CHAP. IV. FEARFUL RAVAGES OF CHOLERA. 113 



M. Le Brim, with whom I resided, sometimes went to the 

 cemetery at four in the morning, and one morning had five 

 appHcations to attend interments before breakfast. It was 

 a matter of personal favour to obtain a coffin for a relative 

 or friend, or even to secure a grave. At the last funeral 

 I attended we had to wait on the ground until the grave 

 was dug, and there were numbers of coffins around, which 

 had to remain until graves could be prepared. In some of 

 the districts it was even more distressing. At Pample- 

 mouses, as I was informed by one of the residents there, so 

 numerous were the deaths, and so few the labourers, that 

 they dug a large pit in which to bury the dead all together, 

 and before the pit was finished no less than forty bodies 

 were collected at its sides for interment. It would be im- 

 possible to describe the state of feeling which pervaded all 

 classes. Families that separated in the morning scarcely 

 expected to gather together in the evening : and when re- 

 tiring to their respective beds at night they parted from 

 each other under a feeling of uncertainty as to whether they 

 should all meet in the morning. 



The poor heathen Indians beat their tom-toms, and walked 

 in processions with incense and garlands to propitiate their 

 idols, and avert the terrors of death. The Christians, besides 

 calling upon God in their homes, appointed a public fast for 

 humiliation and solemn prayer to the Almighty that the 

 plague might be stayed. 



Witb many, antidotes of eagerly hoped for efficacy were 

 carried about the person. Fires were kindled, and gums or 

 resins burned in the yards, or at the corners of the streets. 

 Additional burial-places were appointed in the neighbourhood 

 of Port Louis, and every means adopted, by spreading lime 

 over the graves, and by other means, to prevent the increase 

 of the pestilence. And still the fearful calamity continued. 



