HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
79 
very porous, and covered with small holes of little depth, whose cavities are filled 
With a kind of crystalization. 
The source of the Rampart river is in a mountain which cannot be less than twelve 
hundred feet in height. The woods, which are beautiful towards the bottom of it, 
diminish in its ascent, and at the top dwindle into young trees and shrub-wood. 
There is the fountain-head of the river, which falls a few feet in the form of a cas¬ 
cade, into a small bason. The water issues from the ledge of an horizontal rock 
which rests on a thick bank of earth of a greyish-white colour, and of a consistence 
to be cut with a knife, but does not harden in the air. It is covered with an infinite 
number of small black spots, which have the appearance of coal, but are, more 
probably, particles of ferruginous matter. 
In a valley at the foot of the same mountain there is very excellent stone for 
building, which appears to be of the same nature, or at least to have the same 
grain as the earth that is at the top: it is pierced also with holes, and is full of the 
black particles; from whence it may be concluded, that these stones are formed in 
the bosom of this mountain, that the substance was originally as soft as that of the 
earth, and that the rains and torrents having worn away one part of the mountain, 
these rocks have been carried down into the valley. 
At the foot of the mountains of Villebague, on the road which leads to a deep bot¬ 
tom called Nicoliere, stones of the same kind are seen in the channels formed by 
the rain; they are in an half-hardened state, and have been uncovered by the impe¬ 
tuosity of the torrents. These stones, which are of about two or three pounds 
weight, are easily broken; and the more so, as by being exposed to the air, they are 
already cracked; they are covered, as well within as without, with spots of different 
dimensions, for the most part of a bluish cast; which are, without doubt, particles 
of iron ore. 
The same cause which has formed and hardened all these rocks in the earth, has 
formed and hardened those which are so numerous in all the rivers of the island. 
These rocks, that continually interrupt the course of the rivers, appear as if they 
had been artificially heaped upon one another. 
This effect is remarkable in an hundred parts of the island, but principally in the 
river of Pamplemousses on quitting Villebague, which is a plain, considerably elevated 
above the district of Pamplemousses. This river is very much inclosed, and con¬ 
tinues to be so for the distance of a quarter of a league, while the ground sinks in 
