If it were not for everybody being in such a terror about their health, this lonely little island would be a very charming place. But ever since the fever a feeling of sanitary distrust seems to have sprung up among the inhabitants, which strikes a newcomer very vividly. The European inhabitants look very well, and the ladies and children are far more blooming—though I acknowledge it is a delicate bloom—than any one I saw in Natal. Still, you can detect that the question of health is uppermost in the public mind. If a house is spoken of, its only recommendation need be that it is healthy. There is very little society at night, because night air is considered dangerous: even the chief attraction of lawn-tennis, the universal game here, is that "it is so healthy." And to see the way the gentlemen wrap up after it in coats which seem to have been made for arctic wear! Of course they are quite right to be careful, and it is a comfort to know that with proper care and the precautions taught by experience there is no reason why, under the blessing of God, a European should not enjoy as good health in Mauritius as in other places with a better reputation. There are nearly always cases of fever in Port Louis, and three or four deaths a day from it; but then the native white and creole population is very large, and the proportion is not so alarming.
One of the things which I think are not generally understood is, how completely the whole place is French. It is not in the least like any colony which I have ever seen. It is a comfortable settlement, where families have intermarried and taken root in the soil, regarding it with quite as fond and fervent an affection as we bear to our own country. Instead of the apologies for, and abuse of, a colony (woe to you if you find fault, however!) with which your old colonist greets a new arrival, I find here a strong patriotic sentiment of pride and love, which is certainly well merited. When you take into consideration the tiny dimensions of the island, its distance from all the centres of civilization, its isolation, the great calamities which have befallen it from hurricane, drought and pestilence, and the way it has overlived them all, there is every justification for the pride and glory of its inhabitants in their fair and fertile islet. Never were such good roads: I don't know how they are managed or who keeps them in order, except that I believe everything in the whole place is done by government. Certainly, government ought to be patted on the back if those neat, wide, well-kept roads are its handiwork. But, as I was saying, it is a surprise to most English comers to find how thoroughly French the whole place is, and you perceive the change first and chiefly in the graceful and courteous manners of the people of all grades and classes. Instead of the delightful British stare and avoidance of strangers, every one, from the highest official to the poorest peasant, has a word or bow of greeting for the passer-by; and especially is this genial civility to be admired and noticed at the railway-stations and in the carriages. You never hear English spoken except among a few officials, and a knowledge of French is the first necessity of life here. Unhappily, there is a patois in use among the creoles and other natives which is very confusing. It is made up of a strange jumble of Eastern languages, grafted on a debased kind of French, and gabbled with the rapidity of lightning and a great deal of gesticulation. At a ball you hear far more French than English spoken, and at a concert I attended lately not a single song was in English. Even in the Protestant churches there is a special service held in French every Sunday, as well as another in Tamil, besides the English services; so a clergyman in Mauritius needs to be a good linguist. The polished floors, well frotté every morning, and the rather set-out style of the rooms, all make a house look French. The business of the law-courts and the newspapers are also in French, with only here and there a column of English. The notifications of distances, the weights and measures, the "avis aux voyageurs," the finger-posts, wayside bills, signs on shop-fronts, are all in French. When by any chance the owner of a shop breaks out into an English notification of his wares—and it is generally a Chinaman or Parsee who is fired by this noble ambition—the result is as difficult to decipher as if it were a cuneiform inscription.
The greatest difference, as it is the one which most affects my individual comfort, which I have yet found out between Mauritius and an ordinary English colony is the poverty of the book-shops. Your true creole is not a reading character, though, on the other hand, he has a great and natural taste for music. I miss the one or even two excellent book shops where one could get, at quite reasonable prices too, most of the new and readable books which I have always found in the chief town of every English colony. At Cape Town, Christchurch, New Zealand, Maritzburg, D'Urban, there are far better booksellers than in most English country towns. Here it appears to me as if the love of literature were confined to the few English officials, who devour each other's half dozen volumes with an appetite which speaks terribly of a state of chronic mental famine. I keep hoping that I shall always be as busy as I am now, and so have very little time for reading, for if it is ever otherwise I too shall experience the universal starvation.
Beau Bassin, June 20th.
