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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 

 Riviere Noire, the highest in the whole island, measuring no 

 more than 2544 feet above the level of the sea. Piton du bras is 

 24 feet lower; and the Pouce, 48 feet. What is termed the 

 plain, or level ground, rises perceptibly as you recede fi'om the 



an island equal in size to either Mauritius or Bourbon having been found, lilce 

 these islands, uninhabited. As they lie within a few days' sail of Madagascar, 

 which always maintained a communication with the coast of Africa, the cir- 

 cumstance furnishes an argument in favour of their more recent formation, and 

 against the supposed early navigation of the Chinese in these seas." 



