It will be seen that there are practically no chimneys on the nearer buildings, and no smoke in the air. Finally from our tower top we turn northwestward, and look across the head of Back Bay towards Malabar Point. The building on the shore of the Bay is the office of the Bombay and Baroda Railway, which runs northward along the coast into a densely peopled lowland round the head of the Gulf of Cambay. Away in the distance on that Malabar Promontory, but not visible in this view, are the Towers of Silence, where the Parsis dispose of their dead. [Sidenote: 11. Group of Parsis.] [Sidenote: 12. Parsi Tower of Silence.] The Parsis (_i.e._ Persians) are a community, chiefly of merchants, who came to Bombay in the Middle Ages, flying from Persia when the Musulmans conquered that land. They hold the ancient faith of Persia, and are commonly described as Fire Worshippers. They regard the elements fire, water, and earth as sacred, and therefore refuse to pollute them with the decay of dead bodies. They build round towers, known as Towers of Silence, and these they place in large grounds equivalent to our cemeteries. Each tower is hollow and exposed to the sky within. There on stone ledges the dead bodies are laid, and the vultures pick the flesh from the bones. The ash of the bones is washed by the rain into a central pit at the bottom of the hollow tower, where it slowly accumulates, so that, in accordance with one of the tenets of their faith, the Parsis, rich and poor, meet in death. The Parsis of Bombay are a wealthy and enterprising community, who do no small part of the commerce of the city. One of their number recently sat in the House of Commons at Westminster as the representative of a London constituency. They have no caste prejudices like the Hindus, and no seclusion of women like the Musulmans, so that their ways of life are nearer to those of Europeans.