It has never been my lot hitherto, even in all my various wanderings, to stand of a clear starlight night and see the dear old Plough shining in the northern sky whilst the Southern Cross rode high in the eastern heaven. But I can see them both now; and the last thing I always do before going to bed is to go out and look first straight before me, where the Plough hangs luminous and low over the sea, and then stroll toward the right-hand or eastern side of the veranda and gaze up at the beautiful Cross through the rustling, tall tree-tops. It is much too cold now to sit out in the wide veranda and either watch the stars or try to catch a glimpse of the monkeys peeping up over the edge of the ravine in the moonlight, thereby awakening poor rheumatic old Boxer's futile rage by their gambols. My favorite theory is that one is never so cold as in a tropical country, and I have had great encouragement in that idea lately. We are always regretting that no fireplace has been included in the internal arrangements of this house, and when we go out to dinner part of the pleasure of the evening consists in getting well roasted in front of a coal-fire in the drawing-room. I am assured that a few months hence I shall utterly deny this said theory, and refuse to believe the fireplaces I see occasionally could ever be used except as receptacles for pots of ferns and large-leaved plants. At present, however, it is, as I say, delightfully, bracingly cold in the morning and evening, and almost too cold for comfort at night unless indeed you are well provided with blankets. We take long walks of three or four miles of an evening, starting when the sun sinks low enough for the luxuriant hedges by the roadside to afford us occasional shelter, and returning either in the starlight dusk or in the crisper air of a moonlight evening. In every direction the walk is sure to be a pretty one, whether we have the hill of the Corps-de-Garde before us, with its distinctly-marked profile of a French soldier of the days of the Empire lying with crossed hands, the head and feet cutting the sky-line sharp and clear, or the bolder outlines of blue Mount Ory or cloud-capped Pieter Both. Our path always lies through a splendid tangle of vegetation, where the pruning-knife seems the only gardening tool needed, and where the deepening twilight brings out many a heavy perfume from some hidden flower. Above us bends a vault of lapis-lazuli, with globes of light hanging in it, and around us is a heavenly, soft and balmy air. Whenever I say to a resident how delicious I find it all, he or she is sure to answer dolefully, "Wait till the hot weather!" But my idea is, that if there is this terrible time in front of us, it is surely all the more reason why we should enjoy immensely the agreeable present. That there is some very different weather to be battled with is apparent by the extraordinary shutters one sees to all the houses. Imagine doors built as if to stand a siege, strengthened by heavy cross-pieces of wood close together, and, instead of bolt or lock, kept in their places by solid iron bars as thick as my wrist. Every door and window in the length and breadth of the island is furnished with these contre-vents, or hurricane-shutters, and they tell their own tale. So do the huge stones, or rather rocks, with which the roofs of the humbler houses and verandas are weighted. My expression of face must have been something amusing when I remarked triumphantly the other day to one of my acquaintances, who had just observed that my house stood in a very exposed situation, "But it has been built a great many years, and must have stood the great hurricanes of 1848 and 1868." "Ah!" replied Cassandra cheerfully; "there was not much left of it, I fancy, after the '48 hurricane, and I know that the veranda was blown right over the house in the gale of '68." Was not that a cheerful tale to hear of one's house? Just now the weather is wet and windy as well as cold, and the constant and capricious heavy showers reduce the lawn-tennis players to despair.
If any one asked me what was the serious occupation of my life here, I should answer without hesitation, "Airing my clothes." And it would be absolutely true. No one who has not seen it can imagine the damp and mildew which cover everything if it be shut up for even a few days. Ammonia in the box or drawer keeps the gloves from being spotted like the pard, but nothing seems to avail with the other articles of clothing. Linen feels quite wet if it is left unused in the almirah, or chest of drawers, for a week. Silk dresses break out into a measle-like rash of yellow spots. Cotton or muslin gowns become livid and take unto themselves a horrible charnel-house odor. Shoes and books are speedily covered a quarter of an inch deep by a mould which you can easily imagine would begin to grow ferns and long grasses in another week or so.
Hats, caps, cloth clothes, all share the same damp fate, whilst, as for the poor books, their condition is enough to make one weep, and that in spite of my constant attention and repeated dabbings with spirits of wine. And this is not the dampest part of the island by any means. Do not suppose, however, that damp is the only enemy to one's toilette here. I found a snail the other day in my wardrobe which had been journeying slowly but effectively across some favorite silken skirts. Cockroaches prefer tulle and net, and eat their way recklessly and rapidly through choicest lace, besides nibbling every cloth-bound book in the island. On the other hand, the rats confine their attentions chiefly to the boots and shoes of the resident, and are at all events good friends to the makers and sellers of those necessary articles. So, you see, garments are likely to be a source of more trouble than pleasure to their possessor if he or she is at all inclined to be always tiré à quatre épingles.
