ciiap. iv. 
FEARFUL RAVAGES OF CHOLERA. 
113 
M. Le Brun, with whom I resided, sometimes went to the 
cemetery at four in the morning, and one morning had five 
applications 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 Grod in their homes, appointed a public fast for 
humiliation and solemn prayer to the Almighty that the 
plague might be stayed. 
With 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 precaution adopted, by spreading lime 
over the graves, and by other means, to prevent the increase 
of the pestilence. And still the fearful calamity continued, 
i 
