between them.  The particular funeral I witnessed was that of a child.  When the two corpse-bearers reached the path leading by a steep incline to the door of the tower, the mourners, about eight in number, turned back and entered one of the prayer-houses.  “There,” said the secretary, “they repeat certain gathas, and pray that the spirit of the deceased may be safely transported, on the fourth day after death, to its final resting-place.”

The tower selected for the present funeral was one in which other members of the same family had before been laid.  The two bearers speedily unlocked the door, reverently conveyed the body of the child into the interior, and, unseen by any one, laid it uncovered in one of the open stone receptacles nearest the central well.  In two minutes they reappeared with the empty bier and white cloth, and scarcely had they closed the door when a dozen vultures swooped down upon the body and were rapidly followed by others.  In five minutes more we saw the satiated birds fly back and lazily settle down again upon the parapet.  They had left nothing behind but a skeleton.  Meanwhile, the bearers were seen to enter a building shaped like a high barrel.  There, as the secretary informed me, they changed their clothes and washed themselves.  Shortly afterwards we saw them come out and deposit their cast-off funeral garments in a stone receptacle near at hand.  Not a thread leaves the garden, lest it should carry defilement into the city.  Perfectly new garments are supplied at each funeral.  In a fortnight, or, at most, four weeks, the same bearers return, and, with gloved hands and implements resembling tongs, place the dry skeleton in the central well.  There the bones find their last resting-place, and there the dust of whole generations of Parsees commingling is left undisturbed for centuries.

The revolting sight of the gorged vultures made me turn my back on the towers with ill-concealed abhorrence.  I asked the secretary how it was possible to become reconciled to such usage.  His reply was nearly in the following words:  “Our prophet Zoroaster, who lived 6,000 years ago, taught us to regard the elements as symbols of the Deity.  Earth, fire, water, he said, ought never, under any circumstances, to be defiled by contact with putrefying flesh.  Naked, he said, came we into the world and naked we ought to leave it.  But the decaying particles of our bodies should be dissipated as rapidly as possible and in such a way that neither Mother Earth nor the beings she supports should be contaminated in the slightest degree.  In fact, our prophet was the greatest of health officers, and, following his sanitary laws, we build our towers on the tops of the hills, above all human habitations.  We spare no expense in constructing them of the hardest materials, and we expose our putrescent bodies in open stone receptacles, resting on fourteen feet of solid granite, not necessarily to be consumed