ing the lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its
victim.

Vast as the show-grounds were, there were no vacant
spaces in them outside of the lists, at ten o'clock on
the morning of the 16th. The mammoth grand-stand
was clothed in flags, streamers, and rich tapestries, and
packed with several acres of small-fry tributary kings,
their suites, and the British aristocracy; with our own
royal gang in the chief place, and each and every
individual a flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets --
well, I never saw anything to begin with it but a fight
between an Upper Mississippi sunset and the aurora
borealis. The huge camp of beflagged and gay-
colored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiff-