mouldering walls and among the massive ruins of a vast city that once rivalled Delhi and Agra, only ten thousand people now dwell.

Bombay, the capital of Western India, and the most populous city in the empire next to London, and the most thriving in the whole Peninsula. At Bombay His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales on the 8th November, 1875, first placed his foot on Indian soil when commencing his memorable tour, and received a loyal and enthusiastic welcome. The city and its suburbs, containing altogether about 650,000 souls, spread over a group of islands, which joined together by causeways, form a kind of promontory with one long horn at the eastern or Colaba end, and a shorter one from the Malabar Hill, while Back Bay carries its deep arch between them. The breadth of this promontory never exceeds three miles, and its total length from Colaba to Sion is about fifteen. Two ranges of whinstone rocks, rising sometimes 190 feet above the sea, give Bombay a beauty of outline wholly wanting to the uniform flatness of Calcutta and Madras. A noble bay on the eastern or Mazagon side of the island, affords one of the finest harbours in the world.

Of the earlier history of Bombay, or Mumbai, as the Mahrattas call it, there is little worth mentioning before it fell into the hands of the Portuguese in 1632. At that time it seems to have been little better than a sickly saltmarsh. In 1661 it was ceded to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza. Seven years later, Charles II. handed it over to the East India Company at a quit-rent of £10 a year. For some years the English

settlement had to contend with the twofold dangers of an unhealthy climate and foreign attacks. In 1686 the seat of government and of the Company's trade on that side of India, was shifted from Surat to Bombay, and in 1708 Bombay was formed into a Presidency, like Madras and Calcutta, with a Governor and Council of its own.

From that time the city grew steadily, both in political and commercial importance, through all the troubles which harassed Western India in the last century. Prac tically safe from foreign invaders, it became the centre of a flourishing trade, and the meeting-place of traders and refugees from countries far and near. Its prosperity culminated with the American war of 1861-64, which for a few years threw the command of the cotton trade of the world into the hands of Bombay merchants, and the cotton-growers of Western India.

With the return of peace came a sudden collapse, the more disastrous for the gambling mania which had seized upon the leading citizens of Bombay. Since then, however, the city has gradually emerged from its sudden eclipse, and still runs Calcutta a close race for commercial pre-eminence-a race in which it may yet prove the winner, were it not for the vast producing districts in the rear of the metropolis. In some respects Bombay has already outstripped its eastern rival. The native town, with its broad bazaars and many-coloured house-fronts, is one of the most picturesque in India. In public buildings of architectural beauty, in the public spirit of its native citizens, especially the Parsees, in culture, enterprise, social progress and general well-being, no other Indian city can touch the capital of the west.

In the eighth century, not long after the Arab conquest

of Persia, and the establishment of Islám in the room of the old national sun-worship, the Parsees, a small remnant of the unconverted race, were driven by steady persecution from their retreats in Khorásán, to the isle of Ormuz in the Persian Gulf. Their ill-fortune still following them, they took shelter, first at Diú, in the Gulf of Cambay, and some years later in Guzerát. Here under certain conditions they were allowed to dwell, and to build the temples which held the sacred flame kept ever burning in honour of their god-the pure and bright Ormuzd. From Guzerát they gradually made their way over Western India, until at last a new Parsee settlement sprung up in Bombay itself, where the Parsees have since taken the lead in every field of commercial enterprise, and social progress.

Of late years a new industry has gained a firm footing in Bombay. At this moment eighteen cotton mills are at work in the Island, and thirteen more are nearly completed-to say nothing of the mills which Bombay capitalists are founding in Surat, Ahmedabad, Madras, Nágpore, and the Deccan. Railways connect Bombay with nearly all the chief cities of India-viâ Jubbulpore and Allahabad, it is connected with Delhi and Calcutta, and another line places it in railway connection with Madras. Its water supply is now brought chiefly from a great reservoir at Vehár, some fourteen miles off. Six miles from the city, in the island of Elephanta, are the famous Caves, masterpieces of old Buddhist and Jain architecture, hewn out of the solid rock, and still wonderful to look at even in their decay. The cave-temples of Kanhari, in the neighbouring island of Salsette will also repay a visit, although they cannot vie with the more

imposing beauty of those at Kárli on the road to Poona.

On the Western Ghats, some thirty miles from Bombay, is the pleasant hill-station of Matherán, about 2,500 feet above the sea, noted for its verdure, and the views it offers of the surrounding country. Further south on the same range is the larger station of Mahábleshwar at a height of 4,500 feet above the sea, the Simla as it were of Bombay, near which springs the sacred source of the Kistna.

Poona.-The city of Poona, the ere-while capital of the Maharatta Peishwas, lies 74 miles south-eastward from Bombay, on a treeless plain about 2,000 feet above the sea. It still contains about 100,000 inhabitants, and forms the military head-quarters of Western India.

Oomrawuttee.-In the fertile province of Berár peculiarly suitable for the cultivation of cotton is the large and rising town of Oomrawuttee, the great cottonmart for Central India.

Goa.-Sailing down the coast from Bombay, we come to Goa, the ancient seat of Portuguese rule in India, and still in its decay an interesting relic of the greatness associated with the names of Vasco da Gama and Albuquerque. Its harbour ranks next to that of Bombay, and a Portuguese Viceroy still holds his little court in the modern town. But it is in Old Goa, now a mass of nearly deserted ruins, that the monuments of former greatness alloyed by religious fanaticism may be looked for in the magnificent cathedral, a few fine churches, and a convent hardly to be surpassed for size and grandeur by any in Europe. Lower down the coast stands Cochin, where Vasco da Gama died in 1525, and a little above it is Calicut, where he landed for the first time in 1498.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF BRITISH RULE IN INDIA

continued.

MADRAS PRESIDENCY AND BRITISH BURMAH.

Wars with the French-Clive-Coote-Dupleix-Labourdonnais-Bussy -Nawab of Carnatic-Madras-Arcot, heroic defence of-Vellore, mutiny of-Gillespie and the 19th Dragoons-Ootacamund-Tinnevelley-Pooree-Juggernath-Rangoon-Moulmein.

THE beginnings of Madras date from the founding of an English settlement in 1625 at Masulipatam; but the town of Madras, the great seat of English rule in Southern India, dates its origin from 1640, when the first English factory on the site of the present city was turned into a fortified post, under the name of Fort St. George.

A hundred years later came the wars with our French rivals, signalised by the dashing deeds of Clive, Lawrence, Forde, Coote, and other heroes, and crowned at last, after several reverses, by the firm establishment of our sway along the whole of the Coromandel Coast.

In 1746 the French under Dupleix and Labourdonnais took the town of Madras, and soon after Anwar-uddin, Nawab of the Carnatic, sent an army of 10,000 men to demand the cession of the town. This large army