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Every race and nation in the East is represented in
the streets of Bombay; every shade of colour and of
complexion, from blackest negro to the “café au lait”
of the Parsi woman, is there set off by an array of
positive hues in dress such as would make a colour
theorist shudder were it proposed as an absiract study.
Combined, the effect is brilliant beyond measure. It is
worth a journey to Bombay to see what a Parsi girl will
dare in the matter of dress. A Bombay crowd is as
brilliant, as lively, and as interesting as a Calcutta crowd
is ugly and depressing. Nor is the variety and beauty
of the city streets discounted by the public erections of
Government. It would be hard to find a more impressive
array of buildings than those which face Back Bay and
stretch away to Malabar ‘Hill.
It is well that the eastward voyager should be introduced
 at starting to a city adorned with architecture which
is worthy of the Government of an Indian Empire, for
his impressions may possibly last. They have but little
chance of being renewed as he travels farther eastward.
As a concession to statistical geography it may be
mentioned that Bombay is an island which includes an area
of about 22 square miles. The suburbs of the city occupy
about 4 square miles, and into this space a population of
nearly one million is squeezed. Little wonder that cholera
is endemic, and that plague threatens to imitate cholera.
From the island of Bombay the lines of rail are carried by
causeways over the marrow channel which separates the
island from the larger island of Salsette, and from Salsette
they pass to the mainland by other causeways.
The points of interest which surround Bombay are
innumerable, but for a catalogue of them the reader is
referred to that excellent work— ‘Murray's Handbook
of India.”
Madras has nothing of the cosmopolitan air of
Bombay. It is essentially Indian and Madrasi, and its
charms (for it has many of them) lie chiefly in the local
colouring which pervades it. There is no such wild and
restless surf beating on any shelving beach as that of

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