The sojourn of the King-Emperor and Queen-Empress at Calcutta culminated
on Friday week in a magnificent Indian pageant held on the Maidan. From their seat on two golden thrones, the central point of an amphitheatre on the west side of the Maidan, the King and Queen witnessed a, faithful reproduc- tion of the two historic precessions annually repeated in Bengal: the Mohammedan Nau-roz, or New Year's Day pro- cession, first established by Akbar; and the Hindu procession commemorating the victory of Rama over Havana, one of the central episodes of the Sanskrit epic 'Ramayana..' Before the pageant the Nawab Bahadqr of Murshidabad offered the King a gift of gold mohurs on behalf of the people of Bengal, Behar, Orissa, and Assam, which was accepted and remitted, and after the processions there was a war dance of the Paiks, the hereditary Palace Guards of the Orissa States. Finally the King and Queen entered their landau, and, without any military escort, drove right round the pageant area at a slow walk, separated, for most of the way, by only two yards from the first rank of an immense crowd restrained by nothing but a frail bamboo railing. Calcutta has been the home of Indian unrest. On Friday week the loyal enthusiasm of the multi- tudes was unmarred by a single discordant note.
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