THE DUKE OF YORK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12043, 15 May 1901, Page 2

THE DUKE OF YORK

rati coiiiEiun. ]'.v W. 11. I'lrcmrrT, 15, a., LI..D. If.—A CRUAT CITY'S WKIX'OMR. MEM'.OUItNE, May 6, 1901. Tli'-' memorable (lay strange to say, tvilli ;t his ami memorable blunder, If the stately programme iliil not, in its very first incident, come In inslaiil ami utter wrtck. it ,il least imderivenl a sea nI " :i very surprising sort. Tlic welcome tn tin l I'rim ■■ was intended to beidn on Monday inorniujr. in dramatic shape, 10 miles suiilh-west of the I,o11:■ un 1" light. Wireless telegraphy w:ih io lliii(r n whispered greeting across thai space to the Ophir, the ships of the Australian fleet--llie lioyal Arthur, the Wallaroo, the Riugarooma, tin- \yidur.i- -worn t« meet the royal yacht on llie (IMant sea-horizon, wheel in stalely fashion and allow Hit 1 incoming squadron to pa-s Ihrough their lines while each ironclad broke into the deepthroated thunder of a loyal salute. Then, ai> the comhined squadron passed through (he head-', tlie bellowing guns were to speak their Krretintf Sea and air were lo have lieen shaken liv the gun? of battery after battery. Ijliicenscliir anil Swan Island would have ealleil to the Nest and lo l'ort Vrankliu. and these. ill (tiril, have tlmi); the sound to the South Channel Enr:. A I'KOOKAMMK THAT WK.NT WRONG. Bill all this pretty programme simply went to pieces. The Prince was' impatient: and. unblown to the general public, a modified programme was agreed upon, while the Ophir w.n o/F Albany, by which the royal yacht was lo enter the heads at 'I o clock oil Sunday afternoon. But even this was not (allied mil. The Royal Arthur and her sister ships steamed leisurely down the hay on Sunday morning to meet the royal squadron al (lie entrance. Titey had scarcely j put half-way lo tlif! heads when, dim through the sea haze hcforc them, they J saw I lie white and stalely shape of the Opliir c-iiuin}.- at speed. There was a hurried rush into epaulettes mnl cocked lints mi hoard the licet; tlie great ship? wheeled to starhoard and port, a* the Opliir. with tlie Trinity House llag at her foremast, and the J Royal Standard flying from iier mizzenniasN swept through the fleet: and al half-past 12 the Ophir dropped anchor olf Moriiington, while the sound of the hymns in the diurehe.s ashore floated out to her through the clear sea air, the first Australian greeting. When j the loyal yacht reached the heads, nobody j was prepared for her, and the St. fleorge, ! one of her convoy, was lagging out of sight to the wc»t. The Ophir, with the Jinn, | came straight on. Qiicenscliff, with £1 gun*, spal an ineffectual welcome to the great ships as tlicy eiropt majestically past, but the chain of batteries which guards tlie head* win disappointingly silent. The Australian squadron was stumbled upon in the fashion described. The St. fleorge, tlie other cruiser escorting the Ophir, made her appearance, in leisurely fashion, four hours later; and Melbourne woke up in astonishment on Monday morning to discover that its royal guest bad been, for nearly Z\ hours, quietly at anchor opposite one of tlie Watering-places which stud the great curve of the harbour! i KIXDLIXC KXCiTKMKXT. ' Meanwhile, for days. Melbourne has been slowly fusing in a "while flame of excitement. It takes something lo kindle a mass so great, scattered over an area so wide; 1 hut the miracle is accomplished! Bay after day the excitement has risen. It pcemert to ho like sonic new and strange oxygen ill the very air. It burned in men's blood, j -Many things have combined lo fan the 1 human llame. Bit by bit the decorations I have taken shape. The arches have lifted j their stately curves, fretted with many pin-1 r.acles, high in the sunlit air. The streets j have flushed into colour. Tlie crowds in them have grown almost impassable. The country 'has been emptying itself upon (he city; the population of whole towns marching almost, literally in solid battalions to the capital, until Melbourne lias become one vast human reservoir, full to the very brim. its population may bo at the present moment