[3] The Jains, a very curious sect found in India proper to-day, and known only to the learned in Europe as the sole representatives in Hindostan of the once-numerous adherents to the tenets of Buddhism in that region, hold an intermediate place between Buddhists and Brahmans, but approach more closely to the Buddhists. They hold that Mahavira the hero, their greatest teacher, and the last of a number of deified spiritual legislators called by them Tirthankaras, was the preceptor of the great Gautama, the Buddha, whose followers embrace nearly three-fourths of the human race even to-day. They have, like the Brahmans, castes, and abstain most rigorously from flesh of all kinds. But, on the other hand, like the Buddhists of Siam, Burmah, Japan, etc., they disavow the sacredness of the Vèdas and the Hindoo gods, but in their place worship twenty-four sanctified legislators or Tirthankaras. [4] The descendants of the early Portuguese settlers who have intermarried with the Hindoos and other castes of India, and now form a very large portion of the population of Bombay and Goa. CHAPTER II. Malabar Hill, and Domestic Life of the English in Bombay. My first stay in Bombay was a comparatively short one, and was spent partly with friends at Colabah and partly in tents on the great green in front of Fort George. My stepfather being connected with the engineer or public works department at the military station of Poonah, my life for a year or two was passed at that strange city. Upon the occasion of my marriage, however, I returned to Bombay for a settled residence, from which time I began my real experience of life in India. We established ourselves at Malabar Hill, in a house completely isolated from the rest of the world, where my husband and I took up the study of the Sanskrit and Hindostanee languages. Malabar Hill is a rocky promontory on the south of the island of Bombay, and covered with beautiful houses, many of which are almost palaces. At its highest point, detached and alone, stands a lofty tower, the largest "dohkma," or "tower of silence," of the Parsees. Here the followers of Zoroaster deposit their dead. It is rendered not the less sombre by the birds of prey that hover around it in great numbers. There are two other and smaller towers of silence on the island, all erected in the most isolated positions. No one is ever allowed to approach them save the Fire-priests and those who carry their dead. These strange towers or tombs are mysterious, grand, and barbaric in their very forms--at their base screened by huge branching trees from all human observation, open only to the blue sky, the free air, and the gloomy birds of prey hovering always near.