dropped her anchor in the harbour of Port Louis after seventeen days of
light and baffling winds. The tedium of that past time slipped quickly
out of my mind, however, as the fast-growing daylight revealed the
beauties of Mauritius, a little island which I had so often read of and
yet so little expected ever to behold. The interest of the tragic tale
of “Paul and Virginia” had riveted my wandering attention during the
French reading-lessons of my youth, though I always secretly wondered
why Virginia had been such a goose as to decline help from a sailor,
apparently only because he was somewhat insufficiently clad. But I
should not have dared to give utterance to this opinion, so prudish was
the domestic atmosphere of those early days.
The first real interest I felt in Mauritius arose from the frequent
mention of the little island as a health-resort, in some charming
letters of Miss Eden’s published about five-and-twenty years ago, but
written long before that date, when she was keeping house for her
brother, Lord Auckland, then Governor-General of India. Miss Eden
speaks of many friends as well as of Indian tourists (for “Paget,
M.P.’s” existed apparently even in those distant times) having gone
for change of air to “the Mauritius” and coming back quite strong and
robust. She mentions one instance of a whole opera company, whose
health gave way in Calcutta, and who made the excursion, returning in
time for their next season with restored health, and she often longs in
vain for such a change for her hard-worked brother.
But all this must have been many years before the first mysterious
outbreak of fever which ravaged the place in 1867. I was assured that
before that date the reputation of the pretty little island had stood
very high as a sanatorium, but no doctor could give me any reason for
the sudden appearance of this virulent fever. There were, of course,
many theories, each of which had earnest supporters. Some said the
great hurricane which had just before swept over the island brought
the malaria on its wings. Others declared the _déboisement_ which had
been carried on to a devastating extent in order to increase the area
available for sugar-cane planting was to blame; whilst a third faction
put all the trouble down to the great influx of coolie immigrants
introduced about that date to work in the cane-fields. Perhaps the
truth lies in a blending of these three principal theories. Anyway, I
felt it sad and hard that so really lovely an island should have such
dark and trying days behind as well as before it.
But, after seventeen days of glaring lonely seas and dark monotonous
nights, one is not apt to think of anything beyond the immediate
“blessings of the land,” and I gazed with profound content on the chain
of volcanic hills, down whose rugged sides many _cascades_ tumbled
their gleaming silver. Coral reefs, with white foam tossing over them,
in spite of the calm sapphire sea on which we were gently floating
into harbour, seemed spread all around us, and indeed I believe these
_récifs_ circle the whole island with a dangerous though protecting
girdle. Sloping ground, covered with growth of differing greens,
some showing the bluish hue of the sugar-cane, others the more vivid
colouring of a coarse tall grass, led the eye gently down to the
flowering trees and foliage round the clustering houses of Port Louis,
whose steep high-pitched roofs looked so suggestive of tropic rains.
Port Louis was once evidently a stately capital, and large handsome
houses still remain. These have, however, nearly all been turned into
offices or banks, and the fine large Government House, or _Hôtel du
Gouvernement_, is always empty as to its numerous bedrooms. Hardly
a white person sleeps with impunity in Port Louis, though all the
business—official and private—is carried on there, and it contains many
excellent shops.
You must climb up, however, some few miles by the steep little railway
before you realise how really lovely the scenery of Mauritius can be.
All in miniature, it is true, but very ambitious in character. Except
for the glowing tints of the volcanic rocks and the tropic vegetation,
one might be looking at a bit of Switzerland through the wrong end of
a telescope; but nowhere else have I ever seen such tints as the bare
mountain sides take at sunset. The tufa rocks glow like wet porphyry,
and so magical are the hues that one half expects to see the grand
recumbent figure of the old warrior of the Corps de Garde hill outlined
against the purple sky, rise up and salute the island which once was
his.
