298 
a spot offered no allurement to a people impelled, as they at 
that period were, by the demon of conquest and conversion. 
They contented themselves, therefore, with turning loose into 
the woods a few domestic animals, such as deer, goats, and 
hogs; then forsook it for ever. 
* Ninety years after the period of its discovery, the Dutch 
took possession of the island, and gave it the name of 
Mauritius. "These republicans, however, equally ambitious as 
the Portuguese had been a century before, were at this time 
pursuing the latter in all quarters, and wresting from them 
their most valuable possessions in the east. The infant 
Colony was thus left totally neglected; and feebly protracted 
its existence in languor and obscurity until the year 1712, 
when it was removed to the Cape of Good Hope. The 
French, who had a considerable settlement at this time on 
the Island of Bourbon, no sooner learned that the Hollanders 
had abandoned Mauritius, than they sent a detachment to 
take possession of it in the name of His Most Christian 
Majesty. Such was the origin of a Colony, which, at this 
day amounts to eighty thousand souls. 
* The extreme length of Mauritius, from Cape Malheu- 
reux to Cape Brabant, is about forty miles; and its greatest 
breadth, from Port-Louis to the Grand Port, thirty miles 
Its surface is broken by mountains, some detached, others 
forming chains of considerable extent. "These appear much 
loftier when viewed from the coast than from the interior of 
the island, as the land rises to a great height in the centre, 
equalling in that respect, some of the mountains themselves 
The elevation of the latter is but moderate; the Piton de la 
Riviére Noire, the highest in the whole island, measuring "© 
more than 2544. feet above the level of the sea. Piton du bras 
24 feet lower; and the Pouce, 48 feet, What is termed the 
plain, or level ground, rises perceptibly as you recede from the 
rote a 
an island equal in size to either Mauritius or Bourbon having been founds pe 
these islands, uninhabited. As they lie within a few days’ sail of Madagascar 
which i always maintained a communication with the coast of Africa, the o7- 
. Samstance furnishes an argument in favour of their more recent formation, 
against the supposed early navigation of the Chinese in these seas" 
