Bombay has many advantages for the sailor. It is always accessible during the terrible south-west monsoons, and possesses an anchoring ground of fifty miles, sheltered by islands and a magnificent series of breakwaters, at the south end of which is a grand lighthouse. Its docks and dockyards cover fifty acres; ship-building is carried on extensively; and there is an immense trade in cotton, coffee, opium, spices, gums, ivory, and shawls. Of its 700,000 inhabitants, 50,000 are Parsees—Persians—descendants of the original Fire-worshippers. A large proportion of them are merchants. It may not be generally known to our readers that the late Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy—who left wealth untold, although all his days he had been a humane and charitable man, and who established in Bombay alone two fine hospitals—was a Parsee. Calcutta, in 1700, was but a collection of petty villages, surrounding the factories or posts of the East India Company, and which were presented to that corporation by the Emperor of Delhi. They were fortified, and received the name of Fort William, in honour of the reigning king. It subsequently received the title of Calcutta, that being the name of one of the aforesaid villages. Seven years after that date, Calcutta was attacked suddenly by Surajah Dowlah, Nawab of Bengal. Abandoned by many who should have defended it, 146 English fell into the enemy’s hands, who put them into that confined and loathsome cell of which we have all read, the “Black Hole of Calcutta.” Next morning but twenty-three of the number were found alive. Lord Clive, eight months later, succeeded in recapturing Calcutta, and after the subsequently famous battle of Plassey, the possessions of the East India Company greatly extended. To-day Calcutta has a “Strand” longer than that of London, and the batteries of Fort William, which, with their outworks, cover an area half a mile in diameter, and have cost £2,000,000, form the strongest fortress in India. Across the continent by railway, and we land easily in Calcutta. It has, with its suburbs, a larger population than Bombay, but can never rival it as a port, because it is a hundred miles up the Hooghly River, and navigation is risky, although ships of 2,000 tons can reach it. It derives its name from Kali Ghatta, the ghaut or landing-place of the goddess Kali. Terrible cyclones have often devastated it; that in 1867 destroyed 30,000 native houses, and a very large amount of human life. [Illustration: CYCLONE AT CALCUTTA.] The sailor’s route would, however, take him, if bound to China or Australia, round the island of Ceylon, in which there are two harbours, Point de Galle, used as a stopping-place, a kind of “junction” for the great steamship lines, of which the splendid Peninsular and Oriental (the “P. & O.”) Company, is the principal. Point de Galle is the most convenient point, but it does not possess a first-class harbour. At Trincomalee, however, there is a magnificent harbour.