monkeys raid the fruit and vegetable fields by night,
and are capable of organizing a descent upon some promising point with
all the forethought of human thieves.

The opening of communication with England by the Red Sea route has given
to Bombay a great business impetus, and it possesses to-day more
elements of future greatness than any other city of Asia. The two
principal capitals of the country are situated on opposite sides of the
great peninsula, Calcutta being on the Bay of Bengal, and Bombay on the
Sea of Arabia. We have in the latter a population of a million and over,
one hundred thousand of whom are Parsees, a class of merchants
originally from Persia, who represent a large share of the wealth of the
city. They are by far the most enterprising and intelligent of the
natives of India, and are in entire sympathy with the English
government. Socially, they keep to themselves, strictly preserving their
well-defined individuality. This people settled here more than eight
centuries ago, after their expulsion from Persia. Their temples contain
no images, nothing but the altars bearing the sacred fire which their
fathers brought with them when they landed here so long ago, and which
has never been extinguished, according to their traditions. They worship
the sun as the representative of God, and fire in all its forms, as well
as the ocean, which would seem to be an antagonistic agent; but as their
religion recognizes one good and one evil principle ever contending for
the mastery of the universe, perhaps these emblems are no contradiction.

One of the first places to which we are attracted in Bombay is Malabar
Hill, a lofty eminence just outside the city. On the top are the five
famous "Towers of Silence," which constitute the cemetery of the
Parsees. When a death occurs among them, the body is brought here, and
after a brief ceremony the corpse is carried into one of the towers,
where it is exposed upon a grating. The bearers retire at once, and the
door is locked. These towers are open at the top, and on the cornices
hundreds of vultures are seen waiting; as soon as the body is left, they
swoop down to their awful meal, eagerly tearing and devouring the
corpse. The hideous detail is not visible, but the reappearance of those
evil birds in a gorged condition is only too significant of what has
occurred. The devouring flames which consumed the bodies at Calcutta and
at Benares did not shock us like this.

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