EGYPT AND INDIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 1949, 2 July 1891, Page 35

EGYPT AND INDIA.

Customs of Cairo- Bombay's Likeness

to Boston.

Cairo is a glow of colour and a babel of sounds canopied by the fair Egyptian heavens. Nearly every tongue is spoken there in its limits, and the oostumes of its people draw their colours from every known shade and hue. The bulk of its population is derived from Arabic ancestry, and Arabic is the chief language spoken. The round of gaiety in Cairo is excessive, and the dress of the women as elegant as at any European capital. At the foot of the great pyramids, seven miles away, a splendid hotel has been built, which has become the centre of fashionable activity. There is a great number of Americans in Cairo, many of whom charter dahabeans and spend the winter on the Nile. For this winter, at least, Cairo has not sustained its climatic reputation, and after two months' trial of cloudy, damp, and fickle weather, one can hardly be blamed if he fliea to Ismailia on the Suez Canal, that wonderful watery monument that De Lesseps has cut for himself, and boarding one of the splendid Peninsular and Oriental steamships, gives himself up to happy indolence.

LIFE ON THE INDIAN OCEAN.

The genial warmth of the Red Sea brings into bud the qualities that cold Cairo had nearly killed, and the life on the Indian Ocean is as 3weet as wandering in lotusland. With mirth and music and pleasuring, and the limitless blue sea ever in consonance with your best feelings, the time steals on with rapid pace, and half a score of dreamy, delicious days ends with the sight of Bombay, the chief commercial city oi India, with its territory half as extensive as the United States and population five times as large. Scarcely a greater contrast can be imagined than that between Cairo and Bombay 'and their respective countries. At the former everything savours of the dead, of tombs, antiquities, and a splendid past; at Bombay all is teeming with tropical life, energy, and firm beliefs in a glorious future and the stability of the British Empire, in which India plays a most important role. The name Bombay is said to come from Bom Bahia, meaning beautiful bay, a name given by the Portuguese, who were the first European settlers. The new quarter of the city is a genuine surprise, for its public buildings are models of elegance and convenience, and to a few of them the term magnificent may be properly applied. The Victoria railway station is generally conceded to be the finest of its kind in the world. The city ha 3 a fashionable Back bay district like Boston, and when one drives down Malabar Hill one cannot fail to be .impressed with the resemblance which that view bears to one »een from Cambridge bridge. A GREAT CITY OF MIXED NATIONALITIES.

The population of Bombay, nearly a million strong, is a wonderful mixture of all nationalities, Hindus and Parsees predominating. The Parsee is descended from the ancient Persians, and is the Jew of India, doing the trading and making tbe money. He works hard when alive, and when he dies his friends carry him to the Towers of Silence, where his dead body is devoured by vultures. These towers are hollow, circular structures of stone and cement, and inside are fitted with a series of coffin-shaped depressions made to receive human bodies. When the funeral service is ended, the body is carried to one of the designated places and left to the mercy of scores of vultures, who ponnoe upon it and strip it of all flesh in the brief space of half an hour. The Hindus cremate their dead on the pyre, which, in case of the rich, is sometimes made of the costly sandal-wood. NATIVE WORKMEN WITH BUT ONE IDEA. Bombay has more than 100 mills, mostly manufacturing cotton goods. Thirty thousand natives are required to do the work, easily accomplished by 5000 white men, and they work in the great rooms, under intense heat, with never a window open. They are quick at learning to run the looms, but one man can do but one thing. This holds good of hotel servants, who are tbe most shiftless and exasperating mortals alive. If you ask one for a knife and fork, he will trot away and bring one and later on the other. But never the two together. .Why should he? His fathers never did, and what did for them suffices for him. Buddha forbid that he should ever fall into the wicked, abandoned way of the Christian and do two things at one time. A popular mode of conveyance in Bombay is by small, gaudilypainted carts, drawn by little bullocks. The animals are guided by reins passed through a hole in the nose, and trot gaily along, as fast as many horses. The sacred bull wanders at will about the streets, and is allowed to eat any tidbits that fall in his way. It is not uncommon to see half a dozen of these great creatures lying in the shade of some building, chewing the cud of " sweet fancy," and obstructing the highway and traffic. One may not injure them, for a man's life is less valuable than a bull's in India. — J. C. Bowkee, Jun., in the Boston Globe.