THE JUBILEE IN HIGH LATITUDES: ELMWOOD, FRANZ JOSEF LAND.
It is characteristic of our nation and our times that at this, the most northerly outpost of civilized man—the head-quarters of the Jackson-Harmsworth Polar Expedition—the Jubilee was celebrated “with all the ardour of Big Englanders.”
The Colonies were as enthusiastic as the Old Country in their celebrations of the Jubilee. In Ottawa there was a gathering of 7,000 school children on Parliament Hill. Each of the children carried a Union Jack, and when these were waved together, while the National Anthem was being sung, the effect is described as having been very remarkable. At night the Parliament House was ablaze with 10,000 incandescent lamps, an inscription on the right or Senate wing reading “God save the Queen,” while on the left or Commons wing the device read “Dieu sauve la Reine.” Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg had each its own well-arranged festivities. In Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, and in the cities of New Zealand, the day was kept as a general holiday, the decorations and illuminations being splendid in every case. In Cape Town there was a review of troops and a huge procession headed by the Naval Brigade. In Egypt, at Lagos, Sierra Leone, and at Mauritius, in the far east at Singapore, at Hong Kong, and at Shanghai, in the East Indies and the West Indies, in British Honduras and British Guiana—everywhere where the Union Jack flies Her Majesty’s subjects gathered together to do her honour. Save only in her Empire of India, where the hearts of men were hardly in tune with the festive spirit of the day. Yet, in spite of the recent earthquake, which had shaken Calcutta to its foundations; in spite of the plague, now happily only lingering in Bombay, and the devastations of the recent famine, India was not without her joyful celebrations, these appropriately taking the form, for the most part, of acts of charity and mercy.
From a Photograph] [by Eyre & Spottiswoode.
THE SPEAKER IN HIS STATE COACH BEARING THE COMMONS’ ADDRESS TO HER MAJESTY.
On Wednesday, June 23, the Lord Chancellor (Lord Halsbury) carried the address of congratulation of the Upper House to Buckingham Palace, and presented it to the Queen. This address had been moved in the House of Lords by the Marquis of Salisbury on Monday, June 21, in the following terms:—
|Addresses from Lords and Commons.| “That a humble address be presented to Her Majesty on the auspicious completion of the sixtieth year of her happy reign, and to assure Her Majesty that this House proudly shares the great joy with which her people celebrate the longest, the most prosperous, and the most illustrious reign in their history, joining with them in praying earnestly for the continuance during many years of Her Majesty’s life and health.”