even tlie (iovernment Statist would be afraid to guess. Then, too, there has taken shape in the nublie imagination (hat tiny squadron of fast-coining ships—the great white liner, turned, for the moment, into a royal yacht, villi its two grim black-hulled convoys/ The coming of the Ophir stirs the popular mind, not merely because it brings with it the j Heir-Apparent to the throne, bnt because it hears to Australia (lie greeting and tlio good-will of the whole Empire. Melbourne has thus llie haif-deligliled and half-uncom-fortable sense of bring, at- the present, moment, not only (lie nerve-centre of the continent, but. a centre of interest for the Kmpirc, and for the civilitcd world, Never before was it so deeply moved, so rfstles-, so self-conscious*. 11 is one nole of a magnet (hat runs across Iho world; the coming Ophir may be said to represent the other pole. And now the climax lias come! Today is the moment of contact and of cleetrieal chock. THE GATIIERINtt CROWDS. Early on Monday morning along every line of approach to Melbourne the stream of spectators began to pour in. The rivers were running into the tea! Each road, each railtviiv. each tram line, was a stream flowing full-vuliuued into the centra', human ocean. Melbourne, it must he u'mcnibered, has a papulation of 500,000; and on a moderate computation, three persons out of every live were determined lo assist at I lie l great function as spectators, This, alone, insured a crowd of 300,000: and at least another 100,000 spectators came from (lie country (lMricts and from the oilier States. The decorated area of Melbourne is a parallelogram. a mile in length, and an eighth of a mile in breadth. A crowd of <00,000 emptied on an area so smalt would have liopelcsdv nduiierged it. But. fortunately, llie Si'. Kilda road, a noble curve throe miles long, and of stalely width, along' which the procession was to come, drew probably a third of llie whole vast crowd lo itself. St. Kilda, again, where llie l'rinee was lo land, attracted many thousands, hi that the (oial enormous mass of spectators was (bus happily distributed along a route of nearly six miles. The .spectacle of the gathering was memorable. ll was a scene of movement, uf colour, of joyous excitement, burning through gival masses of people, such a< no Australian city has ever before witnessed. The air was full of a sound deeper and more stirring than even the slrains of martial liiiiric, I lie multitudinous voice of a niinbl.v crowd. And the scene was over changing. Now came, in rhythmic march, a column of Rifles: now. with shrill pound of fifes and lattle. of drums, a battalion of khaki clad cadets; now, in far-stretching length, the I,ancers and Mounted lnfanlrv, on llie nuivch lo meet the l'rinee at St. Kildu; and now, villi free and swinging Kail, and sunbrowued faces, Hint sight that always delights a crowd, a great dc-taeh. ment of seamen and marines from the fleet. And .'till the multitude* in the slrcels grew denser. The noint at which the movement and life and gaiety of the whole scene could be best realised was perhaps at Prince's Urid'.'c. The mo-t effective bit of decoration in the whole city was here, a massive and stately arch, approached through an avenue of columns, standing in pairs, and which, for scale and iiiafjivenc=s, might almost have been stolen from Eaalbec. Xol Iho famous bridge across the Hosfihoriß a( Constant;ropl", for fparkling colour a"d kaleidotcooic life, could have surpassed Prince's linage duriii!' the long hours while th" crowds were gathering to we'eome the l'rinee. K \va< n sort of restless, changing, many-coloured human drama, staged in the open air and sunlight. Meanwhile the crowdi had grown to such a scale llial they seemed lo Mot out o? sifthl and notice evervthing cl-o but themselves. The miles of terraced seals were packed. The lines of tall buildinors on either fide of 111" Touto were turned into human frescoes, livery window had"beeome a square of eager faces. The parapets were transfigured into a living frieze of human figures. The se.i of life flowing through the si reel ! below sienied to fling its spray to the house-roofs.

