HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
163 
dollars. The captain of a ship, some time since, destroyed upwards of forty of 
them, by the following stratagem. As he knew that, from their abodes in the 
summit of the mountains, they could perceive every thing that passed in the road 
where his vessel lay, he ordered some biscuit, cheese, and several bottles of brandy 
mixed with arsenic, to be put on board a canoe, and employed two of his sailors to 
take this treacherous cargo on shore, and to appear to enjoy the contents of it. 
Nor was it long before the wretched people, who were the objects of this perfidious 
design, came down with the utmost precipitation to seize the booty. The sailors 
then regained their boat with some apparent reluctance, and the Negroes, who 
thought that they had possessed themselves of a very valuable prize, instantly began 
to gratify themselves in the consumption of it. On the following morning twenty 
of them were found dead; and about the same number still living, who were so 
swelled from the quantity of water they had drank at a neighbouring spring, that 
they were incapable of quitting the spot. On the next day they also passed into 
the other world; where, it is probable, they found a more happy allotment than the 
captain will experience, when he has made the same voyage. 
44 Some of the inhabitants informed me that the vine would succeed in both 
these islands, but that the Company did not encourage the cultivation of it, from 
the apprehension that it might interfere with those objects which were more neces¬ 
sary and beneficial. 
44 The Company procured, at a ’great expence, some young spice plants from 
the Dutch islands: but though some of them flourished, others degenerated ; 
nevertheless, the cultivation of them is continued with great assiduity, and the 
hope of final success. Fresh and larger importations of these plants were after¬ 
wards made. 
Observations on the Isle of Bourbon, in 1763, by an Officer in the British Navy . 
" This island is situated in about the twenty-first degree of south latitude, and 
fifty-four degrees thirty minutes east longitude, of the meridian of London, and is 
about eighty leagues from Madagascar. Its form inclines to an oval, and its greatest 
length is from north to south. Its circumference is about one hundred and fifty 
miles; and it is divided into eight parishes, of which St. Denis is the principal: 
each of them containing a church, with one or two officiating priests. The number 
of its inhabitants amounts to about twenty-five thousand, three fourths of which are 
Y 2 
