Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/598

By commerce, trade with China, and cotton manufacture Mr Tata has accumulated vast wealth. His firm has branch houses and representatives in the principal cities of the world, and he has become one of the foremost business men of his race, and of India. His city residence in Bombay is palatial and his hospitality unbounded. He is the most loyal subject of the King Emperor, yet one of his present great aims is to develop some of the vast resources of India.

He has recently visited America to learn something of her manufacturing skill and methods, that he might be enabled thereby to reduce the iron ores of which India is so rich.

He has set aside thirty-two lakhs of rupees (one million dollars, gold) of his wealth for the founding of an "Indian University of Research," for the purpose of affording facilities for original scientific research and investigation in the broadest sense possible.

Mr. Tata is a leader in the building improvement of Bombay. The vast hotel which he is constructing is a monument to his public-spiritedness and will reflect great credit upon the city. It is built of basalt rock, is seven stories high, covers two squares of ground, and fronts on the Bay of Bombay, over which it has a magnificent outlook. It has been building for the past five years, and is now nearing completion, at an estimated cost of more than twenty-one lakhs of rupees (about seven hundred thousand dollars, gold).

He intends to make it "not only the finest hotel in India, but in all the East."