Mauritius is in many ways an object-lesson which is not without its
significance just now. Here we have a little island thoroughly French
in its history and people, and inhabited by many of the _vieille roche_
who fled there in the Terror days. Battles between French and English
by land and sea raged round its sunny shores in the first few years of
the just-ended century. Dauntless attacks and valiant resistance have
left heroic memories behind them. We took it by _force majeure_ in
1811, but it was not until the great settling up at the Restoration
in 1814 that the hatchet may be said to have been finally buried, and
the two nationalities began to pull together comfortably. I was rather
surprised to see how thoroughly French Mauritius still is in language
and in characteristics; but the result is indeed satisfactory. I found
it quite the most highly civilised of the colonies I then knew, and
from the social point of view there was nothing left to be desired.
The early class of French settler had evidently been of a much higher
type than our own rough-and-ready colonist, and the refinement so
introduced had influenced the whole place. Did I find any race-hatred,
oppression, or heart-burnings? No, indeed; of all the dependencies of
our Empire not one has come forward more generously or more splendidly
with substantial offers of help than that little lonely isle, “the
Star and Key of the Indian Ocean.” I venture to say, speaking from my
experience of those days, that the King has no more loyal subjects than
the Mauritians.
It may be that the trials and troubles we have all borne there side
by side in the past half-century have knitted and bound us together.
We have had hurricane, pestilence, and fire to contend with, besides
the chronic hard times of the sugar industry. In these fast-following
calamities French and English have stood shoulder to shoulder, and
the only race or religious rivalry has been in good and noble deeds.
In the Zulu War of 1881, when Sir Bartle Frere sent a ship down
with despatches to my dear husband, then the Lieutenant-Governor of
Mauritius, urgently asking for help to “hold the fort” until the
English reinforcements could arrive, Mauritius sprang to her feet then
as now, and gave willing and substantial help. Every soldier who was
able to stand up started at twenty-four hours’ notice for Durban. The
same day the mayor of Port Louis held a meeting, at which a volunteer
corps of doctors and nurses was at once raised, with plenty of money to
equip them, and they, as well as cooks and cows—both much needed—were
on their way to Durban before another sun had set. It was indeed
gratifying to hear afterwards that not only had our little military
effort been of great service, but that the abundance of fresh milk
supplied had helped many a case of dysentery among the garrison at
Durban to turn the corner on the road to recovery.
Nothing can be much more beautiful than the view from the back verandah
at “Réduit,” as the fine country Government House, built by the
Chevalier de la Brillane for the Governors of Mauritius more than a
century ago, is called. Before you spreads an expanse of English lawn
only broken by clumps of gay foliaged shrubs or beds of flowers, and
behind that again is the wooded edge of the steep ravine, where the
mischievous “jackos” hide, who come up at night to play havoc with the
sugar-canes on its opposite side. The only day of the week on which
they ventured up was Sunday afternoon, when all the world was silent
and sleepy.
It used to be my delight to watch from an upper bedroom window the
stealthy appearance of the old sentinel monkeys, who first peered
cautiously up and evidently reconnoitred the ground thoroughly. After a
few moments of careful scouting a sort of chirrup would be heard, which
seemed the signal for the rest of the colony to scramble tumultuously
up the bank. Such games as then started among the young ones, such
antics and tumblings and rompings! But all the time the sentinels never
relaxed their vigilance. They spread like a cordon round the gambolling
young ones, and kept turning their horribly wise human-looking heads
from side to side incessantly, only picking and chewing a blade of
grass now and then. The mothers seemed to keep together, and doubtless
gossiped; but let my old and perfectly harmless Skye terrier toddle
round the corner of the verandah, and each female would dart into the
group of playing monkeys, seize her property by its nearest leg, toss
it over her shoulder, and quicker than the eye could follow she would
have disappeared down the ravine. The sentinels had uttered their
warning cry directly, but they always remained until the very last,
and retreated in good order; though there was no cause for alarm, as
“Boxer’s” thoughts were fixed on the peacocks—apt to trespass at those
silent and unguarded hours—and not on the monkeys at all!
