our of the Indian crows explains, to
a certain extent, this superstition. The vultures are, in a way, the
grave-diggers of the Parsees and are under the personal protection
of the Farvardania, the angel of death, who soars over the Tower of
Silence, watching the occupations of the feathered workmen.

The deafening caw of the crows strikes every new comer as uncanny, but,
after a while, is explained very simply. Every tree of the numerous
cocoa-nut forests round Bombay is provided with a hollow pumpkin. The
sap of the tree drops into it and, after fermenting, becomes a most
intoxicating beverage, known in Bombay under the name of toddy. The
naked toddy wallahs, generally half-caste Portuguese, modestly adorned
with a single coral necklace, fetch this beverage twice a day, climbing
the hundred and fifty feet high trunks like squirrels. The crows
mostly build their nests on the tops of the cocoa-nut palms and drink
incessantly out of the open pumpkins. The result of this is the chronic
intoxication of the birds. As soon as we went out in the garden of our
new habitation, flocks of crows came down heavily from every tree. The
noise they make whilst jumping about everywhere is indescribable. There
seemed to be something positively human in the positions of the slyly
bent heads of the drunken birds, and a fiendish light shone in their
eyes while they were examining us from foot to head.

We occupied three small bungalows, lost, like nests, in the garden,
their roofs literally smothered in roses blossoming on bushes twenty
feet high, and their windows covered only with muslin, instead of the
usual panes of glass. The bungalows were situated in the native part of
the town, so that we were transported, all at once, into the real India.
We were living in India, unlike English people, who are only surrounded
by India at a certain distance. We were enabled to study her character
and customs, her religion, superstitions and rites, to learn her
legends, in fact, to live among Hindus.

Everything in India, this land of the elephant and the poisonous cobra,
of the tiger and the unsuccessful English missionary, is original and
strange. Everything seems unusual, unexpected, and striking, even to one
who has travelled in Turkey, Egypt, Damascus, and Palestine. In these
tropical regions the conditions of nature are so various that all the
forms of the animal and vegetable kingdoms must radically differ from
what we are used to in Eur