PREHISTORIC BOMBAY. 



useless for building, as it is so hard thai it cannot be cut, and will 

 only break in such direction as itself chooses.* 



Bui before we proceed to a more detailed examination, standing 

 up here yet another moment, let us try to pi< ture what would be the 



ne, were water spread over the surface now occupied by the flat 

 plain below us. It requires no violent effort of the imagination to 

 see that if the artificial dams at the Vellard, Worli, and Sion cause- 

 ways, and the natural barriers formed by the heaping of sand-banks 

 at Mahira and Back Bay were removed, so as to freely admit the 

 sea, only the higher points of these two chains of rocky eminences 

 on the east and west would escape submersion. But the soil that 

 now connects them is, as we have seen, in part nothing but the clay 

 deposited as silt by tidal creeks, and in part only the sea-sand 

 heaped up by the waves and winds. 



Here, then, is the first fact recorded on the first page, lying open 

 nt our feet, in the book of which I spoke. Bombay was not formerly 

 one island as now, but a number of small rocky islets, ranged in 

 two nearly parallel rows and separated by the waters of the sea. 



That this was to some extent so even during their human occu- 

 pation, is proved both by recorded facts and the tradition of local 

 names, for we find Malum mentioned in an ancient manuscript 

 as a separate island ; and from Dr. Fryer's account of his visit just 

 220 years ago. it would seem that Malum, Worli, and Love Grove, 

 were then all three separate islands ; while Oolaba consisted of two 

 separate islands, the smaller of which, then called " Old Woman's 

 Island," he describes as "a dry sandy spot, of no further value to the 

 Company than as affording grass to their antelopes and other beast ^ 

 of pleasure." Then again the name TJmarkadi shows that, when it 

 was bestowed, there was at Mazagon a kadi, or salt marshy creek. 

 That it was shallow with a muddy bottom, is further evidenced 

 by the name Paidhoni, given to that portion of the main 



* Even on the eastern side of the island, however, a very hard black rock is found 

 nnlike either the Sewri or Walkeshwar stone. It occurs in small quantities 

 and in isolated spots, which all lie iu the same Straight line between Sion 

 Hill on the north and Cross Island to the south, showing apparently that it was 

 all the result of one eruption under different conditions than those that formed the 

 •ither rocks on eitlici Bide of the island. 

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