XVI

(^umx x»f UK W^f toassf

Crf['^HEN Cambay wa^ famed for its busy harbout,

11 j- Bombay was a mere fishing village. When
Charles II of England married Catherine of Braganza
in 1663, the Eiag of Si3ain and Portugal gave the site of
the seven little islands as part of the dowry with his
daughter—Bombay fetched, then, an income of £10 a
year to the Crown!

Today, many trains come from everywhere in
India, to the serried platforms of Victoria Terminus
and into the vast and modern concrete-built station,
Bombay Central. Electrically propelled trains run to
and fro between Bombay and its suburbs and nearby
cities. Pylons of massive steel carry the lines of hydro-
electric power supply from somewhere in the Western
Ohats to the busiest city of the west coast for
distribution and supply to the inhabitants. Pipelines
bring watef from the neighbouring lakes for a city
inhabited by millions and visited by hundreds of
'thousands from many parts of the world. Broad roads
paved with concrete bear the burden of the traffic that
pours night and day from suburban areas and far-off
places into the city. The age-old bullock cart is till
there^ but its pheunatic-tyred. wheels tell of ox-power
harnessed to modernized methods—the march of time.

City of many leading industial enterprises, home of
the foremost Commercial houses and textile mills
in the country, Bombay, the populous and busy habour
city, pulsates "with life of commoner and capitalist,