PARSEES. 101 



tferiors are constructed of circles of masonry, each divided 

 into compartments, and sloping towards the centre of the 

 circle, where there is a grating; and beneath a vast pit } 

 where, as at Bombay, the unexpiring and sacred fire is 

 tended by a priest, sole visitant to this scene of horrors. 

 A body being carried to the tower, is inserted by means of 

 an exterior grating into the niche designed, and placed in 

 the unoccupied compartment, with the feet towards the 

 centre. As the body is devoured, the bones fall into the 

 pit, and either feed the sacred fire, or are swept away into 

 the neighbouring waters. At all seasons the brink of the 

 tower wall may be seen fringed with vultures satiated with 

 their foul repast, while the busy fancy revolts from the 

 spectacle within, the eyeless faces, and the mangled corpses 

 hurrying to that corruption from which nature draws her 

 seeds of necessary and regenerating change." 



Whilst on the chapter of Parsees, I cannot help relating a 

 mad, or rather drunken freak, that ended fatally, or at least 

 was supposed to be the cause of the death of a young officer 

 at Jaulnah, during the time of my residence there. A 

 similar tower to the one I* have just described was built on 

 the summit of a solitary hill, about three miles from the 

 camp, and used as a place of interment for the dead by the 

 Parsee inhabitants of Jaulnah. It possessed, however, no 

 compartments like those at Bombay. The bodies were 

 simply placed upon the iron grating, and when decomposed, 

 sank into the abyss below. The Parsee hill, as it was termed, 

 was a spot to which we were in the habit of frequently 

 riding in the evening; and many of us have often ascended 

 the sides of the tower, and cast a hasty and shuddering glance 

 upon the ghastly objects below. 



At a public dinner of the mess of the th Native Infantry, 

 and at rather a late hour of the night, when madeira and 

 loll shraub began to show their effects upon some of the 



