In the short space of two centuries of undisturbed industry the Parsees have placed themselves in competition with the foremost of the Europeans in India. In liberality and enterprise they rank with the merchant-princes of England, and may be justly compared to the most famous merchants that America has produced in the last century, and yet no question has ever been raised as to the commercial integrity of the Parsees. In the Indian banks and various other stock companies the Parsees are prime movers. They are almost the exclusive owners of all the trading-steamers that now navigate the Indian and China seas. They are great landholders, and many of the finest residences in the island of Bombay are owned by Parsees. They have shared largely in introducing railways into India. Jamsetjee Dorabjee is now considered the foremost railroad contractor in India. The most difficult passes extending from the Thull Ghauts to the Kustsarah Mountains, covered with wild jungles, full of trap hills, mountain-torrents at one season of the year, and devoid of water at another, were laid open and made as easy of travel by railroad as the most finished roads in England or America. Many English officers of the engineer department have declared the building of this railroad across the Thull Ghauts and Kustsarah a more arduous undertaking than that of the great Pacific Railroad across the American continent. Europe, during the great American War deprived suddenly of one of the chief products so necessary to her industries, resorted to India for cotton, and all at once the island of Bombay became not only the great centre of trade, but soon attracted to herself merchants and traders in cotton from the four quarters of the globe, each and all eagerly competing for the same prize, the monopoly of the cotton-market. Enormous fortunes were amassed in an incredibly short space of time, and for a brief period the whole commerce of the great East and West seemed to flow into the port of the small island of Bombay. Misinformed by the English press, and seemingly unwilling to investigate for themselves the true nature of the almost superhuman struggle carried on between kinsmen for the preservation of State rights and the suppression of slavery on the American continent, this eager crowd only foresaw what seemed the most natural, the utter destruction of the great republic of the United States and the magnificent future for themselves springing from the very ashes of this ruin. Thus assured, and blinded to every other consideration, even the wise and hitherto prudent merchants of Bombay became dazzled with the prospects in view, and launched forth into the most gigantic enterprises and into rash schemes for the utmost development of one and all the various resources of the country. Everywhere this feverish, insatiable thirst to profit by a great nation's approaching destruction displayed itself. Men and women who had