, and we learned with deep interest that
the Hardwar "mela," which he was to visit, takes place every twelve
years, and is a kind of religious fair, which attracts representatives
from all the numerous sects of India.

Learned dissertations are read by the disputants in defence of their
peculiar doctrines, and the debates are held in public. This year
the Hardwar gathering was exceptionally numerous. The Sannyasis--the
mendicant monks of India--alone numbered 35,000 and the cholera,
foreseen by the Swami, actually broke out.

As we were not yet to start for the appointed meeting, we had plenty of
spare time before us; so we proceeded to examine Bombay.

The Tower of Silence, on the heights of the Malabar Hill, is the last
abode of all the sons of Zoroaster. It is, in fact, a Parsee cemetery.
Here their dead, rich and poor, men, women and children, are all laid in
a row, and in a few minutes nothing remains of them but bare skeletons.
A dismal impression is made upon a foreigner by these towers, where
absolute silence has reigned for centuries. This kind of building is
very common in every place were Parsees live and die. In Bombay, of six
towers, the largest was built 250 years ago, and the least but a short
time since. With few exceptions, they are round or square in shape, from
twenty to forty feet high, without roof, window, or door, but with a
single iron gate opening towards the East, and so small that it is
quite covered by a few bushes. The first corpse brought to a new
tower--"dakhma"--must be the body of the innocent child of a mobed
or priest. No one, not even the chief watcher, is allowed to approach
within a distance of thirty paces of these towers. Of all living human
beings "nassesalars"--corpse-carriers--alone enter and leave the "Tower
of Silence." The life these men lead is simply wretched. No European
executioner's position is worse. They live quite apart from the rest
of the world, in whose eyes they are the most abject of beings. Being
forbidden to enter the markets, they must get their food as they can.
They are born, marry, and die, perfect strangers to all except their own
class, passing through the streets only to fetch the dead and carry them
to the tower. Even to be near one of them is a degradation. Entering
the tower with a corpse, covered, whatever may have been its rank or
position, with old white rags, they undress it and place it, in
silence, on one of the three rows presently to be