The festivities, which occupied several days, consisted of receptions, fireworks, reviews, games, dances, and religious ceremonies, culminating in a most impressive and colorful pageant, when the two bridegrooms proceeded to the palace in state to claim their brides. Nowhere outside the pages of _The Wizard of Oz_ could one find such amazing and fantastic costumes as those worn by the thousands of natives who took part in that procession. Every combination of colors was used, every period of European and Asiatic history was represented. Some of the costumes looked as though they owed their inspiration to Bakst's designs for the Russian ballet--or perhaps Bakst obtained his ideas in Djokjakarta; others were strongly reminiscent of Louis XIV's era, of the courts of the great Indian princes, of the Ziegfeld Follies.
The procession was led by four peasant women bearing trays of vegetables and fruits, symbols of fecundity, I assumed. Behind them, sitting cross-legged in glass cages swung from poles, each borne by a score of sweating coolies in scarlet liveries, were the four chief messengers of the royal harem--former concubines of the Sultan who had once been noted for their influence and beauty. The cages--I can think of no better description--were of red lacquer, about four feet square, with glass sides, and, so far as I could see, entirely air-tight. They looked not unlike large goldfish aquariums. As they were passing us the procession halted for a few moments and the panting coolies lowered their burdens to the ground. Whereupon Hawkinson, who is no respecter of persons when the business of getting pictures is concerned, set up his camera within six feet of one of the cages and proceeded to take a "close-up" of the indignant but helpless occupant, who, unable to escape or even turn away, could only assume an indifference which she was evidently far from feeling.
Following the harem attendants marched a company of the royal body-guard, in scarlet cutaway coats like those worn by the British grenadiers during the American Revolution, pipe-clayed cross-belts, white nankeen breeches, enormous cavalry boots, extending half-way up the thigh, and curious hats of black glazed leather, of a shape which was a cross between a fireman's helmet and the cap of a Norman man-at-arms. They were armed indiscriminately with long pikes and ancient flint-locks, and marched to the music of fife and drum. The leader of the band danced a sort of shimmy as he marched, at the same time tootling on a flute. He looked like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Perhaps the most curious feature of the procession was provided by the clowns, both men and women--an interesting survival of the court-jesters of the Middle Ages--powdered and painted like their fellows of the circus, and performing many of their stereotyped antics. One of them, wearing an enormous pair of black goggles, bestrode a sort of hobby-horse, made of papier-maché, and, when he saw that Hawkinson was taking his picture, cavorted and grimaced, to the huge delight of the onlookers. The female clowns, all of whom were burdened by excessive avoirdupois, wiggled their hips and shoulders as they marched in a sort of Oriental shimmy.