Though, As I Have Before Remarked, The Contrast Between The Muslined
Millions Of Bengal And The Less Tastefully Clad Populace Of Bombay Is
Unfavourable, Still The Crowds That Fill The Streets Here Are Animated
And Picturesque.
There is a great display of the liveliest colours,
the turbans being frequently of the brightest of yellows, crimsons, or
greens.
The number of vehicles employed is quite extraordinary, those of the
merely respectable classes being chiefly bullock-carts; these are of
various descriptions, the greater number being of an oblong square,
and furnished with seats across (after the fashion of our taxed
carts), in which twelve persons, including women and children, are
frequently accommodated. It is most amusing to see the quantity of
heads squeezed close together in a vehicle of this kind, and the
various contrivances resorted to in order to accommodate a more than
sufficient number of personages in other conveyances, not so well
calculated to hold them. Four in a buggy is a common complement, and
six or nine persons will cram themselves into so small a space, that
you wonder how the vehicle can possibly contain the bodies of all the
heads seen looking out of it. The carts are chiefly open, but there
are a few covered rhuts, the conveyances probably of rich Hindu or
Mohamedan ladies, who do not content themselves, like the Parsees,
with merely covering their heads with the veil.
Young Parsee women of the better class are frequently to be seen in
carriages with their male relations, nor do they object to appear
publicly in the streets following wedding processions.
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