I The whnlo scene somehow suggested Carlyle's immortal picture of the crowds Paris witnessed when the States-general gathered on May 4, 17E9, and when so many serried rows were sitting perched on tlie very houseroofs. like winged creature# alighted out of heaven. The effect, it may be added, on the Mulder, of tlio frieze-like figures ou the parapets of tlie bouses, ■ of the spectators showing against the sky-line, above even these, was very remarkable. Tlie long street seemed lo be turned into the stage of a great theatre, and these are the gods looking down from ibe highest seats in the gallon*l In the .-treeis helotv there is an odd. moveless look about the crowd. A va-t crowd is usually, .ike the ocean, stirred contimmlly. with strange :md wav<Mtki' u>"Vp* ment'. But here the far-stretching mass of spectators stand facing each oilier, on either side of the clear track, without tumult or struggle. . The crowd, it is needless to sitv. was. 11l look and .-haracier, such as Australasian cities can show, with its indescnbab.e air of ra-e. of order, of comfort, of quick llitiMl* genre. WAITIM!'. • Now (he trams have .-topped; the street harriers defining the route for tne cumin:; procession are'do-cd; the crowds bat . stand, massed and eager, the bar- ; nets, are hedged with soldierly figures in kiu'ki or sc.u'let. A clear route, more than six miles in length, shadowed with Hugs, and bestridden by arches, and running j through an unbroken multitude 01 spccil 1 .- tors, along whose front the soldiers, placed ! at regular intervals, resembled fo many coloured beads along the edge of ?oim) vast garment, is created almost at a breath, and with a gesture. It was a miracle of llMllSgewent and order 1 And as the time for the i'rince to come drew near, and the crowd seemed to arrange itself for his coining, a curious effect was Urn whole scene seemed lo take a certain unity. All colours seemed to blend, all sounds to melt into olie. The croivd became a corporate tbinu. Tin 1 scene resolved itself into one compact, homogeneous puge.nit. And over it all—over the city roofs and the packed streets below, is breathing an air as soft as milk, as keen as wine; while the clear sunlight makes all colour vivid, and seems to make all faces youug. For, be it remembered, this was a perfect aulumu day in Australia! If any artist in words- ,i Ituskin of a Stevenson—could have translated the whole spectacle into literary terms, and charged it sufficiently with literary colour, il would luve made an iinperiihabie wordpicture. A SKA-SCKM*:. And, hark! Deep and faint a wave of sound is rolling up the bay. It is the sound of far-olf welcoming guns.' Another vcene, of a different sort to that in the packed streets, but equally stately and picturesque, is taking place just now off Port Melbourne. The Ophir, with the whole fleet of ironclads for convoy, ennie up majestically from Moruington. As the great ships swung round olf Port Melbourne, they met with a uiaje-lic welcome. All the foreign ships of uar were lying here in grim and stalely order, and along their iron sides, at a signal, ran the while smoke and red flashes of the gun«. and the answering wave of found was audible far ofi' in the crowded streets of Melbourne. The' i-reat four-funnelled iron-clad, the (Ironioboi. with her huge Sin guns, seemed lo dominate the bellowing chorus. The gun* of (lie Victorian Held artillery, in turn, welcomed the Prince with smoke and thunder as he landed on the pier. The grim and frowning aspect of the great ships, shaking | tiie city with their guns, was somehow* acI centuated by the frame of natural beauty in which the whole scene was ret; the loof of azure sky; the floor of azure sea; the soft haze along the horizon, which made it impossible to tell where sky and sea meet, but against which the ships of war, half-lost in eddying smoke, were .silhouetted with startling effect. PICTURES KX HOV'TK. Hut now llie Prince has landed, and let the resd'T picture the scene through which he must pass before lie reaches the city. The whole St. Kilda road was double-lined with troops, a thin thread of steel and khaki, forming n coloured edge to the living ma-s of shouting