Book excerpt: Excerpt from A Descriptive Reading on Calcutta and Bombay The romance that surrounded that India that bounded the mental horizon of Columbus has not decreased in proportion as our knowledge respecting it has broadened. Say, rather that since 1858, when England, became the ruler of India, our curiosity in that direction has been on the increase and nowhere will we be apt to find more characteristic Indian life than in Calcutta, its principal city. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.