There had been fifty-four entries for this triumphal procession, but not more than thirty-three cars put in an appearance. It is significant of the vast progress made since then that no car present was more than 6 h.-p., and that all, except the Bollée three-wheeled car, were precisely what they were frequently styled, "horseless carriages," vehicles built on traditional lines, from which the horses and the customary shafts were painfully missed. There had not yet been time sufficient for the evolution of the typical motor-car body. With the combined strategy of a Napoleon, the patience of Job, and the strength of Samson, the guests were at length piloted through the crowd and inducted into their seats, and the "procession"--which, it was sternly ordained, was not to be a "race"--set out. [Sidenote: THE FIRST CARS] The President of the Motor-car Club, Harry J. Lawson, since convicted of fraud and sentenced to some months' imprisonment, led the way in his pilot-car, bearing a purple-and-gold banner, more or less suitably inscribed, himself habited in a strange costume, something between that of a yachtsman and the conductor of a Hungarian band. Reigate was reached at 12.30 by the foremost ear, through twenty miles of crowded country, when rain descended once more upon the hapless day, and late arrivals splashed through in all the majesty of mud. The honours of the occasion belong to the little Bollée three-wheeler, of a type long since obsolete. The inventor, disregarding all rules and times, started at 11.30, and, making no stop at Reigate, drove on to Brighton, which he reached in the record time of two hours fifty-five minutes. The President's car was fourth, in seven hours twenty-two minutes thirty seconds. At Preston Park, on the Brighton boundary, the Mayor was to have welcomed the procession, which, headed by the President, was to proceed triumphantly into the town. A huge crowd assembled under the dripping elms and weeping skies, and there, at five o'clock, in the light of the misty lamps, stood and vibrated that presidential equipage and its banner with the strange device. By five o'clock only three other cars had arrived; and so, wet and miserable, they, the Mayor and Council, and the mounted police all splashed into Brighton amid a howling gale. The rest should be silence, for no one ever knew the number of cars that completed the journey. Some said twenty-two, others thirteen; but it is certain that the conditions were too much for many, and that while some reposed in wayside stables, others, broken down in lonely places, remained on the road all through that awful night. The guests, who in the morning had been unable to find seats on the "horseless carriages," and so had journeyed by special train or by coach, in the end had much to congratulate themselves upon.