The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce: A New Chronicle for the Eastern Trade

It is with a measure of cautious optimism that we note the recent establishment of The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, a weekly broadsheet now circulating through the ports and presidencies of the East Indies. Founded in the year 1838 by Mr. James Silk Buckingham and his associates, this journal has already begun to furnish the merchant and the curious reader with tidings of shipping, markets, and the peculiar customs of that distant clime. Our own correspondents in Bombay report that the paper is printed upon a steam-driven press of recent invention, a marvel that permits a rapidity of production hitherto unknown in those latitudes.

The Times, as it is styled, devotes its columns to the sober analysis of trade and the movements of vessels, yet it does not neglect the literary and the scientific. In its recent numbers, one may find disquisitions upon the cultivation of indigo, the progress of the railways in the Deccan, and the curious manners of the native courts. It is said that the editor, a gentleman of considerable learning, has engaged a corps of correspondents across the continent, from the Malabar Coast to the Straits of Malacca, to furnish intelligence of every description. Such an enterprise, though fraught with peril and uncertainty, deserves the attention of all who would understand the expanding commerce of our age.

Yet, we must temper our enthusiasm with a note of caution. The path of the journalist in those regions is beset with difficulties: the heat, the pestilence, and the caprice of local potentates. Moreover, the paper's reliance upon the mails, which are conveyed by native runners and fragile country craft, renders its intelligence subject to delays and occasional corruption. Nevertheless, the establishment of a free press in Bombay is a signal of progress, and we wish its proprietors every success in their arduous undertaking.

For the reader in our own Carpathian borderlands, the Times offers a window into a world of spice-laden breezes and opulent bazaars, a welcome diversion from the snows and wolves that beset our own passes. We shall endeavour to reprint selections from its columns as they reach us, that our readers may judge for themselves the merits of this new chronicle of the East.