1 8 Thomas Henry Huxley 



as occur relate to Huxley's constant occupations on 

 shore, sketching natives and their dwellings, and his 

 apparatus on board for trawling, dredging, and dis- 

 secting. 



The voj^age out was uneventful. The ship touched 

 at Madeira and at Rio de Janeiro, and then crossed the 

 South Atlantic to Simon's Town at the Cape of Good 

 Hope, where the first quantity of treasure was to be 

 landed. There they found the colony distressed by the 

 long continuance of the Kaffir war. Prices for every- 

 thing were extortionate, and the colonists had no mind 

 for an}' affairs than their own, so after a short stay the 

 voyagers were glad to set out for the Mauritius. That 

 island, although in the possession of Britain, still re- 

 tained a strong impress of its French occupation, and 

 the travellers were interested by the mixture of popul- 

 ation inhabiting it.* 



'& 



" Passing through the closely packed lines of shipping, and 

 landing as a stranger at Port Louis, perhaps the first thing to 

 engage attention is the strange mixture of nations, — repre- 

 sentatives, he might at first be inclined to imagine, of half the 

 countries of the earth. He stares at a coolie from Madras with 

 a breech-cloth and a soldier's jacket, or a stately bearded Moor 

 striking a bargain with a Parsee merchant. A Chinaman with 

 two bundles slung on a bamboo hurries past, jostling a group 

 of young Creole exquisites smoking their cheroots at a corner, 

 and talking of last night's Norma, or the programme of the 

 evening's performance at the Hippodrome in the Champ de 

 Mars. His eye next catches a couple of sailors reeling out of a 

 grogshop, to the amusement of a group of laughing negresses, 

 in white muslin dresses of the latest Parisian fashion, contrast- 

 ing strongly wnth a modestly attired Cingalese woman, and an 

 Indian ayah with her young charge. Amidst all this, the 



* Narrative of the Voyage of H. M. S. '' RattlcsJiake;' by John 

 MacGillivray, F.R.G.S. 2 vols. T. W. Boone, London, 1852. 



