The human skeletons are left within the Tower to disintegrate by action of sun and wind, heat and cold. In time the bearded men, gloved and with tongs, remove them to a vast well in the middle of the enclosure, where with lapse of time they turn to dust.
Corpses being considered unclean by Parsee standards, carriers of the dead, as well as those who enter the Towers, are assigned to a class by themselves, and forbidden to mix with others of their strange religion. There is a superstition that an awful curse would be visited upon an unauthorized person whose gaze fell upon a body or skeleton inside a Tower of Silence. The habiliments of those whose duty takes them within are always destroyed before they leave the grounds.
Whatever may be claimed in defense of the Parsee method of dealing with their dead, from a sanitary standpoint, the custom possesses an aspect gruesome in the extreme. The Hindus' system of burning on the river bank is even less repulsive.
If any city in the East is sport-mad it is Bombay. Men work there mornings and engage in something of a sportive character afternoons. The school-boy, even, slings his books from a hockey stick, and the departmental clerk sets out for an afternoon's sociability accompanied by his faithful tennis racquet. Nowhere can better polo be seen than on the Marine Lines Maidan; as for cricket, there probably are more players in Bombay, British and native, than in any town of its population in England—and Bombay's cricket is of the best. More than once have crack teams out from England been heartlessly beaten by local Parsee players. Golf is considered too slow. The next best thing to being a member of the nobility is for a Briton to belong to the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, for it gives him the cachet to everything Asiatic. The club-house on the Apollo Bunder possesses the best situation on the water front, and from its verandas fashionables watch matches that are sailed with consummate skill. During winter months foot-ball appeals strongly to the soldier class, while motor-car races and trials appear to be daily events.
A BOMBAY RAILWAY STATION
It is the horse that is king, however, in Bombay's pastimes. The Hunt Club sends the smart set to the suburbs now and then, and tent-pegging and pig-sticking draw biggish audiences from the military class whenever contests are announced. But the paramount sport of the masses is horse-racing, pure and simple. The course is on the plains a few miles out of town, close to a suburb given over to cotton-mills, where nearly as many spindles fly as at Fall River. All Bombay seems to be at the races, irrespective of religious or social distinctions—everyone present loves the
horse and appears possessed of a goodly supply of rupees with which to back his selections.
The Jockey Club has its own lawn and private enclosure on the stand, and there is a box for the governor and anybody coming from Government House. The grand-stand bears a minor importance to the betting ring, for the latter holds a surging, throbbing medley of humanity—society folk from India's innermost official set, sleek Parsees wearing gold rimmed eye-glasses, rajahs from all parts, wealthy merchants and bankers, fez-wearing Mohammedans from the world of Islam, men from the Persian Gulf in astrachan head-gear, Pathans from beyond the Himalayas, Sikhs from the Punjab—as can be gathered in great India, the museum of the human race.