Except these objectionable creatures, there is not much animal life astir around me in the belle isle. It is too cold still for the butterflies, and I do not observe much variety among the birds. There are flocks of minas always twittering about my lawn—glossy birds very like starlings in their shape and impudent ways, only with more white in the plumage and with brilliant orange-colored circles round their eyes. There are plenty of paroquets, I am told, and cardinal birds, but I have not yet seen them. A sort of hybrid canary whistles and chirps in the early mornings, and I hear the shrill wild note of a merle every now and then. Of winged game there are but few varieties—partridges, quails, guinea-fowl and pigeons making up the list—but, on the other hand, poultry seems to swarm everywhere. I never saw such long-necked and long-legged cocks and hens in my life as I see here; but these feathered giraffes appear to thrive remarkably well, and scratch and cackle around every Malabar hut. I have not seen a sheep or a goat since I arrived, nor a cow or bullock grazing. The milch cows are all stall-fed. The bullocks go straight from shipboard to the butcher, and the horses are never turned out. This is partly because there is no pasturage, the land being used entirely for sugar-cane or else left in small patches of jungle. As might be expected from such a volcanic-looking island, the surface of the ground is extremely stony, but the sugar-cane loves the light soil, and I am told that it thrives best where the stones are just turned aside and a furrow left for the cane-plant. After a year or so the furrow is changed by the rocks being rolled back again into their original places, and the space they occupied is then available for young plants. The wild hares are terrible enemies to the first shoots of the cane, and we pass picturesque gardiens armed with amazing fusils and clad in every variety of picturesque rag, keeping a sort of boundary-guard at the edges of the sprouting cane-fields. There are a great many dogs to be seen about, and they are also regarded as gardiens; for the swarming miscellaneous Eastern population does not bear the best reputation in the world for honesty, and the police seem to have their hands full. All that I know about the use of the dogs as auxiliaries is that they yelp and bark hideously all night at each other, for every one seems to resent as a personal insult any nocturnal visit from a neighbor's dog.
The horses are better than I expected. When one hears that every four-footed beast has to be imported, one naturally expects dear and indifferent horses, but I am agreeably surprised in this respect. We have horses from the Cape, from Natal, and even from Australia, and they do not appear to cost more here than they would in their respective countries. I may add that there is also no difficulty whatever in providing yourself with an excellent carriage of any kind you prefer, and it is far better to choose one here than to import one. I mention this because a carriage or conveyance of some sort is the necessary of necessaries here—as indispensable as a pair of boots would be in England. I scarcely ever see any one on horseback: people never seem to ride, to my great regret. I am assured that it will be much too hot to do so in the summer evenings, and that the hardness of the roads prevents riding from being an agreeable mode of exercise. Every village can furnish sundry carrioles for hire, queer-looking little conveyances, like a minute section of a tilt-cart mounted on two crazy wheels and drawn by a rat of a pony. Ponies are a great institution here, and are really more suitable for ordinary work than horses. They are imported in large numbers from Pegu and other parts of Birmah, and also from Java, Timur and different places in the Malay Archipelago. They stand about twelve or fourteen hands high, and are the strongest, healthiest, pluckiest little beauties imaginable, full of fire and go. Occasionally I meet a carriage drawn by a handsome pair of mules, and they are much used in the numerous carts and for farm-work, especially on the sugar estates. They are chiefly brought from South America and from the Persian Gulf, and have many admirers, but I cannot say I like them as a substitute either for horses or for the gay little ponies. This is such an exceedingly sociable place that I have frequent opportunities of looking at the nice horses of my visitors, and most of the equipages would do credit to any establishment. The favorite style of carriage in use here is very like a victoria, only there is a curious custom of always keeping the hood up. It looks so strange to my eyes to see the hood, which projects unusually far as a screen against either sun or rain, kept habitually up, even during the brief and balmy twilight, when one fancies it would be so much more agreeable to drive swiftly through the soft air without any screening soufflet. Of course it would be quite necessary to keep it up in the daytime, or even late at night against the heavy dew, but this does not begin to fall until it is too dark to remain out driving.
I must say I like Mauritius extremely. It is so comfortable to live in a place with good servants and commodious houses, and the society is particularly refined and agreeable, owing chiefly to the mixture of a strong French element in its otherwise humdrum ingredients. I have never seen such a wealth of lovely hair or such beautiful eyes and teeth as I observe in the girls in every ball-room here; and when you add exceedingly charming—alas! that I must say foreign—manners and a great deal of musical talent, you can easily imagine that the style of the society is a good deal above that to be found in most colonies.