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

CHAP, VI] JAMSHED]I DORAB/I. 257

leading shipwrights on the European system in Western India, one is hardly surprised to find that he should have become imbued with the emulative spirit of his chiefs; the wonder, however, is not that he became the first of shipwrights, but, after being shipwright, cooper, housebuilder, he should open a hew mine of enterprise, and work that mine with such success as to earn for himself the reputation of the native pioneer of railway construction in India, and the father of native application and skill to the clevelopment of the race of iron-horse in Hindustan. “When the history of Western India shall be written in another generation, free from the influences which beset us, when truth can portray without fear or favour the men and the times in which we live, among those men whose existence is one continued illustration of ability, activity, and courage, as it must be of exhaustless benefit to their race and country in the examples they offer to posterity, will appear prominently the name of Jamshedji Dorabji.” While we have thus expatiated at length on the commercial spirit, industry, and enterprise of the Parsis, it is but right to state here that their position in the commercial community of to-day is not what it was a quarter of a century ago. Shortly after the first war between England and China, about 1842, the Parsis, who had until then monopolised the Chinese trade, began to encounter VOL. II. S