and cheering people behind. Xo than £0 bauds were scattered at intervals along the route, while one mounted band—that of the New South Wale? Imincer:—formed part of the moving e?corl. Thus the glittering procession moved in a [ sort of temneFt of sou-ul: the clash of steel I on stirrup filling* the air with metallic vibroj tions; the music of the bauds keeping pace j with the royal parly, or running ever before | it. And deeper than beat of drum, more ; resonant than blast of brazen instruments, j rose continuousiy the many-voiced, multitudinous clieerug of the crowd. i At one point ou the St. Kilda road stood massed and ranked some 20.000 fchonl children, a sort of island of youthful faces set in the darker framework of the crowd. And as the royal party passed, these broke out into what can only be described as u tumult of thrilling, shrill-cadenced music. Let who can try lo realise the effect of .*O,OOO youthful voices—sweet and pure, if pin ill—poured suddenly into tlie strains of '"fiod save llie Ki'jfc." and miming in one mighty wave of keenest, sound over the whole scene. The children, it may he added, were drawn up on a long, sloping bank, so that the whole mass was visible at a glance, a vast inclined parallelogram of youthful figures, the girls iu white, with bands of blue. At n given signal, as they sing " flotl save the King," every child iu the crowd suddenly lifted a tiny flay and waved it. In a moment, the great bank of childish facer had vanished.' All that could be seen was a carpet of bright-coloured Uniterm!; flags. ANOTHER PICTURE. But lei. the reader imagine that he is waitill!.' ill front of Parliament House, at the artistic and dramatic centre of the whole spectacle: where the crowd is densest; where all the beauty and interest of the seeuc reaches its culminatiufr point. Before j him _vises Ibe lons, many-pillared facade of Parliament tlous?. The slope of the great terrace of steps leading m> to it is crowded with the foremost men and the fairest women in Australasia; the long front is edged with fresh-faced and youthful cadclr. The foolp.ilbs, far ns the eye can run, are one packed and solid mass of spectator*. Tiie great terraces of seat.-', rmiiiing up . with a sort of mountainous effect, are one •slope of life and colour. A narrow ribbon of clear mip.cc. edged with the steadfast figures of the silent troops, marks where the procession is lo conic. The air has been full of the chatter of human voices; the crowd has been lauifbini:. iv.-'llev!. iinui'tirnt. Hut noiv it suddenly hushes! Every figure grows tense, every face eager. A wave of sound that grows deeper every ii)omcut is flowing over the house-roofs; it is the sound of the trampling hoofs of many horses, of life and drum, of steel ringing on strel, of the stormy cheering of a great crowd. A great crowd, il is lo be noted. lia» a cbarecteristie voice of its own, with a definite though "arrow range of uote.j: and the hearer finds himself unconsciously trying to rna.yse its (piality. Every human p.i'siim liai iU special note. Did not Mendelssohn (let the music of the .-iormv d.orus, " Stone- him to death," iu hie " St. Paul." from the voice of the crowd crying "Bread!" in front of tlie Kaiser's palace in Vienna? Hut there i< no character or passion m the cheer of (he crowd 10-day. As heard far off il is high-keyed and sharp, a note of exciteinenl rtnming through it. Then, as it come* noaiTr, it sorm* to fh'epon; ii is all about one, an indescribable tumult of sound. THE PRINCE! Hill now the head of the procession, a folitaiy and gorgeous figure, swings into sight. It is only llie assistant quarter-master-general. but 10 ficld-mavfha'.s rolled ■ into one would scarcely eo.ual for pictures- . ouunoss this scarlet, lie-feathered and martini figure. Then come the Victorian Mounted Killes, iu sober brown, with maroon faeincs, . and following them the New Suulh Wales Mounted Itilles, whose brown uniform is edged and slashed with vivid red. Detachment ,liter (letncluneiil follows; then a single resplendent figure, with shining helmet and cuirass and gold-braided uniform, the aide-de-camp to his Excellency llie Ooiernoilieneral. Now come a pair of