escape and the queen's thank-offering. And although time has robbed it of many a picturesque incident, the procession is still of unique interest, because the whole of the State army takes part in it. His Highness's regular and irregular forces may be seen in this yearly pageant—gorgeous African Cavalry Guards on magnificent horses, smart Household Cavalry, the Golconda Lancers, the Imperial Service troops, and all the rest of the regular army, and also the irregular forces, the descendants of the soldiers who helped the first Nizam, Asaf Jah, to reconquer and settle the Deccan tableland at the beginning of the eighteenth century a.d., and to carve out and consolidate the country that is now known as "the Nizam's Dominions." Wild and weird some of these irregular soldiers look while they dance and sing in the procession and brandish all sorts of antique weapons. And terrible, indeed, appear the State executioners, who are dressed in red and hold aloft their hideous emblems of office.
The procession, which takes several hours to pass a given point, is swelled by nobles with their retainers; but in modern Hyderabad it would appear that the greater number
