354 BAMBLES OP A GEOLOGIST. 



tian convert from the ancient faith of Zoroaster, who now 

 labours in the Free Church Mission at Bombay. Buchubai, 

 his only child, was, on his conversion, forcibly taken from him 

 by his relatives, but restored again by a British court of law ; 

 and he had secured her safety by sending her to Europe, a 

 voyage of many thousand miles, with a lady, the wife of one 

 of our Indian missionaries, to whom she had become attached, 

 as her second but true mamma, and with whose sisters I now 

 found her. The little girl, sadly in want of a companion this 

 evening, was content, for lack of a better, to accept of me as 

 a playfellow ; and she showed me all her rich eastern dresses, 

 and all her toys, and a very fine emerald, set in the oriental 

 fashion, which, when she was in full costume, sparkled from 

 her embroidered tiara. I found her exceedingly like little 

 girls at home, save that she seemed more than ordinarily ob- 

 servant and intelligent, a consequence, mayhap, of that early 

 development, physical and mental, which characterizes her 

 race. She submitted to me, too, when I had got very much 

 into her confidence, a letter she had written to her papa from 

 Strathpeffer, which was to be sent him by the next Indian 

 mail. And as it may serve to show that the style of little 

 girls whose fathers were fire-worshippers for three thousand 

 years and more differs in no perceptible quality from the 

 style of little girls whose fathers in considerably less than three 

 thousand were Pagans, Papists, and Protestants by turns, be- 

 sides passing through the various intermediate forms of be- 

 lief, I must, after pledging the reader to strict secrecy, sub- 

 mit it to his perusal : 



" My dearest Papa, I hope you are quite well I am 

 visiting mamma at present at Strathpeffer. She is much 

 better now than when she was travelling. Mamma's sisters 

 give their love to you, and mamma and Mr and Mrs F. 

 also. They all ask you to pray for them, and they will pray 

 also. There are a great many at water here for sick people 



