o took possession of it somewhere about 1811. Still, it
does not seem to have been of much use to them, for the French inhabitants
naturally made difficulties and declined to take the oath of allegiance;
so that it was not until the great settling-day--or rather year--of 1814,
when Louis XVIII. "came to his own again" and definitively ceded Mauritius
to the British, that we began to set to work, aided by the inhabitants
with right good-will, to develop and make the most of its enormous natural
resources.

I really believe Mauritius stands alone in the whole world for variety of
scenery, of climate and of productions within the smallest imaginable
space. It might be a continent looked at through reversed opera-glasses
for the ambitious scale of its mountains, its ravines and its waterfalls.
When once you leave the plains behind--it is all on such a toy scale that
you do this in half an hour--you breathe mountain-air and look down deep
gorges and cross wide, rushing rivers. Of course the sea is part of every
view. If it is lost sight of for five minutes, there is nothing to do but
go on a few yards and turn a corner to see it again, stretching wide and
blue and beautiful out to the horizon. As for the length and breadth of
the island representing its area, the idea is wildly wrong. The acreage is
enormous in proportion to this same illusory length and breadth, which
very soon fades out of the newcomer's mind. One confusing effect of the
hilly nature of the ground is that one dwarfs the relative length of
distances, and gets to talk of five miles as a long way off. At first I
used to say--rather impertinently, I confess--"Surely nothing can be very
far away here!" but I have learned better already in this short month, and
recognize that even three miles constitute something of a drive. And the
chances are--nay, the certainty is--that three miles in any direction will
show you a greater variety of beautiful scenery than the same distance
over any other part of the habitable globe. The only expression I can find
to describe Mauritius to myself is one I used to hear my grandmother use
in speaking of a pretty girl who chanced to be rather _petite_. "She is a
pocket Venus," the old lady would say; and so I find myself calling L'Ile
Maurice a pocket Venus among islets.

This is the beginning of the cool season, which lasts till November; and
really the climate just now is very delightful. A little too windy,
perhaps, for my indi