mighty nondescript body is echoed the cry "Kedge
Anchor!" Sure enough, "Kedge Anchor," an unknown from Australia, ridden
by a jockey of obscure past, wins the great race. Three favorites are
ingloriously beaten. Up go the numbers. All is over in less than two
minutes--and the crowd goes pell-mell back to the book-makers'
enclosure, hoping for better luck over the next race on the card. If
rupees were dollars, the financial aspect of a Bombay racing day would
be important.

Kipling wrote true when he called Bombay "India's Queen City." It lacks
the depressing influences of Calcutta, as well as the odors. Indeed, it
is one of the handsomest cities of the whole British Empire, and has
more notable buildings than Manchester or Edinburgh. True, its stately
piles blend the Gothic and Indian schools of architecture, but otherwise
there is nothing Eastern about Bombay--save its people. A man awakening
from long slumber on a ship anchored off the Apollo Bunder would
willingly swear he beheld a European town. Eight tenths of India's
visitors arrive and depart from Bombay.

The opening of the Suez Canal made certain the importance of Bombay as
a trade center. It is now the largest cotton port in the world next to
New Orleans, and if plague and smallpox might be controlled for five
years it would have a population of a million. Bombay is a comparatively
modern city, as cities count in immemorial India. England secured Bombay
in 1661, not by conquest, but as a portion of the marriage dowry of
Catharine of Braganza of Portugal, when she became the queen of Charles
II.

The world's most artistic railway station--not the largest, nor
costliest--is in Bombay, and the best marble statue in existence of
Queen Victoria was presented to the Bombay municipality by His Highness
the Gaekwar of Baroda. Another notable gift is the bronze statue of
Edward VII, donated by Sir Albert Sassoon, son of a public-spirited
banker from Baghdad, who took up his residence in Bombay. A newcomer
among the city's office buildings is "Roosevelt House," advantageously
situated near the Apollo Bunder.

The eyes of the person recently arrived from Europe or America behold
many strange and amusing sights in the streets of Bombay, and for days
your local guide and the obliging porter at the hotel is kept busy the
livelong day answering questions. The native policeman is a human
institution who explains himself. It is averred that he is loyal and
efficient, but