WILL HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS VISIT US ?

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 74, 15 March 1876, Page 4

WILL HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS VISIT US ?

(San Francisco News Letter.) The (Prince of Wales is about to visit what is thought to be one of the romantic portions of that Imperial dominion over which, in' the course of nature, he Will one day be called upon to reign. Yet, whether in the essential elements of true romance, the domain of the Great, Mogul is richer' than that "Great Britain " whereof English is the mother-tongue, may be doubted. Less picturesque in some respects than the aged East, the twin Anglo-Saxon empires of the Australian and North American continents, are to the eye that looks into the future rather than the paßt, the fuller of features that will arrest the intelligent curiosity of its gaze. Among the motives that have determined the visit of the Prince to India, it is not to be doubted that self-improvement*- :in the sense which those words naturally bear in reference to a great ruler among men — is one. He will acquire a personal knowledge of the wants, capabilities, and the condition of his Oriental domain which no industry or study could otherwise impart. But in this large political sense, the Greater Britain constitutes a field no lees large and no leas important for his Royal Highnese's Btudy We Americans are the great natural allies, as well as the great commercial rivals of, Great Britain. Between ourselves and them the supremacy of the seas is to be divided. Between us and them the trade of the Orient and the vast Pacific Ocean is to be controlled. As they now reap the fruits of the Suez Canal, we are reaping those of the Continental Railway, and the rivalry is direct and personal. The heart of Britain ie her Lombard-street, and the great vein whence that heart draws the blood wherewith, it pulsates, is our Comstock vein in Nevada. The exchanges and the values of the world are bound up in the low of that precious stream which there wells up from the deep bowels of the earth. The life of the teeming millions of Hindostan rests upon a food supply which their vast irrigation works provide. We are emnlating on the boundless plains of San Joaquin, the labors which have there come down from the immemorially lost races of the Bush. England is clothed with the wool from the great Australian flocks. The commercial bonds between Australia and ourselves are drawing ever closer, and we may soon compete, in a way not heretofore thought of, with the English millmasher in the Australian market. Russia and Great Britain already look into each other's eyes with uneasy menace on the eaves of that vast tableland — "the root of the world "—and when the inevitable struggle shall come, we are the natural ally of the Saxon— not of the Russ. For more reasons than can be enumerated, we are better worth the acquaintance of the ruler of the English people than any other human beings under the sue Then let him come and let us look at him. We have somewhat to show him withal — somewhat of the curious to those who would be curious, to those who would be curious intelligently, and according to the spirit of the age. We will lodge him in the grandest habitation wherein it is privileged for merely mortal man at this day to lodge. We will entertain him in the "Palace" of American sovereigns, and, look you, we will please the palate of him with dainties. He shall glide over the boundless plains of California, and see what irrigation means with us. He shall drop to the depths of Comstock, and look upon mines and mining, the like whereof are not to be seen elsewhere upon this footstool. The wonders of Yosmite shall be to him a possession and a joy thenceforward for ever. And we will give him a welcome as hearty and as Honest as ever greeted British majesty from the days of Norman William to bis own. He shall lead a quadrille with beauty to make his head swim, and take down to supper as much wit as would have curled the wig of his gallant grftuduncle. He shall think that the crown jewels of Austria have burst their iron-guards to burn up the necks and foreheads of our dames. In brief, betwixt that "champagne atmosphere" which intoxicates even the Strawberry vine [into putting forth a September berry, and the awful carloads of silver bricks that render the tales of Arabia only as sounding braßß, the Prince shall become a Caiifornian from crown to toe, and go back to bis wife and bairns the better and the wiser King. God save King Edward VII I