IS2 BOMBAY. 
an extreme, for a more ragged, dirty set of beings than the Govern- 
ment peons, I never beheld. 
The view from the fort is extremely beautiful towards the bay, 
whose smooth expanse is here and there broken by the islands that 
are, many of them, covered with wood, while the lofty and whim- 
sically shaped hills of the table land form a striking back ground 
to the landscape. The sea is on three sides of it, and on the fourth 
an esplanade, at the extremity of which is the black town, embo- 
somed in a grove of cocoa-nut trees. The situation ought to be 
healthy, but unfortunately experience proves that it is not so. The 
fever is at present making most alarming ravages, and the liver 
complaint is more frequent and more fatal here, than in any part 
of India. Mr. Duncan and Dr. Scott assure me, that this season 
is more than usually unhealthy ; but they both admit the general 
insalubrity of the place, and particularly, that exposure to the land 
breeze, which sets in every evening, is generally followed by a fever, 
and frequently by a loss of the use of all the limbs. This breeze is 
chillingly cold at present, and its deleterious effects may probably 
be attributed not only to this, but to the noxious vapours that it 
brings with it from passing over the rank vegetation which springs 
up in the marshy boundaries of the bay immediately after the rains 
are over. The Island of Salsette is still more unhealthy than 
Bombay, the jungle being closer, and the valleys more closed in. 
The young cadets that came out this year were sent to the new estab- 
lishment at Varsova, when the fever immediately attacked them- 
They were instantly removed to Bombay, but many fell victims to 
the violence of the disease. Moderate living, cautiously avoiding 
opposite extremes, is found most conducive to health. Here, as in 
