212 
HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
through with the stroke of a sabre as easily as a cabbage stock. Eggs sell for a 
sous, and chicken at one livre ten sous. 
We now make wheaten bread of our own growth: the corn is ground by a small 
hand-mill, which gives rather a coarse flour, but the bread is of a very agreeable 
taste. This will prove very advantageous to the island, as the flour brought from 
Europe is often spoiled in the course of the voyage, and bread then becomes extra¬ 
vagantly dear. 
Grant. 
LETTER IV. 
Isle of France, ist of June, 1743. 
I proceed to give you a detail of my present situation. You already know that 
the Council had granted me six slaves; but the strongest of them has already quitted 
me to join a party of runaway Negroes, who live on the fruits of nocturnal rapine. 
We consider them as obnoxious animals, and hunt them down in the same manner. 
My fugitive has accordingly suffered on one of his marauding expeditions, when he 
was shot. This black cost me three hundred livres; and since the return of the 
Governor, the slaves of his kind are sold for a thousand. This is a considerable 
loss in the first instance, besides the value of his labour ; but I am consoled by the 
kind and ready assistance I receive from my friends and neighbours. I have since 
purchased a Negress, at a public auction, for three hundred and fifty livres, or an 
hundred piastres, which in France would amount to upwards of five hundred livres, 
to be paid in grain in the course of the year. 
M. de la Bourdonnais has promised to let me have four blacks, on his return, at 
seven hundred and twenty livres each, one-third of which sum is to be paid in grain, 
on receiving them, and the rest in three years. He is now at the Isle of Bourbon; 
and as I have already delivered to the magazines, on his account, a quantity of maize, 
to the value of nine hundred and fifty livres of this country, I shall receive my slaves 
as soon as he returns. 
We however experience difficulties of many kinds: besides the augmentation in 
their price, disease, death, and flight, deprive us of our Negroes. We are also 
subject to the caprice of those in power, who change even the price of grain, not¬ 
withstanding the difficulty in conveying it to the port, which is at the distance of 
three leagues. The price of maize was fifty livres the millier , and after the succeeding 
