t--gave us news of the ladies who had come out to be married. She had
asked one of these as they came off the ship into the tender what it was
she carried so carefully, and the reply was, "My wedding cake," and of a
poor man, she told us, who came on at Marseilles bringing out his
fiancee's trousseau, and who found on his arrival here, he had utterly
lost it! What would the latter end of that man be; would she forgive?
Could she forget? It was said that another lady, finding the natives
were in the habit of going about without clothes, booked a return
passage by the next ship.

Here is a jotting at this same landing place of the Prince and Princess
going off to the Guard Ship, but I am so sorry it is not reproduced in
colour. They were to have gone to the Caves of Elephanta across the bay,
but had not time. They apparently go on and on, without any "eight
hour" pause, through the procession of engagements--it must be
dreadfully fatiguing.

You see three Eurasians in foreground of the sketch, one of them with
almost white hair and white skin, and freckles and blue eyes, he might
be Irish or York shire. The two younger boys are, I think, his
brothers--they have taken more after their mother. All three are nervous
and excited watching for the Prince. They are neatly dressed in thin
clothes, through which their slightly angular figures show, and have
nervous movements of hand to mouth, and quick gentle voices, slightly
staccato, what is called "chee chee," I believe.

[Illustration]

Beyond the boys you see a Parsi woman looking round. They are
conspicuous people in Bombay by their look of intense harmlessness. The
men are very tidy and wear what they probably would describe as European
clothes, trousers and long cutaway coats and white turndown collars.
Some have grey pot hats, with a round moulding instead of a brim, but
their ordinary hat is something like a mitre in black lacquer, and it
does suggest heat! They all have very brainy-looking heads from the
youth upwards, and wear glasses over eyes that have no quickness--as if
they could count but couldn't see--and they constantly move their long,
weakly hands in somewhat purposeless angular fashion; the women with
similar movements frequently pat their front hair which is plastered
down off their foreheads, and shade their eyes with their hands at a
right angle to their wrists.

I suppose they and the Bengalis are the backbone of Indian mercantile
business. Yet in