"On y voit grandes nombres _d'oiseau bleu_ qui se
nichent dans les herbes et dans les fougères."
This was in the year 1710. There were then, he says, not more than
forty Dutch settlers on the Island of Mauritius, and they were daily
hoping and expecting to be transferred to Batavia. As editor (La
Roque) subjoins a relation furnished on the authority of M. de Vilers,
who had been governor there for the India Company, in which it is
said,-- {354}
"The island was uninhabited when the Portuguese, after having
doubled the Cape of Good Hope, discovered it. They gave it the
name of Mascarhenas, _à cause que leur chef se nommoit ainsi_;
and the vulgar still preserve it, calling the inhabitants
_Mascarins_. It was not decidedly inhabited until 1654, when
M. de Flacour, commandant at Madagascar, sent some invalids
there to recover their health, that others followed; and since
then it has been named the Isle of Bourbon."