14 
MADAGASCAR. 
abroad, we are literally overwhelmed with offers 
of hospitality on all sides. 
The harbour of Port Louis, the chief town of 
the Mauritius, at once arrests the attention of 
the visitor. Its waters are of great depth and of 
marvellous purity, so that the forests of coral- 
trees, and fantastic masses of mountain and 
valley and rugged counterscarp, which lie deep 
beneath the translucent w 7 aves, are plainly vis¬ 
ible to the delighted and. astonished beholder, as 
he leans over the ship’s rail, and gazes into their 
white and sinuous recesses, through which are 
floating continually myriads of small glittering 
fish, and occasionally, in silence and solitude, a 
grim specimen of the terror of these seas, the 
ravenous shark. 
The first impressions of a visitor, upon landing 
on the busy quays of Port Louis, are on the whole 
pleasing. A sense of bewilderment comes over 
us—for a short time only, however—as we pass 
along the crowded streets, and first experience 
the great contrast between the bustle and ac¬ 
tivity of the full flow of oriental life which is 
all around us, and the quiet and monotony of 
our days at sea. 
The polyglot population, the oriental air of 
the whole place, the entire absence of European 
equipages, the domes of a Mohammedan mosque, 
the open portals of the Indian temples, the 
