Returning to Bombay, it was natural to think of the Towers of Silence, for these too are located on a lovely eminence, called the Malabar Hill, and overlooking the city and the bay. These towers are enclosures in which the Parsees, a most intelligent, wealthy, and influential sect, dispose of the bodies of their dead, by laying the forms in the open air where they can be devoured by vultures. The towers themselves are at least half a dozen in number, and they vary in size. But the style of their construction is uniform. Inside of a lofty circular wall are concentric beds of stone, each with its groove in which a corpse can be laid. There are three concentric circles, the outermost for men, the next inner for women, the innermost for children. The structure has no roof, but is open to the air. Great flocks of vultures perch upon the top of the outermost enclosing wall, waiting in silence and expectation for the time when they can descend upon their prey. Only a half-hour elapses after a body is laid on its stony bed, before these ravenous birds have torn every morsel of flesh from its bones. The skeleton is then left to disintegrate by the action of the elements, until the rains wash the remaining dust into a great pit at the center of the circles, from which receptacle the refuse is conducted away by drains during the rainy season, to mingle with the surrounding earth. This is the Parsees' "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." They glory in this method of disposing of their dead, and they think it far more natural and impressive than the common Hindu method of cremation. We must grant that all methods of disposing of the dead are painful. But faith in a resurrection of the body is surely most in consonance with our time-honored custom of laying our dead away in their kindred earth, "until the day dawns, and the shadows flee away."