the useful factor comes in of knowing to a day when the earliest
possible shower of rain is due. The tent, a huge flat-topped
"Shamyana," was, when finished, roughly paved with bricks, over which
were spread priceless Persian and Indian carpets from the "Tosho
Khana" or Treasury. The sides and roof were stretched at one end with
sulphur-coloured Indian silk, at the other with pale blue silk, the
yellow silk with a two-foot border of silver tinsel, the blue edged
with gold tinsel. Cunning craftsmen from Agra fashioned "camouflage"
doorways and columns of plaster, coloured and gilt in the style of the
arabesques in the Alhambra, and the thing was done; almost literally,

"Out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation,"

and it would be impossible to imagine a more splendid setting for a
great pageant. Some one on the Viceroy's staff must have had a great
gift for stage-management, for every detail had been carefully thought
out. The scarlet and gold of the Troopers of the Body-guard, standing
motionless as brown statues, the mace-men with their gilt standards,
the entry of the Rajahs, all in full gala costume, with half the
amount of our pre-war National Debt hanging round their necks in the
shape of diamonds and of uncut rubies and emeralds, the Knights of the
Star of India in their pale-blue mantles, the Viceroy seated on his
silver-gilt throne at the top of a flight of steps, on which all the
Durbar carpets of woven gold were displayed, made, under the blaze of
electric light, an amazingly gorgeous spectacle only possible in the
East, and it would be difficult for any European to have equalled the
immense dignity of the Native Princes.

Custom forbids the Viceroy's wife to dine out, but it had been long