History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

256 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [CHAP. VI.

Eminently of a retiring disposition, at the close of a long and laborious career he withdrew from active life some ten years ago. In September 1882 he died at the advanced age of seventy-eight. He never had the advantage of attending a school even to learn his letters, but he was naturally gifted with faculties of a very high order. He was remarkably quick, and by mere mental calculation, to the great astonishment of the best European engineers with whom he came into intimate contact, he arrived at correct results in computations relating to his works. He was, in fact, an adept at the difficult task of accurately estimating large and varied undertakings. He possessed a powerful and very retentive memory, which never failed him in life. In the words of a European writer, “his success in life may im no small degree be attributed to the frankness and suavity which characterised him in his business relations, and that sterling simplicity which appears to be peculiar to all great minds. An excellent master to his workmen, not only liberal in wages, but pleasant of speech, and constantly throwing himself into contact with them, it is not at all extraordinary that native labourers should have cheerfully taken employment with him, even in the worst districts for the supply of water and unhealthiness of climate.

“Tyained in a household which supplied the