Among the places worth attention in the neighborhood of Bombay are Byculla and Mazagaum. The former has a fine English school-house for all classes of children. It is placed under the supervision of a number of English ladies of high rank, who take turns in visiting it.
Mazagaum is a very old part of the island of Bombay, formerly a fishing village, which its name indicates, but now a densely-populated town, inhabited chiefly by the descendants of the early Portuguese settlers. The Roman Catholic church here is a most venerable and picturesque building, standing under the shadow of great forest trees. Their foliage is certainly magnificent beyond description. The mango, the tamarind, the graceful peepul, and the banyan attain great height and breadth, and are covered with marvellous specimens of huge parasitic creepers and plants forming miles of sheltered walks. The fruit-bearing trees come to great perfection here. But with all its beauty the spot is considered so unhealthy that it is often called the "white man's grave."
I have seldom seen a pleasanter sight than that which is presented at Mazagaum on every Sunday morning in the year, when the whole native Christian population turns out to church almost simultaneously. The streets are filled with handsome women and children. The women in their long flowing mantles and costumes, half Hindoo and half European, are very picturesque. But the men and boys present an appearance at once both grotesque and ludicrous. Most of them are dressed as Europeans, and not a few as English and Portuguese generals; gold lace, plumed hats, helmets, and striped pantaloons are the prevailing fashion. They seem to have no idea of the fitness of things. Their passion for European dress is carried to such an extreme that I have seen a native[4] Portuguese sailing down the lane without any shoes on his feet, but sporting the military dress, with the cocked hat and feathers, of some English general. This love of dress is exceedingly queer, but it is quite as much a characteristic of the Portuguese men of education and culture in India as of the more ignorant and illiterate.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The name Mahratta is applied to all the Indo-European races who dwell in that portion of India extending from the Arabian Sea on the west to the Satpura Mountains in the north, to which in ancient times was given the Sanskrit name of Maharashtra, or "the good country." The Mahrattas are Hindoos, divided like them into four castes—the Brahmans, priests and professors; the Kumbis, cultivators of the soil; the Rajpoots, or warriors; and the Sudras, or menials. The Mahratta Brahmans are remarkable for the high physical, intellectual, and moral qualities of that caste. Their language, a fine sonorous and flexible tongue, is a dialect of the Sanskrit, called Mahratti.
[2] Pieces of money each of the value of one-fourth of a penny.
[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.