"To begin at the beginning, the first thing that attracted our attention was the great number of Parsees; we had seen them before in Calcutta, Hong-Kong, and other cities, but when we got to Bombay we found the streets full of them. Doctor Bronson says there are about 700,000 inhabitants in Bombay, and the Parsees are thought to be not far from 70,000; then there are 450,000 Hindoos, 120,000 Moslems, and 25,000 Europeans, while the balance is made up of various Eastern races and nationalities. So you see the Parsees are a tenth of the population, and we are told that at least half the wealth of Bombay is in their hands. Bombay is often called the City of the Parsees, and not by any means without good reason. "The Parsees came originally from Persia, where they had been persecuted for their religious belief; they settled at Surat, and from there a good many of them came to Bombay and to other places along the coast, and it is thought that at least half of all the Parsees in India are in this city. They are sometimes called fire-worshippers, on account of their reverence for fire, and the worship they give to the sun, as the emblem of life. They regard fire as sacred, and will do nothing to degrade it; no good Parsee will venture to smoke, and it is an act of rudeness or ignorance to offer him a cigar or cigarette, or to light a cigar while talking with him. The Parsees are the shrewdest merchants of the East, and a large part of the business of Bombay is in their hands; the leading Parsee houses have branches in London and other European cities, as well as in China and the Far East generally. In every way they are the most influential of all the native inhabitants of Bombay, and are steadily gaining in intelligence and prominence. When they fled to India they brought the sacred fire with them, and it has been kept burning in their temples ever since. [Illustration: PARSEE SCHOOL CHILDREN.] "Doctor Bronson found an old friend from New York,[9] who had been for ten years a resident of Bombay; through his assistance and in his company we were taken to the cemetery of the Parsees, on Malabar Hill, where we saw their strange way of disposing of the dead. He also took us to a Parsee school, where we saw lots of bright-eyed children, and heard them recite their lessons, which they did very prettily, although the language was one we did not understand. The little girls and boys 'spoke their pieces' just as girls and boys do at a school examination in Massachusetts or New York, and were quite as proud of the medals and prizes that were given to them. The afternoon we spent in visiting the Parsee school was one of the most interesting of our stay in Bombay. [9] Doctor F. W. Doolittle, an American physician, who had gained a high reputation and had a large practice among Europeans and Parsees. He died suddenly in April, 1880, from the effects of a severe cold contracted while attending a patient.