o have their own homes; hence the dwellings in
the native quarters are packed with several generations of the
same family, and that makes the occupants easy prey to plagues,
famine and other agents of human destruction.

The Parsees love air and light, and many rich Hindus have followed
the foreign colony out into the suburbs, where you find a succession
of handsome villas or bungalows, as they are called, half-hidden by
high walls that inclose charming gardens. Some of these bungalows
are very attractive, some are even sumptuous in their
appointments--veritable palaces, filled with costly furniture
and ornaments--but the climate forbids the use of many of the
creature comforts which American and European taste demands. The
floors must be of tiles or cement and the curtains of bamboo,
because hangings, carpets, rugs and upholstery furnish shelter for
destructive and disagreeable insects, and the aim of everybody
is to secure as much air as possible without admitting the heat.

Bombay is justly proud of her public buildings. Few cities have
such a splendid array. None that I have ever visited except Vienna
can show an assemblage so imposing, with such harmony and artistic
uniformity combined with convenience of location, taste of
arrangement and general architectural effect. There is nothing,
of course, in Bombay that will compare with our Capitol or Library
at Washington, and its state and municipal buildings cannot compete
individually with the Parliament House in London, the Hotel de
Ville de Paris or the Palace of Justice in Brussels, or many
others I might name. But neither Washington nor London nor Paris
nor any other European or American city possesses such a broad,
shaded boulevard as Bombay, with the Indian Ocean upon one side
and on the other, stretching for a mile or more, a succession of
stately edifices. Vienna has the boulevard and the buildings,
but lacks the water effect. It is as if all the buildings of
the University of Chicago were scattered along the lake front
in Chicago from the river to Twelfth street.

The Bombay buildings are a mixture of Hindu, Gothic and Saracenic
architecture, blended with taste and success, and in the center,
to crown the group, rises a stately clock tower of beautiful
proportions. All of these buildings have been erected during
the last thirty years, the most of them with public money, many
by private munificence. The material is chiefly green and gray
stone. Each has a