After the reception to the royal party came a parade through the principal streets and when this was concluded all restrictions were relaxed and the populace and the visitors from surrounding towns gave themselves up to an evening of enjoyment. The buildings were illuminated, some with white and others with red electric lights, while many large structures were lighted by little oil lamps, in a cup or glass. The main streets were filled with long lines of carriages, crowded with richly dressed natives and Europeans, although the natives outnumbered the foreigners by one hundred to one. Never in my life have I seen so many valuable jewels as on this night, when I roamed about the streets for two hours, enjoying this Oriental holiday. At times I would stop and sit on one of the stands and watch the crowd flow by in a steady stream. Walking by the side of a Parsee millionaire and his richly dressed family would pass a Hindoo woman of low caste, one of the street sweepers, in dirty rags, but loaded down on ankles and arms by heavy silver bangles and painted in the center of the forehead with her caste mark. She was followed by a poverty-stricken Mohammedan leading a little boy, stark naked, while a girl with brilliant cap held the boy's hand. A naked Tamil, with only a dirty loin cloth, brushed elbows with three Parsee girls, beautifully dressed. And so this purely democratic human tide flowed on for hours, rich and poor showing a childlike pleasure in the street decorations and the variegated crowd. And in the midst of all this turmoil native parties from out of town squatted on the deserted tiers of seats, ate their suppers with relish and then calmly composed themselves to sleep, wrapped in their robes, as though they were in the privacy of their own homes. It was a spectacle such as could be seen only in an Oriental city with a people who live in public with the placid unconsciousness of animals.
RELIGION AND CUSTOMS OF THE BOMBAY PARSEES
The Parsees of Bombay--a mere handful of exiles among millions of aliens--have so exerted their power as to change the life of a great city. Proscribed and persecuted, they have developed so powerfully their aptitude for commercial life that they represent the wealth of Bombay. Living up to the tenets of their creed, they have given far more liberally to charity and education than any other race. Some idea of the respect in which the Parsee is held may be gained from the fact that customs officers never search the baggage of one of these people; they take the Parsee's word that he has no dutiable goods. The commercial success and the high level of private life among the Parsees is due directly to their religion, which was founded by Zoroaster in ancient Persia three thousand years ago. As Max-Muller has well said, if Darius had overthrown Alexander of Greece, the modern world would probably have inherited the faith of Zoroaster, which does not differ in most of its essentials from the creed of Christ.