140 
HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
companions. I received, however, great benefit myself from the little voyage, and 
the change of air. To add to the distress of those whom I had left, and whose health 
and strength had yielded to the miseries of their situation, a violent hurricane, which 
shook the most solid buildings, tore up large trees from the earth, and destroyed 
the harvest in Mauritius, blew away, like so much straw, their wretched habitations 
from the rock, and they had no other shelter but such as its cavities afforded 
them. 
“ It may not perhaps be an unamusing relief to the curious mind, to be informed 
of the personal circumstances and employments of the exiles of the rock. 
“ As we did every thing in our power to counteract our melancholy, one of us, 
who had a great deal of ingenuity and fancy, suggested the idea of making hats of 
the leaves of the latanier, as there were some of those trees in one of the adjoining 
islets, to which we had access at the full and new moon. This employment did not 
merely serve to amuse, but became the cause of procuring us relief; for these hats 
were considered as such a flattering present, that they purchased the good will and 
gratitude of those who brought us our provisions: and when the inhabitants of the 
island saw these productions of our toil, they were so delighted with them, that in 
return for such as we could present to them, they contrived to convey to us various 
kinds of refreshments, which proved of the greatest utility and comfort. 
“In our situation it was natural for us to look to fishing as an aid to our subsistence; 
but all application for any remnants of our fishing tackle being treated with neglect, 
we were only able to contrive a kind of harpoon with a pole and a large iron nail, 
with which, however, we were sufficiently successful in the holes or trenches on the 
shore, that served as traps for the fish when the sea retreated from them. But 
our fishery had well nigh cost us our lives. It happened that in one of our fishing 
parties, we caught, or rather killed, as we thought, an immense eel, which weighed 
upwards of sixty pounds; and, as we bore it away in triumph, each of us considered 
himself a St. George, the conqueror of the dragon. We found its flesh, however, 
not only hard but nauseous ; and it was fortunate that we were so soon disgusted 
with it, or we should have been irrecoverably poisoned. Instead of an eel, it proved 
to be a marine serpent (the Murena), whose deleterious qualities are so well known 
to naturalists, but of which we were altogether ignorant. We all, indeed, suffered 
severely from the very little we eat of this serpent, and it was a month before I re¬ 
covered from the effects of the small morsel which reached my stomach. 
