346 AK0UXD THE WORLD VIA INDIA. 



resuced from the crocodile infested Nile and long before 

 Romulus was weaned from the breast of his ferocious 

 wet nurse. 



A GREWSOME CHARNEL HOUSE. 



The Parsee people who came from Persia to India 

 centuries ago. and of whom there are now about 100,- 

 000 in Bombay, are fire worshipers, and neither burn 

 nor cremate their dead. They dispose of their dead 

 by exposing them in a place where vultures can devour 

 them in peace and safety. The Towers of Silence is 

 the place where the hundreds of vultures are fed by 

 the bodies of the dead Parsee. These towers, five in 

 number, and the Fire Temple, the place of Parsee wor- 

 ship, are located on Malabar Hill, in elevated beauti- 

 ful grounds which have an area of over ?5,000 square 

 yards. These grounds are surrounded by a high stone 

 wall and strangers are not admitted without a spe- 

 cial permit. (Fig. 70.) The 'Powers of Silence, the 

 largest of which measures 276 feet in circumfer- 

 ence, art' ah surrounded by high walls, about 25 feet 

 in height, and have an opening on the ground level, 

 through which the dead bodies are carried. The corpse 

 hearers are the only persons allowed to enter the towers. 

 bodies of the deceased are laid in grooves around the 



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&* 



well, which is in the center of the tower. The corpses 

 of children are laid in the center circle, those of the 

 women in the second and those of the men in the outer 

 ring. The bodies exposed in this manner are in a short 

 time stripped of the flesh by the hundreds of vultures 

 that are always in waiting for the arrival of the dead, 

 and then the bones arc thrown into the well, where they 

 are allowed to decompose. On the day I visited this 

 grewsome spot I saw hundreds of these bird cannibals 

 perched in neighboring trees and on top of the towers. 

 their gizzards evidently gorged with human flesh, rao- 

 t ; onless. hanging heads, drooping eyelids, sleeping, 

 dreaming of the next feast on the first corpse of the 