outrider-. eairkgc after carriage, with postilions, containing members of the royal tiafl'; the i.dvanee party of the royal escort, formed of . men from all the States of the Commonwealth, with New Ze_alaiidc-rj; a group of oHiceiv: a pair of outriders; then (onics the i (iovcruor-deiierars carriage, with the Duke I I and Duchess. Tin; two figures are teen for (he first time 1 by probably 990 people out of every 1000 in ; the crowd : vet they are in-tuutly recognised, j The youthful, lliougli bearded and sailor-like, j faee of (lie I'rince; the stalely figure, clad ' in black, of the Duchess. Tlie carriage ! moves slowly on, attended by one continuous I wave of cheering, that began at the St. Kilda pier and • never ceased till, after u drive of betwixt eix and seven miles, the royal carriage swent into the gates of (.10-1 1 vcnmienl House Domain. One could have wished sometimes a deeper nole i'.i the cheering; but tiie. (ruth was thai the vision of 1 the royal pair was, at first, au appeal c'lielly 1 to the curiosity of the crowd. Manv of the 1 spectators were so eager In take in every ! detail of what they saw that they almost 1 forgot that they possessed voices as well : 83 eyes. But as the cortege moved on. 1' every now and again noma .sudden shout, or a tumult of voices from one of tin great terraces of seals, would move the i crowd with tlie contagion of its enthusiaMii,

ami then the cheering took something; of the depth and vibratio-u of thunder. The royal pair bowed incessantly, but with a judicious economy of curve, 'i'lie roy.il bow has apparently been reduced to a minimum. It might almost- be (Inscribed ns consisting of, nothing but a spinal vibration! But human strength has its limits. It would : bo umri"oiiab!c to expert- the roy.il spine to describe a scries of extensive and in. crca.-ing curves alow; a route of nearly seven mile;. THE TIMIOI'iS. Now comes the far-stretching column of mounted infantry. They moved past in what seemed to lie unceasing succession; sometimes picturesque, always serviceablelooking and soldier-liko: Quceiislaiiders with maroun-farnd khaki, ami felt hats feather-crested: South Australians in khaki, scarlet-faced: West Australians, with-Spar-tan-like severity of kbalii, in which gleamed no point of colour: Tasmaniftns in grey, faced with red. and Mark-leathered hats; New /.calenders in brown and red. The New South Wales Field .Artillery, in blue cloth tunics, yellow-braided, with white pants and white helmets, outshone the Victorian "miners: but the most pichires<|iie figures in the column were the New South Wales Lancers. The fawn-coloured tunics, piped and breasted v.iih red. and the feather-eiested hats, were striking; but when above these gleamed a forest of glittering lance-points, with gay pennons, the effect was striking, and the enr.vd, always responsive to o vivid colour-effect, cheered rapturously. There were only 1400 Mounted Infantry, and that number seems modest. It scarcely amounts to.a couple of cavalry regiment?. In the military arithmetic of the Continent, the whole force would ■ have been a very inconspicuoui numeral. None wore swords, too, and only a single detachment carried lances, so that it was difficult to imagine them, like the bowmen of Wellington's days, charging batteries at or breaking 'squares with their impact. Yet they represented ihe bluest and mo.-t formidable mass of armed horsemen ever seen ill the streets of an Australian city; and the sense of power tliey gave was very marked. The men rode well. They were keen-faced, alert, hardy. It was easy to imagine them keeping wait)), a line of ontposti along a threatened frontier: or moving, a wave of mounted skirmishers, in front of an advancing army, the eyes and cars of the force to which tliey belonged. Sometimes the long column—ami, be it remembered, it was a mile and a quarter in length— got temporarily dislocated. A wide gap stretched het'.vixt two detachments, and (lie order was given to "trot," "canter." This look place once on the hill slope from the post ofiice to Queen street, and again when; the crowd was densest in what is known as "The Block," in Collins street. The-sight of the rushing