CHAPTER XIV
AN AMERICAN VICEREINE
Next day the real show began. The State Entry, which was to eclipse any entry ever previously made into Delhi, even in the far-off days of its Imperial greatness, was to be the beginning of things. There was a spirit of suppressed excitement in the air. Even before the dawn one felt that the whole of the vast encampment was astir. It was the first of the wonderfully organised and much-rehearsed events that were to fill the following days. Its success or failure would be an augury for those to come.
The streets of Delhi that morning were a sight one is hardly likely ever to see again. They were a moving mass of brilliant colour, a glorious jumble of the old-world east and the modern fashionable west—an east and west that it seemed impossible should ever meet save as they were meeting to-day, like the moving parts of a kaleidoscope passing and repassing, but never merging, always divided and apart.
The Jumma Musjid is just magnificent. As we
