HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
2 7 
government, or the different governors who have been sent there. We have been 
successful only in obtaining the names which follow. 
In the year 1648, Vander-Mester was the Dutch Governor of Mauritius. He is 
mentioned in a voyage to Madagascar, by the Abbe Rochon, as follows: 
“ Pronis, who had been commissioned to take possession of Madagascar in the 
“.name of the King of France, &c. was a man of inferior talents. He added to his 
“ other malversations, that of selling to Vander-Mester, then Governor of Mauritius, 
ct the unfortunate Malegaehes, who were in the service of the settlement; but it ex* 
(i cited the islanders to the highest pitch of indignation, when they found that among 
tc these slaves there were sixteen women of the race of Lohariths.” 
According to Le Guat’s account of the islands of Rodriguez and Mauritius, 
M. La Mocius was Governor of the latter, when he arrived at the former in the 
year 1690. And, according to the same author, M. Rudolphe, or Rodolphe 
Deodate, a native of Geneva, was Governor of Mauritius, when he was detained 
prisoner there during the years 1693, 1694, 1695, and 1696 ; as will hereafter ap¬ 
pear in the subsequent account of the island of Rodriguez. 
Before we enter on the History of Mauritius under the French government, it i$ r 
necessary for us to recur to the first settlement of that nation in the island of Mas- 
caregnas, or Bourbon; as it was from the latter that the French came to establish 
themselves in the former. 
The first appearance of an establishment at Mascaregnas was, according to the 
Abbe Rochon, in his work already mentioned, in the year 1657, when M. de 
Flacourt, who was the first Director of the infant company of the Indies at Paris, 
arrived in that island. He mentions that M. de Flacourt was sent to Madagascar 
in the year 1648, and consequently in the reign of Louis XIV. to consolidate 
there, the .establishments already begun : but the French under his direction, in the 
southern part of that great island, having been attacked by the natives of the coun¬ 
try, M. de Flacourt went with a part of them to settle in the island of Mascaregnas, 
in the course of the year 1657, when he gave it the name of the Isle of Bourbon; 
and hoisted the standard of France, in the very place where that of Portugal had 
already been elevated, as he had done at Madagascar. 
The history and progress of the settlements formed in the island of Madagascar 
will have their appropriate place; though we may be previously obliged to men¬ 
tion it from its relative connection with the isles of Mauritius and Bourbon, We 
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