, eagerly tearing and devouring the flesh,
absolutely picking it clean from the bones, which fall into a space
below in an indiscriminate mass, to be decomposed by time and the
elements. The hideous detail of the scene is not visible to the
spectators, but the reappearance of these terrible birds of prey upon
the walls, an hour later, in a gorged condition, is only too significant
of what has transpired within the silent and gloomy inclosure.

During a subsequent early-morning walk the writer observed a funeral
procession on its way towards Malabar Hill, and followed it to the
Towers. For a moment after arriving there the face of the corpse was
exposed, showing the marble features of a young girl of some fifteen
years, wearing upon her pale face an expression of seraphic loveliness.
The body was covered with a snow-white sheet, exhibiting the outline of
a beautiful, budding form suddenly snatched from life. Over and around
the body were white buds and half-blown pale flowers, indicative of
youth, recalling to mind a similar experience on the banks of the
Ganges. There was no apparent want of sentiment and tenderness here. As
soon as the brief ceremony was over the beautiful remains, lovely even
in death, were deposited in the nearest tower, the door was closed and
the bearers retired. Down swooped the ravenous birds to their terrible
banquet, as we turned away with a shudder. The devouring flames that
wreathed about the child-corpse at Benares did not seem to us so
shocking as this.

Seeing an intelligent Parsee, who had evidently been watching us, we
asked: "How can you reconcile to your feelings such disposal as that of
the remains of a tenderly beloved child?" "What do you do with your
dead?" he asked. "We bury them in the earth." "Yes," he continued, "for
the worms to eat. And if there is death at sea you sink the body in the
ocean to be consumed by the sharks. We prefer to give our dead to the
birds of the air." We were certainly answered, though not convinced, as
to the propriety of the awful scene just enacted. Perhaps, after all, it
makes but little difference what becomes of these tenements of clay. The
Parsee feeds the vultures with his dead, the devout Hindoo burns the
body, and the professed Christian gives his to the worms and to the
sharks. Still as we came down Malabar Hill that morning, and saw the
hideous carrion birds, gorged and sleepy, roosting upon the walls of the
cemetery, a sense of nausea came