Wilhems Plains.'] 
TERRA AUSTRALIS. 
42 ? 
tions, the alleys of tamarinds and mangoes, the villages of huts, and 
all the party-coloured vegetation with which that district is adorned ; 
but soon it passes on to the Baye du Tamarin, to the breakers on the 
coral reefs which skirt the shore, and to the sea expanded out to a 
very distant horizon. An elevation of ten or eleven hundred feet, 
and the distance of three or four miles which a spectator is placed 
from the plantations, gives a part of this view all the softness of a 
well-finished drawing ; and when the sun sets in front of the gap, 
and vessels are seen passing before it along the coast, nothing seems 
wanting to complete this charming and romantic prospect. 
Amongst the natural curiosities of Mauritius may be reckoned 
the Mare aux Vacouas, situate about two miles S. by E. of the Refuge. 
It is an irregular piece of fresh water of about one mile in length, 
surrounded with many hundred acres of swampy land, through 
which run four or five little streams from the back hills ; in some 
places it is from so to 25 fathoms deep, as reported, and is well 
stocked with eels, prawns and a small red fish called dame-cere, 
originally brought from China. The eels and prawns are indige- 
nous, and reach to a large size ; the latter are sometimes found of 
six inches long without the beard, and the eels commonly offered, 
for sale ran from six to twenty, and some were said to attain the 
enormous weight of eighty pounds. This fish is delicate eating, and 
■ the largest are accounted the best ; its form has more affinity to the 
conger than to our fresh-water eel, and much resembles, if it be 
not exactly the same species caught in the small streams of Norfolk 
Island in the Pacific Ocean. Whence it is that fresh- water fish should 
be found on small islands, frequently at several hundred leagues 
from other land, will probably long remain one of the secrets of 
nature ; if it were granted that they might come by sea, the difficulty 
would scarcely be less to know how they should have mounted 
precipices of many hundred feet, to reach lakes at the tops of moun- 
tains where they are not uncommonly seen. 
Five or six miles to the south of the Refuge lies another lake 
1 80s. 
September. 
