live there, and so far Billimorá is blessed. The Parsis here are respectable people, very fat and very prayerful. There are Hindus and Mahomedans too. But the bulk of the population consists of the fisher people, low-class Hindus, dark, thick-skinned, and very poor. I stood on the main road for about two hours one evening to feast mine eyes on the beauties of nature: then I retired to bed, and dreamt vividly of Dante's Inferno. Billimorá does not boast of rural beauties—pariah dogs cannot pass under that title. But fish is cheap, and plentiful, and good. Now and then you can get a pull at the oddy[1] flagon. But the liquid is too sweet to be the genuine article.
Billimorá is under a magistrate, a very good man, a relative of the Subá (Chief Commissioner). This magistrate is said to be a very strict man, and as he fines people right and left, he might look to be a Subá very shortly. He is a reformed Hindu, I am glad to say. Under the magistrate there is a Parsi Foujdár,[2] an energetic and obliging sort of man, with about fifty policemen and 500 street dogs. This latter force may pass
