. Winter India . of Silence,with the friezes of living vultures on their cornices,where the Parsis, who do not believe in defiling theearth, expose the bodies of their dead to the elementsand the birds of the air. Nothing could be moregruesome and repellent than the rows of huge, mo-tionless birds awaiting their prey. There were chill,sepulchral halls where ceremonies are held by themourners, and from the parapet of the high gardenone has a fine view down over the Back Bay and thecity, and across the harbor to the mainland shores. In all the many accounts I have read of theseTowers of Silence,
. Winter India . of Silence,with the friezes of living vultures on their cornices,where the Parsis, who do not believe in defiling theearth, expose the bodies of their dead to the elementsand the birds of the air. Nothing could be moregruesome and repellent than the rows of huge, mo-tionless birds awaiting their prey. There were chill,sepulchral halls where ceremonies are held by themourners, and from the parapet of the high gardenone has a fine view down over the Back Bay and thecity, and across the harbor to the mainland shores. In all the many accounts I have read of theseTowers of Silence, the narrators always looked downthe winding road and saw a procession of white-clad mourners approaching with a body, and grue-somely told how the vultures saw it too, and flappedtheir wings. We looked and looked in vain, thefirst travelers to miss that regulation we boasted our exemption to a resident ofBombay, he said wearily: But of course you willgo home and say you saw a funeral winding BOMBAY 389 They all do. Four travelers whom I had takenthere have published minute and thrilling accountsof how the procession wound up and up, and howthe vultures flapped their wings, although I had seennothing of the kind. Guide-book in hand, and Sir Edwin Arnoldscaves of Elephanta fresh in mind, we rose with thedawn one morning and sped away by steam-launchacross the harbor to the cave-temples of Shiva thatdate before the twelfth century. We landed ata pier of detached concrete blocks, and made ourway by leaps to land, where the old sergeant whoguards the place described every temple, every bas-relief, every group and image, so minutely that weought never to forget a detail of those rock-sculp-tures, many of them of such beauty that we echoedthe sergeants anger at the Portuguese for firingcannon into the caves to destroy the idolatrous tiptoed here and there, kept away from thedarker corners, looked suspiciously at every rock andbush and tuft of grass, remem
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