HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
215 
Since this unpropitious event, some small vessels have arrived, which however 
brought us little more than accounts of the state of public affairs. The last of them 
indeed gave us the satisfactory intelligence, that the Company had dispatched several 
behind us. When this person, who was a Negro, had overtaken us, he informed us that he came 
from that part of theisland called La Poudre d’Or, and was sent to the port to inform the Governor 
that a ship from France had anchored on the Isle of Ambre, and fired guns of distress, as the sea 
was very stormy. He then left us, and pursued his journey.—‘ Let us go,’ said I to Paul, 1 towards 
that part of the island, and meet Virginia.’ Accordingly we bent our course thither. The heat was 
suffocating, and the moon which had risen, was encompassed by three large, black circles. A dismal 
darkness shrouded the sky; but the frequent flakes of lightning discovered long chains of thick, 
gloomy clouds, rolling with great rapidity from the ocean, though we felt not a breath of wind on the 
land. As we walked along, we thought that we heard peals of thunder; but after listening more 
attentively, we found they were the sound of distant cannon repeated by the echoes. These sounds, 
joined to the tempestuous aspect of the heavens, made me shudder, and I had little doubt that 
they were signals of distress from a ship in danger. In half an hour the firing ceased, and I felt 
the silence more appaling than the dismal sounds which had preceded. 
*< We hastened on without uttering a word, or daring to communicate our apprehensions. At 
midnight we arrived on the sea-shore. The billows broke against the beach with an horrible 
noise, covering the rocks and the strand with their white and dazzling foam, blended with 
sparks of fire. By their phosphoric gleams we distinguished, dark as it was, the canoes of the 
fishermen, which they had drawn far on the sand. Near the shore, at the entrance of a wood, 
■ we saw a fire, round which several of the inhabitants were assembled: thither we repaired, 
in order to repose ourselves till the morning. One of this circle related, that in the afternoon he 
had seen a vessel driven towards the island by the currents, that the night had obscured it from 
his view, and that two hours after sunset he had heard the firing of guns, as signals of distress; 
but the sea being so tempestuous, no boat could venture out: that a short time after he thought 
he perceived the glimmering of the watch-lights on board the ship, which he feared, by its having 
approached so near the coast, had steered between the main land and the small Isle cP Ambre, 
mistaking it for the Coin de Mire, near which the vessels pass, in order to gain Port Louis; and if 
that were so, the ship, he apprehended, was in great danger. Another islander then informed us, that 
he had frequently crossed the channel which separates the Isle d’Ambre from the coast, and as he 
had sounded it, he knew the anchorage was good, and that the ship would there be in as great 
security as if it were in the harbour. A third islander declared it was impossible for the ship to 
enter the channel, which was scarcely navigable for a boat; he asserted, that he had seen the 
vessel at anchor beyond the Isle d'Ambre, so that if the wind sprung up in the morning, it could 
either put to sea, or gain the harbour. At break of day the weather was too hazy to admit of our 
distinguishing any object at sea, which was covered with a fog. All we could descry was a dark 
cloud, which we were informed was the Isle d’Ambre, at the distance of a quarter of a league 
from the coast. We could only discern, on this gloomy morning, the point of the beach where we 
