cting lanes, seem to be covered with a huddled
confusion of buildings, and, until the improvements which have
recently taken place, the whole of the town seems to have been nearly
in the same state.

The processes of widening, draining, pulling down, and rebuilding,
appear to have been carried on very extensively; and though much,
perhaps, remains to be done in the back settlements, where buffaloes
may be seen wading through the stagnant pools, the eye is seldom
offended, or the other senses disagreeably assailed, in passing
through this populous district. The season is, however, so favourable,
the heat being tempered by cool airs, which render the sunshine
endurable, that Bombay, under its present aspect, may be very
different from the Bombay of the rains or of the very hot weather. The
continual palm-trees, which, shooting up in all directions, add grace
and beauty to every scene, must form terrible receptacles for malaria;
the fog and mist are said to cling to their branches and hang round
them like a cloud, when dispersed by sun or wind elsewhere; the very
idea suggesting fever and ague.

Though, as I have before remarked, the contrast between the muslined
millions of Bengal and the less tastefully clad populace of Bombay is
unfavourable, still the crowds that fill the streets here are animated
and picturesque. There is a great display of the liveliest colours,
the turbans being frequently of the brightest of yellows, crimsons, or
greens.

The number of vehicles employed is quite extraordinary, those of the
merely respectable classes being chiefly bullock-carts; these are of
various descriptions, the greater number being of an oblong square,
and furnished with seats across (after the fashion of our taxed
carts), in which twelve persons, including women and children, are
frequently accommodated. It is most amusing to see the quantity of
heads squeezed close together in a vehicle of this kind, and the
various contrivances resorted to in order to accommodate a more than
sufficient number of personages in other conveyances, not so well
calculated to hold them. Four in a buggy is a common complement, and
six or nine persons will cram themselves into so small a space, that
you wonder how the vehicle can possibly contain the bodies of all the
heads seen looking out of it. The carts are chiefly open, but there
are a few covered _rhuts_, the conveyances probably of rich Hindu or
Mohamedan ladies, who do not content thems