This is a sad digression, but yet it has not led us far from that
halcyon scene, which is so often before the eyes of my memory. The
beautiful changing hues of the Indian Ocean binds the horizon in this
and every other extensive island view, but between us and it there
arises in the distance a very forest of tall green masts, the spikes
of countless aloe blossoms. I have heard Mauritius described as “an
island with a barque always to windward,” and there is much truth in
the saying; though one could easily mistake the glancing wing of a huge
seagull or the long white floating tail-feathers of the “boatswain
bird” for the shimmer of a distant sail.
I fear it is a very prosaic confession to make, but one fact which
added considerably to my comfort in Mauritius was the excellence of
the cook of that day. I hear that education and Board schools have
now improved him off the face of the island, but he used to be a very
clever mixture of the best of French and Indian cookery traditions.
The food supply was poor. We got our beef from Madagascar, and our
mutton came from Aden. We found it answer to import half-a-dozen little
sheep at a time; they cost about £1 apiece for purchase and carriage,
but could be allowed only a month’s run in the beautiful park of five
hundred acres which surrounded Réduit. More than that made them ill,
so rich and luscious was the grass; for sheep, like human beings, seem
to need a good deal of exercise, and, as Abernethy advised the rich
gourmet to do, ought to “live on a shilling a day and earn it.”
These same sheep, however, or rather one of the servants, gave me one
of the worst frights of my life. We were at luncheon one day when an
under servant, who never appeared in the dining-room, rushed in calling
out, “Oh, Excellence, _quel malheur_!” then he lapsed into Hindustani
mixed with patois, declaring there had been a terrible railway accident
and that _all_ were injured and two killed outright! As this same line,
which had a private station in the Park about a mile away, constantly
brought us up friends at that hour, I nearly fainted with horror;
and yet I remember how angry, though relieved, I felt when the same
agitated individual wailed out, “and they were all so fat!” One is
apt to be indignant at having been tricked into emotion before one is
grateful for the relief to one’s mind.
Almost the first thing which struck me in Mauritius was the absence of
cows as well as sheep. I never saw a cow grazing, and yet there seemed
plenty of good milk, and even a pallid pat of fresh butter appeared at
breakfast. But there were really plenty of cows, only the coolies kept
them in their houses, to the despair of the sanitary inspectors, who
insisted on proper cowsheds being built at an orthodox distance from
the little _case_ or native house, only to find that the family moved
down and lived with the cow as before. One year there was an outbreak
of pleuro-pneumonia among the poor cows, and I heard many pathetic
stories of the despair of the owners when sentence of death had to be
pronounced in the infected districts against their beloved cows. It was
impossible to make the coolies understand that this was a precautionary
measure, and the large and liberal compensation which they received
seemed to bring no consolation whatever with it. I was assured that in
many instances the owner of the doomed animal would fling himself at
the inspector’s feet, beseeching him to spare the life of the cow, and
to kill him (the coolie) instead!
The roads in Mauritius were admirably kept, but very hard and very
hilly. The big horse, usually imported from Australia, soon knocked his
legs to pieces if much used up and down these hills; but an excellent
class of hardy, handsome, little pony came to us from Pégou and other
parts of Burma, as well as from Timor and Java. These animals were very
expensive to buy, but excellent for work, and I should think would
have made splendid polo ponies; but polo did not seem to be much played
in Mauritius at that date.
Since my day another frightful hurricane has devastated the poor
little island, but I heard many stories of former ones. During the
summer season—that is, from about November until March or April—the
local Meteorological Office keeps a sharp eye on the barometer, and
every arrangement is cut and dry, ready to be acted upon at a moment’s
warning, for a _coup de vent_ is a rapid traveller and does not dawdle
on its way.
We had many false alarms during my stay, for it sometimes happens that
the hurrying winds are diverted from the track they started on, and so
we escaped, _quitte pour la peur_. When the first warning gun fired all
the ships in harbour began to get ready to go outside, for the greatest
mischief done in the big hurricane of 1868 was from the crowded vessels
in the comparatively small harbour of Port Louis grinding against each
other; to say nothing of those ships which, as Kipling sings, were
“Flung to roost with the startled crows.”
