CHAPTER XXIV.

BOMBAY.

BOMBAY, January 27, 1890.

Leaving delightful Jeypore by the evening train, we were two nights and one day on the road. It was very cold after dark, so much so that I had to get up in the middle of the night and put on my overcoat and shoes.

The train went at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour, stopping at stations for meals, which were quite good, but the native waiters were of the worst, and all the arrangements very primitive compared with the splendid vestibule trains running on the Central Railroad from New York to Chicago.

We obtained accommodations at a first-rate hotel, where I rested for a day, being much fatigued by the trip from Jeypore, but towards night I took a walk along a beautiful boulevard, and through fine parks for several miles, and was much interested in looking at the strange and wonderful scenes. The highly colored dresses of the native women, the silver ornaments covering their persons; the immense public and private palaces, very costly and beautiful,--all made a great impression on me, and I think that Bombay is one of the finest cities in the world.

There are fifty thousand Parsees in this city, with some of whom I became acquainted, and found them to be very intelligent, and was told that they were very successful merchants, many of them millionaires. They originally came from Persia, where they were agriculturists, but here they are merchants. These Parsees are all worshippers of the sun.

One day we went to their burial-place called the "Towers of Silence," situated in a handsomely laid out park. There were three round towers about one hundred feet in diameter and fifty feet high, without any tops, and around the edges perched some hundreds of black vultures. We were told by the attendant that the dead bodies were placed on slats inside these towers and then devoured by the vultures.

We saw the dreadful creatures all flying over to one of the towers, and discovered that a body was being carried there by attendants dressed in white. We were not permitted to go near the towers, but were shown by an attendant a working model of one of them, and exactly how the dead bodies were disposed of.

Towards evening a band played in the beautiful park fronting the hotel, and I saw sights probably not surpassed by any other place on earth.

The _élite_ were out, both native and foreign, in full force, as a public meeting was being held in a beautiful building erected by a wealthy Parsee merchant, in front of which was his marble statue.

The building is called the Bombay University, and an officer, whose coat was covered with decorations, was delivering an address on higher education. Officers and soldiers mounted on fine horses patrolled the streets; companies of Sepoys dressed in native costumes marched along; many white children cared for by native nurses, splendidly dressed native women, and beautiful English ladies and children passed to and fro; carriages and fine horses went by on the road, making a scene of wonderful beauty and attraction. The city, with its many parks, covers a large space, and is elegant and clean, containing more than a million of people, but, strange to say of such an important commercial centre, there has been no United States consul here for six months, and I had in consequence much trouble in shipping home some boxes.

I called upon Mr. Henry Ballantine,[1] who had delivered a delightful lecture on Cashmere before the Geographical Society at New York last winter, and he was good enough to give me such information as enabled me to get my goods off.

[1] Since the above was written Mr. Ballantine has been appointed U. S. Consul to Bombay.