Helena Blavatsky first wrote these letters in the late 19th century for amusement and with no intent for them to be used in scientific endeavors. The author says that the facts are true but she may have colored or dramatized the incidents she writes about. The letters begin with her arrival in Bombay in 1879. "Late in the evening of the sixteenth of February, 1879, fter a rough voyage which lasted thirty-two days, joyful exclamations ere heard everywhere on deck. "Have you seen the lighthouse?" here it is at last, the Bombay lighthouse." The reader is cautioned to remember that this manuscript was first translated into Russian and then into English. Certain inaccuracies in quotations and spellings must be considered.