At the second signal gun, which meant that the force of the wind was
increasing and travelling towards us, the ships got themselves out of
harbour, and every business man who lived in the country betook himself
to the railway station, as after the third gun, which might be heard
within even half-an-hour, the trains would cease to run. I chanced to
be returning from Port Louis on one of these occasions, and certainly
the railway station presented a curious sight. All my acquaintances
seemed to be there, hurrying home with anxious and pre-occupied faces.
Each man grasped a ham firmly in one hand and his despatch-box in the
other, whilst his _pion_, or messenger, was following, closely laden
with baskets of bread and groceries, and attended by coolies with
live fowls and bottles of lamp oil! My own head servant, “Monsieur
Jorge,” always made the least sign of a “blow” an excuse for demanding
sundry extra rupees in hand for carriole money, and started directly
in one of these queer little vehicles for a round of marketing in the
neighbourhood.
At the first gun heard at Réduit an army of gardeners used to set to
work to move the hundreds of large plants out of the verandahs into a
big empty room close by. They were followed by the house-carpenter and
his mates, armed with enormous iron wedges and sledge-hammers. These
worthies proceeded to close the great clumsy hurricane shutters, which
so spoil the outer effect of all Mauritian houses, and besides putting
the heavy iron bars in their places, wedged them firmly down. It really
looked as if the house was being prepared for a siege. Happily, my own
experience did not extend beyond a couple of days of this state of
affairs, nor was any storm I assisted at dignified by the name of a
hurricane, but I could form from these little experiences only too good
an idea of what the real thing must be like. Personally, my greatest
inconvenience arose from the pervading smell of the lamps, which were,
of course, burning all day as well as all night, and from our never
being able to get rid of the smell of food. One was so accustomed to
the fresh-air life, with doors and windows always open, that these
odours were very trying.
But the noise is, I think, what is least understood. Even in a “blow”
it is truly deafening, and never ceases for an instant. At Réduit there
was a long well-defended corridor upstairs, and I thought I would
try and walk along its length. Not a breath of wind really got in,
or the roof would soon have been whisked off the house; but although
I flatter myself I am tolerably brave, I could not walk down that
corridor! Every yard or so a resounding blow, as if from a cannon-ball,
would come thundering against the outer side, whilst the noise of many
waters descending in solid sheets on the roof, and the screams of the
shrieking, whistling winds outside, were literally deafening. It was
impossible to believe that any structure made by human hands could
stand; and yet that was not a hurricane! Never shall I forget my last
outdoor glimpse, which I was invited to take just before the big
hall-door on the leeward side was finally shut and barricaded. I could
not have believed that the sky could be of such an inky blackness,
except at one corner, where a triangle of the curtain of darkness, with
sharply defined outlines, had apparently just been turned back to show
the deep blood-red colouring behind. It was awful beyond all words to
describe; but “Monsieur Jorge,” who held the door open for me, said:
“Dat not real bad sky.” He seemed hard to please, I thought.
However, a couple of days’ imprisonment was all we suffered that
time, and the instant the gale dropped, at sunrise on the second day,
the rain ceased and the sun shone out. It was a curious scene the
rapidly-opened shutters revealed. Every leaf was stripped off the
trees, which were bare as mid-winter. A few of the smaller ones had
been uprooted bodily and whisked away down the ravine. Some were found
later literally standing on their heads a good way off. It was quite a
new idea to me that roots could be snowy white, but they had been so
completely washed bare of soil by the down-pouring rain that they were
absolutely clean and white. A few hours later I was taken for a drive
round some neighbouring cane-fields. Of course, the road was like the
bed of a mountain torrent, and how the pony managed to steer himself
and the gig among the boulders must ever remain a mystery. Already
over three hundred Malagashes (coolies) were at work covering up the
exposed roots of the canes, for each plant stood in a large hole partly
filled with water, which was rapidly draining away. The force of the
wind seemed to have whirled the cane round and round until it stood,
quite bare of its crown of waving leaves, in the middle of a hole. Had
the sun reached these exposed roots nothing could have saved the plant.