mounted figures, sweeping through tho' crowd in a track so narrow, the sound of the thundering hoofs, curiously excited the multitude,, and the cheering grew vehement. Sometimes y trooper's horse flung its head suddenly above the line of the crowd. Tile snorting uoifrils, tno di-tonded eyes, and the flying mane were visible for a moment, then vanished. But the effect was as though a bit of the frieze along the front of the Partlir- : non had suddenly come to life, and was exhibited for the sake of thrilling an Australian crowd! i But the long column comes to an end at hft. Tiie last files' Jtavc passed. The ' sound of the cheering grows fainter. Then ' the long, rigid lines of the crowd suddenly ' relax. Its mass dissolves. The clear line ' of the track vanishes. The great tcrraces of ' seats have emptied themselves: the line ] of the house-tops grow clear: Melbourne ] has seen and welcomed tin? JVince. The 1 first act in tho long and stately welcome ' which Melbourne is offering its royal visitor 1 has come to an end! ' I AN ILLUMINATED CITY. ; Then came the night, with its illuminated ; city, night which outshone even a day • so brilliant. The illuminations were, in fact, a revolution of what art, working'by dec- i trieity, can do in tho "way of clothing a city with flame. No one had imagined, or gue-sed, the wealth of artistic invention, as well as of solid cash, which had been expended towards this end. The uso of electricity makes strange effects in tho way of illumination possible. The •.vhole front'of a great building breaks into wliito (ire almost, at a single flash. The Exhibition Building, for example, rose, a shapclcfw, dimly-seen ninss in the evening dusk. Its cupola-like dome, black against the black sky, seemed like some inky and gigantic moon. Suddenly a thousand lines of white flame flashed like threads of pallid lightning along the whole front of the huge building. They leaned at a breath from basement to window, from window to parapet. Tlioy crested evory little spire; they ran along the black curve of the great dome, l-'vi'rv angle in an instant wa-< edged with flame: every line was drawn in fire. The whole architecture became luminous. The ami building clad with the flame of ten thousand star;, stood revealed; the dome, that crowns the building, hung in the sky like some great harvest moon, and visible for a distance of 20 miles. Where two faces of mmc ■ great building, rising above the city roof.-—like the Town Hall or the I'c.it Office—were illuminated with sufficient art, the oli'ect seen from afar was that of eonio great architect urn] design lning in space, or painted on the velvet blackness of tiie night sky. The climax of the effect, Jiowever, was reached with the two spire-crowned and ornamental buildings which the Railway department had erected at the opposite corners of Swanson street, where it is intersected by • Flinders street. The deign of these buildings lent itself with curious effectiveness to the purposes of illumination. There is .something Moorish in their shape; they suggest tho tombs of the Caliphs at Cairo,, crowned with a lance-shaped spire. When lit up from bane to summit with points of electric light, the effect was remarkaale. Each seemed like a luminous spire of jewels set in the darkness. The tinting of the light; strangely heightened the genera! effect. It was green at hise, a deep flame-like red :.t centre, running up to white—the white of molten steel—at the tip, the whole giving an indescribable sense of intensity.. They were twin siicaM of flame, white-hot at the extremity, lifted liiuli into the skv. Seen from some high building, Melbourne at night-time, when illuminated, suggested, in a word, nothing so much as a scene from the "Arabian Nights." It was a citv of flame, which only the imagination and art of some committee of genii could have create:!. Low in the western sky, too, right above the roofs of the citv. hung the comet. .Seen from one of the eastern suburbs, it looked 0.1 though it were about to plunge into the luminous haze of the shilling streets and add a new glory to the illumination?. (Altering city below and flaming comet above made a weird conjunction!