On The Left Side Of The Bay, Exactly Opposite Elephanta,
And As If In Contrast With All Its Antiquity And Greatness, Spreads
The Malabar Hill, The Residence Of The Modern Europeans And Rich
Natives.
Their brightly painted bungalows are bathed in the greenery
of banyan, Indian fig, and various other trees, and the tall and
straight trunks of cocoanut palms cover with the fringe of their
leaves the whole ridge of the hilly headland.
There, on the south-
western end of the rock, you see the almost transparent, lace-like
Government House surrounded on three sides by the ocean. This is
the coolest and the most comfortable part of Bombay, fanned by
three different sea breezes.
The island of Bombay, designated by the natives "Mambai,"
received its name from the goddess Mamba, in Mahrati Mahima, or Amba,
Mama, and Amma, according to the dialect, a word meaning, literally,
the Great Mother. Hardly one hundred years ago, on the site of
the modern esplanade, there stood a temple consecrated to Mamba-Devi.
With great difficulty and expense they carried it nearer to the shore,
close to the fort, and erected it in front of Baleshwara the "Lord
of the Innocent" - one of the names of the god Shiva. Bombay is
part of a considerable group of islands, the most remarkable of
which are Salsetta, joined to Bombay by a mole, Elephanta, so named
by the Portuguese because of a huge rock cut in the shape of an
elephant thirty-five feet long, and Trombay, whose lovely rock rises
nine hundred feet above the surface of the sea.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 7 of 357
Words from 1680 to 1945
of 96531
