22 BOMBAY Scotland. In the year ending March 31, 1870, the value of the imports into the province was 22,232,435, and of the exports from it 24,- 690,819. The length of the railway lines open for traffic there on Dec. 31 of the same year was 1,184 m. The chief towns, in addition to the city of Bombay, are Hydrahad and Kur- rachee in Sinde, Surat and Baroda in the re- gion E. of the gulf of Cambay, and Poonah in the highlands E. of the Ghauts, 2,000 ft. above the sea level. The sepoy mutiny of 1857 did not attain any serious magnitude in Bombay. A few conspiracies were detected in widely separated localities, and immediately sup- pressed. The native troops remained for the most part faithful to the British. Two ring- leaders in a plot for the massacre of all the European residents of the capital were sum- marily punished by being blown away from the mouths of cannon. II. A city, capital of the province, picturesquely situated on an island of the same name close to the W. coast of Hindostan, in lat. 18 56' N., Ion. 72 63' E., separated from the mainland by an arm of the sea; pop. in 1871, 646,636, of whom about 450,000 were Hindoos, 120,000 Moham- medans, 30,000 Parsees, and 8,000 Europeans. The island, which was the first possession ever acquired by the British in India, is 8 m. long and nearly 3 m. wide, and the city occupies its southern extremity. Toward the close of the 15th century it was conquered by the Moham- medans, who ceded it to the Portuguese in 1530. Shortly before the marriage of Charles II. and Catharine of Braganca, infanta of Por- tugal (1662), it was conveyed to the English crown as a portion of the dowry of that prin- cess. About seven years later the king trans- ferred it to the East India company, who held it at an annual rental of 10 sterling up to the year 1859, when the home government assumed direct control of all the British East Indian possessions. Bombay is the busiest and in appearance the gayest of the cities of British India. The ancient portion is known as the Fort, and contains numerous handsome build- ings. The houses within the walls are built of wood, surrounded with verandas, and cov- ered with sloping roofs of tiles. The poorer .classes occupy dwellings of clay thatched with palmyra leaves. There are many large store- houses and commercial establishments, and in the European quarter are numbers of fine resi- dences. Of the public buildings the more prominent are the Anglican cathedral, the various churches, temples, and synagogues, the government house, the town hall, the custom house, the Grant college of medicine, and the hospital founded by the Parsee merchant Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, and bearing his name. The city is now connected with the neighbor- ing island of Salsette by means of a recently constructed causeway and arched stone bridge. By far the most interesting structures in the vicinity of Bombay are the celebrated cave temples of the Buddhists, excavated from the solid rock and" adorned with colossal statues, on the island of Elephanta, which lies at a dis- tance of from 6 to 8 m. The harbor of Bombay, as the name of the city indicates, is safe and com- modious, being one of the best in all India. It is enclosed by Colabba, or Old Woman's island, Bombay island, and the island of Salsette, on the west and north, and by the islands of Ele- phanta and Caranja, together with the main- land, on the east. It is between 12 and 14 m. long, between 4 and 6 m. wide, and has a depth of from 7 to 14 fathoms. A lighthouse 150 ft. high stands on the southern end of Colabba island. The rise and fall of the tide are suf- ficient to permit the construction of wet docks capacious enough for building large ships ; and in those belonging to the East India company merchant vessels of the largest class, and even frigates and line-of-battle ships, have been built by the Parsees. As the material used for ship building at Bombay is exclusively teak, the vessels constructed there are noted for their durability. The city is both a naval and a military station, but the fortifications, although extensive, are not adequate for de- fensive purposes against a well equipped foe. Preeminent among the natives for their intel- lectual capacity, their industry, their business ability, and their great wealth, are the Par- sees, the descendants of the ancient fire-wor- shippers. Socially, commercially, and politi- cally, they constitute, after the Europeans, the most influential class in Bombay. Their walled cemetery, carefully guarded, stands on fhe summit of Malabar hill, the most fashion- able suburb of the city. It contains five round towers, each about 60 ft. in diameter and 50 ft. in height, and surmounted by a large grate. The bodies of the newly dead are placed upon these towers, and when the vultures have re- moved the flesh from the skeleton, the bones fall through the grate into the enclosure be- neath. The external trade of Bombay is very extensive, and is carried on principally with Great Britain, France, China, Mauritius, and the ports of the Arabian sea and Persian gulf. Cotton is by far the most important article of export. The rise in price and the increased demand growing out of the civil war in Ame- rica were followed by an era of the wildest speculation in commercial circles at Bombay, from 1862 to 1865, resulting in a financial panic so disastrous that for a time there was said to be not one solvent merchant in the en- tire city. The exceptional activity of this pe- riod, however, contributed in no slight degree to its present prosperity. The exports of cot- ton to Europe for six years ending with 1872 averaged nearly 1,100,000 bales a year. In 1863-'4 opium to the amount of 5,548,- 158 was exported, principally to China. The other leading exports, in the order of their to- tal values, for the same year, comprise wool, seeds, cashmere shawls, coffee, grain, spices, sugar, tea, silk and silk goods, saltpetre, and tobacco. The first railway in the East Indies
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