A Powerful Name. 195 slipped off the stick, leaving the handle hanging on the wall, and myself stretched on the ground, in which position two vultures flew down from the trees to look at me. I threw stones at these sacred birds, so driving them back to their roosting-places. I was not going to be eaten alive unresistingly. The matter was getting desperate. Remorse came also to nag me, as it always does to those in trouble. What business had I here—-poking my nose into other people's burials? We are much too curious. What mattered it to me how the defunct Parsees were disposed of? Let the dead past bury its dead, and the dead Parsees too. What could it matter to me whether birds or worms ate them? We will be nibbling still about that tree of knowledge, true children of our first mother, and getting into the trouble that it still brings to us. Desperate cases suggest strange remedies, as necessity breeds invention. I took the now naked umbrella stick from the wall and walked on towards the gate. I had various cards in a pocket-case, one of which was written in Cingalese character, and looked eastern and unintelligible enough for anything. The guardian of the gate soon saw my approach, and came towards me. I held out the card, and said loudly, “Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy," a name that I had learnt was all powerful with the Parsees. It appeased at once the mixture of surprise and anger I had seen in his face. He seemed to take the card and explanation as satisfactory, and so showed me to the gate. Looking again at the inscription on it, I now noticed that Sir Jamsetjee's name was mentioned as the donor of the ground. On going down the hill I took care to walk painfully and slowly to avoid any appearance of a run, which I nevertheless felt greatly inclined to break into. That gatekeeper was, I feared, looking after me, with an undecided mind. The first baronet of the Jeejeebhoy line is, I believe, dead; but the baronetcy has, I was told, passed to a son and namesake. The first was the founder of this walled enclosure, who at his own sole cost built the towers and settled the feathered colony around them-presenting the whole of it for the use of the Parsee sectarians. Why the native guar dian of the towers never inquired how I got into the enclosure was probably due to his not speaking English, and perhaps to some little confusion of ideas for the moment. It was not the only time that a strange card did me good service. A Parsee of communicative mind, who spoke English well, as they mostly do, whom I met at the Byculla Hotel, kindly told me all about the towers, and the different uses of each of them. He understood that I had seen them from horseback -just standing in the stirrups to get a glimpse over the wall. One tower is only used for six months at a time. There are different grades to be provided for, whose bodies cannot be allowed the use of the same grating. Others are for women, children and suicides—each having a tower to themselves. Families preferring the expense can have a tower for their sole use. The chowk, or native quarter of Bombay, is a well-built place compared to that of Calcutta. The houses are of many stories, stuccoed and coloured in blue, white, and yellow. The cleanliness and gay colours are all explained when I learn that the population hereabout are mostly Parsees. The names I see about end generally in "bhoy" or " jee." One, however, stands out in bold difference as "Mr. Annunciation, undertaker of funerals." The "Mr." seemed all out of the way in the front of a name like that. I failed to make anything of the drama at two of the native theatres which I visited, and very shortly quitted. In coming from one of them I passed through Commatteepoora-a street full of the most friendly-disposed people I ever met. Seated outside, enjoying the cool breeze of the evening, these playful creatures seemed to mistake me for some long-lost relative, and clutched my coat-tail in an unexpected fashion. These were mostly of European complexion, and their like I had not met with anywhere in Hindoostan. An alarming street, certainly, which for the future I carefully avoided. A native newspaper published in this quarter has the simple and modest title of The True God-a Features of the City. 197 novel but needless way of asserting the acknowledged supremacy of the press. Two sights of Bombay are its market-the finest that the world can show-and the walled enclosure in which the Dhobies, or washing-men, work-to the number of three hundred, at least. The market is adapted for all states of the weather, and, as an adjunct, has a fine garden with good seats and a pretty central fountain. Each of the dhobies works at a small stone tank, in which the linen is soaked. Afterwards it is taken out and slapped about on a square stone until all the buttons are pretty well broken or knocked off. It is then dried and ironed after a fashion that makes it look yellowish and unpleasant. The Chinaman, as before observed, understands washing and does it well, but the Hindoo is a sad failure at it. was. Bombay is becoming a second Alexandria, as that city once The civilization of the East and the West here meet and ferment. Other cities of India are dead-alive compared to it. They show what India was, and one sees here what it is. There is not here that darkly-shaded Rembrandt-like picture which Benares shows, nor that Paul Veronese splendour which is seen at Lucknow. There are here no fairy-like bubbles of marble floating in the air as at Agra, nor any palaces of alabaster inlaid with jewels and mirrors as at Delhi; but there is instead busy life and vitality in everything, and samples to be seen of all the large packages of Hindoo nationalities that the traveller sees fully opened out elsewhere. Here are Hindoo temples with ever-clanging bells; Moslem mosques that seem never without devotees; Parsee temples for those worshippers of fire whom one sees in the evening bowing their heads to the setting sun-the most practically powerful of all Indian deities—a sun too, that is seen in greater glory than the eyes of the western world ever see it. A Jewish synagogue is here too, and the chapel of the Roman Catholic, side by side with the church of the Protestant. Near at hand, the cemetery of both Protestant and Catholic jostle that of the Mohammedan; and the “ghaut" or ground on which the Hindoo burns his dead is within sight of that in which the Parsee gives his to the birds of the air. A busy metropolis and a very warm one for nine months of the twelve is this Hindoostanee metropolis, the City of Bombay. CHAPTER XVII. AT APOLLO BUNDER. "A VISIT to India has been the dream of my life," said a late visitor there of the highest distinction. He has made the visit, but India will still be as a dream to him. It will be the same to all who make but similar fleeting visits-but though fleeting the travel, its memories will be fixed; memories which will cling to one of things that gave such varying and wonderful sensations, and were but so little understood. England's very possession of the country seems but dreamlike in the daylight of facts. Such an immense territory, and so many hundreds of millions to be under the control of one hundred and fifty thousand only of British here, and but thirty millions more on a little far-distant island in the North Sea. In a late work by Colonel Cory, of the Bengal staff, I read thus as I wait for the mail at this Apollo Bunder, which is the steamboat wharf at Bombay: "The loss of Canada or of any other possession to England, would sink into absolute insignificance if compared with that which threatens us in the prospect of any decline of the power of Great Britain in India. It is mainly from her that we derive our vast wealth, and the boundless prosperity that we enjoy. It is from her, 'the storehouse of the world,' as Peter the Great called her, 'that our coffers are filled to overflowing. Thousands of British families owe competence and affluence to India alone. She supports half our army. It is not too much to say that it is the possession of India which alone confers upon Great Britain her claim to be a first-rate power." |