, brown faces and clear-cut figures of the English. The Prince’s route lay northwards by the Esplanade Reed and Hornby Road, past the centre of the commercial activity of the city. The people of Bomber say that Hornby Road is the finest thoroughfare in Asia – and it is difficult to contradict them. Regent-street would look provincial were it set down in its midst, and even St. Pancras is eclipsed by Victoria Railway Station, which, for good as well as for evil, it somewhat resembles. A scene of welcome fringed the road as the Prince’s cortège ascended Malabar Hill and threaded its way through the comfortable garden-encircled residences of the favourite suburb of Bombay. At last the gates of the grounds of Government House swallowed up the guest of India, and Bombay’s millions returned home to discuss the great and gay doings of the day. Tonight, after an unofficial dinner at Malabar Point, a reception will be held.