The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-06-24
THE WONDERS 0F WESTERN INDIA DESCRIBED BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

The Parsees have a peculiar form of burial. which has come down from
 prehistoric times. On Malabar Hill. in the suburbs of Bombay. overlooking the sea. in the midst of a beautiful
 garden. are their Towers of Silence.
 These are large circular buildings
 twenty-fiv or thirty feet high and without a roof. Within the wall Is a circular platform sloping inward to well in the center. When a Parsee dies he Is prepared for burial and borne to this garden. After the last rites have been performed and the rel- atives and friends have taken their farewell. the body is carried within the tower by men appointed for the purpose and placed naked upon this platform. AS soon as the corpse bear CTS depart, the waiting vulturcs (of which several hundred make their home in the garden) swooD down upon 1t and do not rise until tha bones ars, bare. The skeletons, sun-bleached. are washed by the rains into the pit in the center. where rich and poor. conspfcu-
 ous and obscure. mingie their dust to- gether. Every sanitary precaution is taken and a fixed rate of five rupees is charged to all alike, the money being advanced from a burial fund where tho family cannot afford to bear the ex- pense.
 The Parsees of Bombay, though they
 wear a dress peculiar to themselves, are of all the Indians most like the
 Europeans and Americans. We were In one Parsee home. and the furniture
 the pictures and the library were such as would be found in the average home in our country. Statistics show that
 the per centage of education among
 the Parsees is very much higher than among any other class of inhabitants
 and the women share the educational
 advantages with the men.
 The well-to-do Parsees have been
 conspicuous in philanthropy, endowing
 colleges, hospitals and other charities
 While they are counted among the
 staunchest friends of British rule. they
 are also among the most intelligent
 critics of the governments faults. Sir l Pherosha M. Mehta. the leading Par
 see orator. is prominent in the national | congress movement. At a reception l given at the hotel. and on other occa- sions. we had an opportunity to meet a number of the Parseeg. men and wo-
 men, priests and laymen, and found them abreast with the times and alive l to the problems with which the world i is wrestling today.
 l cannot cToGa this article without mentioning the increasing presence of
 American lnfuenee, in Bombay. An | American minister. Dr. Nell, Is pastor
 of the principal Methodist Church. ana the American CongregationAlists have
 a largely attended school for boys and | girls in the city. Many of the students | were taken from famine-st tcken homes 1 and are beina educated w American money. There Is also he es school
 for the blind under American manage ment. where the students are no. only | taught to read and write, but trained l In the industries for which they are | ftted.
 | I dc not apologize for mentioning ! from time to time the institutions ] which a1truistic Americans have scat l tered over the orient If we cannot 1 boast that the sun never sets on Amer | ican territory. we can Ind satisfaction | in the fact that the sun never sets up- on American philanthropy: If the boom ] of our cannon does not follow the Orb i of Day in his daily round, the grateful thanks of those who have been the l beneficiaries of American generosity form chorus that encircles the globe.