HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
477 
ing in which they would be swallowed up by the high tides. The boat was three 
days in getting there, and was too small to take them all on board; but this want 
was supplied by a raft from the wreck of the vessel. It possessed the dimensions 
requisite to contain the provisions and utensils which were necessary for the con¬ 
struction of a chaloupe. The raft was towed by the canoe to the Isle of Providence, 
and the shipwrecked people remained two months upon that rock, in order to 
construct a boat of five and-twenty feet in length, in which they had the good 
fortune to reach Madagascar without any further accident. The Isle of Providence 
is 9 0 5' latitude, and 50° longitude; and is north-north-west, and some degrees to 
the west of the Isle of France. 
M. Moreau, Captain of the sloop Favori, dispatched from the Isle of France on 
the 9th of February, 1757, to Narrapore, on the 26th of March following fell in with 
the Adu Isles: from his observation the latitude was 5 0 6' south, and according to 
his reckoning, 76° of longitude, to the east of Paris. He sent a boat on shore 
which he was obliged to abandon, being forced away by the currents. Six leagues 
to the south of these islands M. Moreau fell in with a bank, which had a good 
bottom. A narrative of what befel the party which were thus involuntarily deserted, 
and of their arrival at Cranganore, near Calicut, has already been given in a former 
part of this Volume. 
The Isle de Sable was discovered in 1722, by the ship la Diane, Captain M. de 
la Feuillee. It is flat; and is not a quarter of a league in circumference : how¬ 
ever, at the northern and southern points of it fresh water is to be found, at the 
depth of fifteen feet. The ship l’Utile, Captain M. de la Fargue, was shipwrecked 
here in 1761. The officers, and the ship’s crew, which was for the most part 
composed of blacks, saved themselves upon this small island. They built, during 
their abode of six months there, a chaloupe out of the wreck of the vessel aboard 
of which the white people embarked. They fortunately reached the small island of 
St. Mary, near Madagascar, after a short passage. The blacks remained upon 
this rock in the fruitless expectation of receiving assistance from their compa¬ 
nions; but they were left'to perish there without a single attempt being made 
to rescue them from their melancholy situation. The corvette, the Dauphin, 
commanded by M. Tromelin, whose brother has been already mentioned with the 
distinction he deserves, on the 29th of September, 1776, fell in with the Isle de 
Sable, and, notwithstanding the dangers which threatened any approach to it, he had 
