Long before these preparations were completed, the invasion of London by visitors from the country, from America, and from the Continent had commenced. The streets, always pretty-well congested with the great press of traffic, were now almost impassable. Vast good-humoured crowds surged up and down the principal thoroughfares, and travelling from one part of the town to another became a matter of increasing difficulty. Where all the people were accommodated it would be difficult to say. Certain it is, that all the rooms in the better-known hotels were taken weeks beforehand, and the landladies of Bloomsbury reaped a rich harvest. [Illustration: _Photographed at the Crown Studios, Sydney._ THE RT. HON. G. H. REID, PREMIER OF NEW SOUTH WALES. Was born at Johnstone, Renfrewshire, in 1845, and is the son of a Presbyterian Minister. He began life in Sydney in the Civil Service, but studied law and entered the New South Wales Legislature in 1880. He became Minister of Education, 1883; Leader of the Opposition, 1891; Premier, 1894. He is a strong advocate of Australian Federation.] [Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Lafayette._ THE RT. HON. SIR G. TURNER, PREMIER OF VICTORIA. Born in Melbourne; he is by profession a solicitor. Entered the Victorian Parliament in 1889, and became Prime Minister and Treasurer in 1894. He is between forty and fifty years of age.] [Illustration: _From a Photograph by Talma, Melbourne._ THE RT. HON. R. J. SEDDON, PREMIER OF NEW ZEALAND. Born at St. Helens, Lancashire, in 1844; went to Victoria in 1863. He has been for twenty-five years in the New Zealand Parliament, and has been Premier since 1893. He is also Colonial Treasurer, Commissioner of Customs, Postmaster-General, Minister of Labour, and Minister of Native Affairs.] [Sidenote: Grand Stands.] In addition to the vast amount of accommodation afforded by the houses lying along the route, every available coign of vantage was seized upon for the erection of a stand. Churches were lost to view beneath vast tiers of red upholstered seats reaching half way up their towers, and what had been known as Charing Cross Station was buried from sight under a mammoth thousand-seated stand. "Can our City Princes not have noticed," asks a writer in the _Daily Mail_ with quaint humour, "that somebody has stuck a lot of carpentry on the very pediment of the Royal Exchange? Somebody else has boarded up the Law Courts, and barristers and solicitors stoop and dive in as if they were going to clean out their chicken houses. The Houses of Parliament are all scaffolding too, and at first, seeing no reports in the papers, I thought they had been abolished while I was away.... Even to take a penny boat at Westminster you have to go under a sort of triumphal arch of joinery.... They are actually changing all London from building into furniture."