MAURITIUS 
195 
ally to the island, which sometimes bears the name of 
Cirne in the earliest maps, but was sometimes called Cainas ; 
apparently Cienos was the proper designation, meaning 
something like Swan-island. This name may have been 
derived from the ground-pigeons or dodos, as large as 
swans, which were then numerous on the island. As 
the Portuguese put forward no claims to possession, the 
Dutch next planted themselves there and gave the land 
the name of Mauritius, in honour of one of the Dutch 
stadtholders. No real settlement took place till 1642, 
when several Dutch families, with a military post and 
some slaves, took up a permanent abode on the eastern 
side, where stands the Mahebourg of to-day. They began 
the clearing of the forests and introduced the sugar¬ 
cane from Batavia. In 1712, however, the Dutch families 
emigrated to the Cape, where they hoped to find better 
means of livelihood. 
Soon there arrived some French Creoles, and in Sep¬ 
tember 1715 Captain Guillaume Dufresne appeared with 
his ship the ‘"Chasseur”, took official possession of the 
island and gave it the name of He de PTance. The 
colony did not begin to flourish till the year 1735, when 
Mahe de Labourdonnais came to the Mascarenes as 
governor. It did -not escape his practical eye that the 
spacious harbour on the west side was far more conve¬ 
nient for trade than the roadsteads of the island of 
Bourbon, lying, as they do, at the mercy of all the winds. 
In the first years of his administration he brought 
about the transference of some 2000 Creole settlers 
and negroes, and expended public money in favour of 
the He de France, thus slighting Bourbon and bringing 
down upon himself much hatred and even calumny. 
The centre of gravity of the sister colonies was soon 
shifted to the He de France, and Reunion had to take 
second rank. 
At the beginning of this century this possession, then 
