The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 2 (of 2): By His Wife, Isabel BurtonBurton, Isabel, Lady
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The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 2 (of 2): By His Wife, Isabel Burton
Burton, Isabel, Lady
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, 1821-1890; Explorers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Scholars -- Great Britain -- Biography
We then went for a little excursion to Jhinjeera, and one to Bassein,
for we found it extremely hot in March in Bombay. Bombay is a City of
large public buildings; every great man builds one, and it is called by
his name. But in 1876 there was no general hospital, no assembly-room,
no theatre, no lunatic asylum.
[Sidenote: _Bhendi Bazar_.]
One cannot say enough of the Bhendi Bazar. It is unrivalled in India,
and there one really sees what India is in the present time. It has a
totally different cachet to any other Eastern bazar. You have Hindú,
Parsee, Portuguese, Chinese--every race, caste, and family between
Cathay and Peru, Marocco and Pekin, Moscow and the Malay Peninsula.
Every house is of a different architecture and different colour--green,
blue, Cashmere shawl pattern, the names written in English, in
Maharattee, Guzaratee, and Hindostani. Here and there are inserted
small oratories dedicated to as many different gods as races, and you
are mostly attracted to them by a black, almost naked worshipper,
dancing furiously before it to the jangling of bells. Here are three
hundred and three jewellers and dealers in precious stones, fine
diamonds, carved blackwood furniture, cocoanut-fibre matting and reed
matting, brass and copper work, bronzes, ivory, and tortoiseshell,
Bombay box-work, carving in sandal-wood and ebony, turquoise ornaments,
shawls, and all sorts of silver and gold work, and old china. The
"swells'" houses are also the quaintest things under heaven, with every
colour in the rainbow, and all sorts of shapes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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