But my memories must not be all meteorological. Rather let me return
in thought to the merry and happy intercourse with pleasant friends,
of which so many hours stand brightly out. In all the colonies I
know hospitality is one of the cardinal virtues, and nowhere more
so than in pretty little Mauritius. I heard many lamentations that
in these altered times the gracious will far outran the restricted
possibilities, but still there used to be pleasant dances, without end
and number, most amusing cameron-fishing _déjeuners_, and _chasses au
cerf_ in the winter months. It so chanced that we had a guest hailing
from Exmoor, who was bidden to one of these popular forms of _le
sport_, and never shall I forget his horror at finding he was required
to carry a gun and shoot a stag if he could! No fox-hunter invited
to assist at a battue of foxes in the Midlands could have been more
shocked and disgusted, and it was quite in vain that we cited Scotch
deer-stalking in excuse. This was _not_ deer-stalking he vowed, for
you sat on a camp-stool in a thick forest and took pot shots at the
poor animals as they were driven past certain spots! An excellent
luncheon was served in the middle of the _chasse_, so it was always
a favourite diversion, but the hospitable owner of one of the best
deer districts told me that he had to inflict fines on these sportsmen
who only wounded the poor deer. Some very handsome “heads” could be
got among them however. But, indeed, I am constrained to say that the
idea of sport, as we understand it, seemed rather undeveloped in that
fairy island, and it was difficult to keep one’s countenance when, in
answer to the Governor’s inquiry as to the success of a morning among
the cane-fields in pursuit of red-legged partridges and quail, the
sportsman rose in his place, bowed low, and answered, “Excéllence, j’ai
tué un, mais j’ai blessé deux.”
The annual race-meeting, held on the Champ-de-Mars outside Port Louis,
was remarkable for the crowds of coolies it attracted from all parts of
the island. The horses were the least important or interesting part of
the performance, and the betting on even the principal races appeared
to be confined to a few Arab merchants, who certainly did not look at
all “horsey” in their gay and flowing robes. It so chanced that I was
being driven home very late the night before the third principal day
of one of these race-meetings, and I thought the shuffling, sheeted
crowds with which the roads were thronged by far the most curious and
suggestive part of the proceedings. No cemetery giving up its silent
sleepers could have furnished a more ghostly crew. Young and old,
babes astride on their mothers’ hips, older children carried by their
fathers, aged men and girls in their shrouding veils, all gliding,
barefooted, in absolute silence along the dusty roads in such a dense
and never-ending crowd that my carriage could only move, and that with
difficulty, at a foot’s pace. It was a lovely starlight, cold night,
and I had the hood of the victoria lowered so as to better take in the
weird scene, to which the dangling cooking-pots carried by all, added
a grotesque touch. At various parts of the road the wily Chinaman had
hastily set up a little booth of palm branches, from which he dispensed
refreshments of sorts doubtless at a high price. These moving masses
were perfectly orderly, nor did they seem to require any restraining or
even guiding force.
Next day I naturally looked out from my beautiful rose-wreathed stand
on the Champ-de-Mars for these white-clad crowds, and there they
were, sure enough, covering the slopes of the encircling natural
amphitheatre, but to my astonishment, though it was barely noon and
the principal race was yet to be run, the massed mob was rapidly
dispersing. As a matter of fact, none of these fifty thousand coolie
spectators cared in the least about the races. That final Saturday
of the race week had come to be regarded as a public holiday. Work
was suspended at the sugar estates all over the Island, and the race
meeting was just an occasion on which all expected to meet their
friends. Every coolie had washed his garment to a snowy whiteness, and
this, taken in conjunction with the vivid touches of colour dear to the
Oriental eye, furnished by the babies’ little scarlet caps and the red
edging of the women’s veils, made up an enchanting picture set against
the vivid green and glowing blue of earth and sky.