208 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
for he died a complete cripple within two years from 
this period. 
We delivered our despatches and were honoured 
with an invitation to dine at Government-house. As 
the weather was oppressively hot, and within the fort 
at Bombay is by no means the coolest part of the 
island, we pitched our tents upon the esplanade, 
which at this season had the appearance of an irre- 
gular encampment, all the military men and many of 
the junior civilians living under tents for the benefit 
of a cooler air. 
A day or two after our arrival at Bombay I was 
strolling about sunset on the beach of Colaba, — a 
small island separated from Bombay, only when the 
tide rises, by a narrow creek, the passage being perfectly 
dry at low water, — when my attention was arrested 
by a singular object. A man approached me in the 
common costume of the lowest orders, having only a 
cloth wrapped round his loins. I could not help being 
forcibly attracted by his appearance. His skin was 
perfectly white, as white as chalk ; and when he came 
near me I perceived that it seemed glazed, as if it had 
been seared with a hot iron. His hair, for he wore 
no turban, was precisely the colour of his skin, and 
hung in long strips upon his lean and withered shoul- 
ders. His eyes, excepting only the pupils, were of a 
dull, murky red, and he directed them perpetually to- 
wards the ground as if the light was painful to him, 
which, upon inquiry, I discovered to be the case. His 
gait was slow and tottering, and his limbs were shrunk 
to a state of attenuation quite ghastly. His ribs were so 
prominent that they might be counted at a distance of 
