The Jasper Weekly Courier

Sights in Bombay.

Bombay is exceedingly interesting to me. I love to soak my handkerchief in camphor, and then start off in the edge of the evening for a long ramble on foot, oblivious of the danger from cholera and other prevalent pestilence.

Here is a single, lone Chinaman, the only one I have seen in all Bombay, who is stepping along to his shoe-shop.

Here are a group of my esteemed countrymen, as I immediately gather from the gilt inscription "U. S. S. Trenton" around their hat-bands, and also from their blue sailor suits. They are slightly moistened with benzine I can see, and I have grave doubts as to the nature of their mission ashore: but they compare so favorably with the men from the British ships in conduct that I do not rebuke them as I pass by.

Here are some bootblacks, the first I have seen since leaving San Francisco. Your shoes are always blacked by the hotel porter, or the boarding-house porter, or the steamer porter in these ports, so that the business of the street urchin is sadly injured. I do not hear the familiar American cry: "Shine yer boots?"

These Hindu bootblacks should visit New York and "see how it is done."

Here a great crowd of natives are looking off at the sky over the bay. I look, also, but see nothing. I move on further, until I come in sight of the sea-shore, when I discover thousands of people sitting down and gazing at the blank, cloudless sky. I ferret out a Parsee (the Parsees almost always speak English), and he explains it all to me. This is the first day of the Hindoo new year, and it is a great National custom to look for the new moon. After much looking I discover the queen of night--the smallest crescent I have ever seen.

The streets are thronged with men, women and children, all attired in costumes that are more showy than any I have ever seen elsewhere in the world.

A series of terrible shrieks now rise above the babel of street cries. I elbow my way along to the scene of operations, and find that a Hindoo is piercing the nose of one of his daughters, aged perhaps ten years.

This is, of course, a part of every girl's education, but is a medicine that is not appreciated in the taking. The means adopted for performing the operation are rather primitive. The child's head is held by one person, while another jams the wire of the jewel through the shrinking cartilage of the nostril.-Cor. N. O. Times-Democrat.