BERNARDIN DE SAINT PIERRE
Voyage to the Isle of France
I.—Miseries of Slavery
In 1768 Bernardin de Saint Pierre (see Fiction) was sent out to Mauritius, which was then a French colony called the Isle of France, to fortify it against the English. He found it was not worth fortifying, and, after an absence of three years, he returned to France, and in 1773 published his famous "Voyage to the Isle of France," and thereby made his name. It gave him a position similar to that which Defoe occupies in England, for by means of it he introduced into French literature the exotic element which he afterwards expanded in "Paul and Virginia." He was the first French writer of genius to apply the art of description in depicting the life and scenery of far-distant lands. Finally, it is interesting to remark on the general change which has taken place in the treatment of subject native races since the time when Saint Pierre wrote, even though such atrocities as came to light in the recent Congo scandal may be still burning themselves out in isolated instances.
Port Louis, August 6, 1768. The Isle of France was discovered by a Portuguese, and taken over by the Dutch; but they abandoned it in 1712, and settled at the Cape of Good Hope, and the French then took possession of it.
The island was a desert when we took it over, and the first settlers were a few honest, simple farmers from our colony of Bourbon, who lived together very happily until 1760, when the English drove us out of India. Then, like a flood, all the scoundrels, rogues and broken men hunted from our Indian possessions, invaded the island and threw everything into disorder and ruin. Everybody is envious and discontented; everybody wishes to make a fortune at once and depart. And this is an island with no commerce and scarcely any agriculture, where the only money found is paper money! Yet they all say they will be rich enough to return to France in a year's time. They have been saying this for many years. Everything is in a state of squalid neglect. The streets are neither paved nor planted with trees; the houses are merely tents of wood, moved from place to place on rollers; the windows have no glass and no curtains, and it is rare that one finds within even a few poor pieces of furniture.
There are only four hundred farmers. The rest of the white population are mainly idlers, who gather together in the square from noon till evening and pass away the time in gambling and scandalmongering. The work of agriculture is carried on by black slaves imported from Madagascar. They can be got in exchange for a gun or a roll of cloth, and the dearest does not cost more than seven pounds. They are compelled to work from sunrise to sunset, and they are given nothing to eat but mashed maize boiled in water, and tapioca bread. At the least negligence the skin is scourged from their body. The women are punished in the same manner. Sometimes when they are old they are left to starve to death. Every day during my sojourn in the Isle of France I have seen black men and black women lashed hands and feet to a ladder and flogged for having forgot to shut a door or for breaking a bit of pottery. I have seen them bleeding all over, and having their wounded bodies rubbed with vinegar and salt. I have seen them speechless with excess of pain; I have seen some of them bite the iron cannon on which they have been bound.
I do not know if coffee and sugar are necessary to the happiness of Europe, but I know well that these two vegetables are a source of misery to the inhabitants of two continents of the world. We are dispeopling America in order to have a land to grow them; we are dispeopling Africa in order to have a nation to cultivate them. There are 20,000 black slaves on the Isle of France, but they die so fast that, in order to keep up their number, 1,200 more have to be imported every year.