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failings he lost his authority over his troops, who 
became, in consequence, licentious and refractory. 
A rebellion was excited against him ; and the settlers, 
seeing no prospect of his governing the colony with 
prudence, and fearing the combinations of the native 
chiefs, arrested and laid him in irons. He remained 
a captive six months, when he was released by a 
French ship; but he had scarcely resumed the com-” 
mand, when he committed an act, which rendered him 
in the highest degree hateful to the natives —that 
of selling a number of the natives, who were in the 
service of the colony, to the governor of the Mauritius; 
and amongst these were sixteen women of the Loha- 
vohitz race, which doubly incensed them. These 
poor creatures were shipped off in so crowded a state, 
that the greater part of them died on the passage; 
and the remaining few, upon arriving at the Mauritius, 
fled immediately into the woods, whence they could 
never after be taken, but subsisted in a wild state. 
As soon as the East-India Company became 
acquainted with these transactions, Pronis was sus¬ 
pended, and Flacourt appointed to succeed him. 
This person arrived at Fort Dauphin the latter 
end of September, 1648, where he was received in 
a friendly manner by the chiefs ; but his conduct, 
like that of his predecessors, was not well adapted to 
promote a conciliatory spirit. He appears rather to 
have aimed at reducing the whole island to a state of 
subjection; for soon after he arrived, upon some 
slight provocation, he sent a detachment of eighty 
K 
