mango, banian, wild cinnamon,
and several others.

In addition to the splendour of its wood and water, Bombay is
embellished by fragments of dark rock, which force themselves through
the soil, roughening the sides of the hills, and giving beauty to
the precipitous heights and shelving beach. Though the island is
comparatively small, extensively cultivated and thickly inhabited,
it possesses its wild and solitary places, its rains deeply seated
in thick forests, and its lonely hills covered with rock, and thinly
wooded by the eternal palm-tree; hills which, in consequence of
the broken nature of the ground, and their cavernous recesses, are
difficult of access. It is in these fastnesses that the hyenas find
secure retreats, and the Parsees construct their "towers of silence."

There is little, or indeed nothing, in the scenery that comes under
the denomination of jungle, the island being intersected in every
part with excellent roads, macadamized with the stone that abounds
so conveniently for the purpose. These roads are sometimes skirted by
walls of dark stone, which harmonize well with the trees that
never fail to spread their shade above; at others, with beautiful
hedge-rows, while across the flats and along the Esplanade, a
water-course or a paling forms the enclosures.

The multitude of large houses, each situated in the midst of gardens
or ornamented grounds, gives a very cheerful appearance to the roads
of Bombay; but what the stranger on his first arrival in India is
said to be most struck with is, the number and beauty of the
native population. Probably, had I never seen Bengal, I might
have experienced similar delight and astonishment; but with the
recollections of Calcutta fresh in my mind, I felt disappointed.

Accustomed to multitudes of fine-looking well-dressed people, with
their ample and elegant drapery of spotless white muslin, I could not
help contrasting them with the squalid, dirty appearance of the
native crowd of Bombay. Nor is it so easy at first to distinguish the
varieties of the costume through the one grand characteristic of dirt;
nor, with the exception of the peculiar Parsee turban, which is very
ugly, the Persian cap, and the wild garb of the Arab, do they differ
so widely as I expected. For instance; the Hindus and Mohamedans are
not so easily recognized as in Bengal. The vest in ordinary wear,
instead of being fitted tightly to the figure, and having that
peculiarly elegant cut whi