HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
146 
CHAPTER V. 
Historical Description of the Isle of Bourbon.—Origin of its Establishments.—An 
Account of the Governors from the Tear 1664.— The successive Voyages thither 
—Descriptions of it by Reynal y Rochon , St. Pierre , Poivre , Admiral Kempenfelt, 
La Caille , and the Captain of an English Ship.—Account of the Hurricanes, 
by Brunei and Bernier , &c.—History of the Volcano , by M. de Co miner son y 
Rochon , and Brunei; and a Comparison of it with those of Mount Etna and 
Vesuvius.—State of its Agriculture , by M. Poivre. 
1505. From the discovery of the Isle of Bourbon by Mascaregnas, in 1505,* to 
the year 1598, when the Dutch possessed themselves of it,+ it does not appear that 
the Portuguese had formed any establishment there, nor even that their navigators 
had approached it. The Dutch themselves, at this latter epocha, had only touched 
at the Isle of France. 
1613. After the Portuguese, the English captain, Castleton, appears to be the first 
who had visited this island, in 1613: he left it as he found it, absolutely desert. 
1618. Bontekoe came to an anchor off the coast of this island in 1618. It'was 
then without inhabitants; but he found a plank there, on which an account was 
inscribed, that Admiral Martens Blok, commanding a fleet of thirteen ships, had lost 
a boat with several sailors on this coast.J 
1664. From this period, 1618, to 1657, according to Rochon, orto 1664, accord¬ 
ing to Rennefort, we have not been able to discover that any voyager had touched at 
the island of Mascaregnas. 
1665. It was in this year that M. Flacour, director of a French Company, took 
possession of it, and gave it the name of the Isle of Bourbon, which it still retains. 
He left there but very few inhabitants, as will be seen hereafter. 
* According to an incription found at St. Paul, at Mascaregnas, and mentioned by le Guat, 
the Portuguese took possession of that island in the year 1545. 
f See the second voyage of the Dutch to the East Indies, by Vanneck. 
I Chapter I. page 24. 
