aoo 
HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
employ his authority to compel the people to cultivate this plant, though it was to 
prove an infallible resource against that scarcity which they had so often suffered. 
He published an ordinance, by which every inhabitant was obliged to plant five 
hundred feet of ground with manioc for every slave which he possessed. Never¬ 
theless the greater part of them, attached to their old customs, and disposed to resist' 
authority, spared no pains to discredit this branch of agriculture; and some of them 
even carried their aversion to it so far as to destroy the plantations, by secretly 
moistening them with boiling water. Sensible, at length, of the folly of their former' 
prejudices, they now experience and acknowledge the utility of this plant, which secures 
the islands from the possibility of famine : when their harvests are laid waste by hur¬ 
ricanes, or destroyed by locusts, which frequently happens, the inhabitants find in 
the manioc the means of repairing their misfortunes. 
Besides this root, which grows in great abundance, these islands produce at present 
from five to six hundred measures of corn; whereas, previous to the arrival of M. de 
la Bourdonnais, the quantity was very trifling, indeed, in the Isle of France, and 
still less in the Isle of Bourbon. 
But it was not sufficient to provide for the subsistence of the inhabitants by the 
cultivation of the earth, it was also necessary to put the islands themselves in a state 
of security; for he found them without magazines, or fortifications, or hospitals; 
nor had they any workmen, or troops, or marine force. To attain these objects 
M. de la Bourdonnais spared no exertions'; but they were attended with such diffi¬ 
culties and mortifications, from the actual state of things,.as well as frOm-the Cha¬ 
racter of the inhabitants; that he had frequently determined to renounce the 
enterprize. 
When he left France, he had been assured that he should find at the Isles several 
French engineers, not one of whom was there on his arrival; as there had been 
continual disputes between them and the members of the Council, and they were' 
returned to France to complain of the treatment which they had received; so that he 
found the body of engineers reduced to a Mulatto, who superintended the- construe-’ 
tion of a small windmill, in an unfinished state : there was also a magazine, which 
had been building for four years, and was yet without a roof, and a very small house’ 
for the chief engineer. Such were the only public buildings which he found on his' 
arrival in the Isle of France. The Isle of Bourbon could not boast a superior 
degree of preparation. , 
