an island on the western coast of Hindustan, in the province of Aurungabad, about eighteen miles in length by fourteen in average breadth. It was formerly separated from Bombay by a narrow strait about two hundred yards across, opposite to the fort of Tannah, across which, in 1805, a causeway was carried, which, although it is said to have had a prejudicial effect on the harbour, has been of much advantage to the island. The soil is well adapted for the cultivation of sugar, cotton, hemp, indigo, and the like; but it has been hitherto kept in a state of nature, and almost wholly covered with jungle, for the purpose of supplying Bombay with wood, charcoal, and sea-salt, of which there is a considerable manufactory in this island. It is more unhealthy than Bombay, the jungle being thicker and more shut in. In its present uncultivated state, it scarcely produces the hundredth part of what it might supply. Notwithstanding its present desolate state, Salsette contains numerous mythological antiquities, and the remains of reservoirs with flights of steps round them, and the ruins of temples, which indicate that it was formerly in a greater state of prosperity, and had a more numerous population.

Among the most remarkable curiosities, are the caverns at Kemmere, which are very extraordinary excavations. The largest resembles that at Carli, but is not equal to it in size and elegance. It contains two gigantic figures of Booth, nearly twenty feet in height, and each filling one side of the vestibule. They are exactly alike, and in complete preservation, the Portuguese having adopted them and painted them red, and converted the temple into a Christian church.

The manufacture of salt is carried on at the sea-shore, where extensive enclosures are levelled and divided into partitions of about twenty feet square, which are filled by the overflowing of the sea, and contain six or eight inches of water. The moisture is exhaled by the heat of the sun before the next tide, and the salt is gathered from the bottom of the enclosure. The first account we have of this island is dated in 1380, and was written by a friar named Odoric. It was taken possession of by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, and from them by the Mahrattas in 1750. In 1773, during a rupture with that nation, the Company's troops obtained possession of it; and it was formally ceded by the Mahrattas, at the treaty of Poorhunder, in 1776, and subsequently confirmed at the peace of 1782-83, when all the small islands in the gulf formed by Bombay and Salsette were also ceded.