The Livingstone Expedition — Home. 521 
energy and enterprise of Commissioner Franklin. The 
houses, which are principally of wood, are small square 
buildings, surrounded with verandahs, and looking 
very neat and pretty. There is a small Protestant 
Church, but a much larger Roman Catholic Chapel, 
the latter, by comparison, being quite an imposing- 
looking edifice. The other public buildings are, the 
hotels, hospitals, the police station, the post office, 
and the government house. The streets, roads, and 
everything else are kept in good repair, and the place, 
while novel and picturesque, wears an aspect of quiet 
and cleanly respectability. 
The population is composed almost entirely of 
French Creoles, who speak a French patois. There 
are a few foreigners — officials, individuals whom 
chance and accident have thrown here, runaway 
sailors, etc. A great many liberated slaves have been 
taken to Mahe, of whom we are obliged to say, that 
theirs is at best a very unenviable lot. Many of them 
work upon the roads, and others are bound as ap- 
prentices to the people of the place. Their education 
totally uncared for, treated with supercilious contempt 
by the semi-civilized Creoles, and above all bitterly 
feeling their exile, we regard their condition as being 
as bad, if not worse, than their original slavery. 
^ The prevailing religion of Mahe is Roman Catho- 
licism, Protestantism being professed by very few 
indeed. There is a fine field of labour here for any 
Protestant Missionary Society, who might feel itself 
in a position to undertake a protestant mission. With 
a fair field, and no favour, an able, earnest worker 
might do an immense amount of good. The govern- 
ment of the place was in the hands of a Commissioner, 
