Peeps at the Far East

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: flung from Persian rugs and carpets, lighted up by strong sunbeams, piercing the sheltering awnings?all make up a picture which, once seen, ill prepares the traveller to be struck by anything he beholds in Bombay. Here there are no buildings, temples, mosques, or churches, streets or public places, which...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: flung from Persian rugs and carpets, lighted up by strong sunbeams, piercing the sheltering awnings?all make up a picture which, once seen, ill prepares the traveller to be struck by anything he beholds in Bombay. Here there are no buildings, temples, mosques, or churches, streets or public places, which in their architectural or general appearance impress one as being anything more than might naturally be looked for in a presidency town of such wealth. Nor does one see camels or elephants, or anything to suggest the feeling of being further East amid new and peculiar scenes. I was struck with how little has been thus done in an architectural point of view. Colaba Point and Malabar Hill, for instance, would tell much more on the scene, were they marked by a few minarets, or gilded domes, or something to break the sky-line and lift the whole city out of the mediocre dead level in which it lies. Save for the surrounding scenery, Bombay would be an uninteresting city to a traveller. To the merchant it is another Liverpool or Glasgow, with its long bazaars, piles of cotton, and counting- houses. True, there is one fine place or square in the city; and the public institution, the colleges, hospitals, and town-hall, too, are all very creditable to it, while the esplanade is a fine open space. Yet I cannot but feel that Bombay deserves more than it has received in respect to architecture. But who is to guarantee the money required for anything beyond the practical and necessary ? The Europeans are only strangers and sojourners, making money to take home to England with them, but not to leave behind. The natives have no pride in the city as their own, and the Government cannot be allowed to be generous at the expense of the taxpayers. In the exercise of princely hospitality, however...