They receive four pounds sterling per month, and live in barracks resembling those of the soldiery; those who are married are allowed to live where they please. Their uniform is duck trowsers, a jacket of blue cloth reaching to the hips, and closing tightly with brass buttons, each displaying the crown, and a blue cap, the top of which is of white glazed oil skin--this cap is also surmounted with a crown; in the hand, day and night, is carried a baton, beautifully ornamented with Chinese characters. We were much surprised to find in the police force a number of Americans who had deserted from whalers, and whom we had seen before in the eastern ports of the Indian Ocean; amongst these were several of the Elisha Dunbar’s crew. One of them, a Bostonian, had been promoted to be sergeant, and was living with a great, greasy, disgusting-looking squaw, as black as the ace of spades, thereby carrying out the doctrine of amalgamation to its fullest extent. None of the members of either of these bodies are allowed to go beyond the precincts of the city without a pass--the authorities being extremely fearful of desertion; and with reason, too, as, although these men are induced to enter by the prospect of easy times, (and they are easy, indeed, duty only being required of them for four hours out of the twenty-four, after which time they are at liberty to dress and act as citizens, only they are not permitted to engage in any other business,) yet their very inactivity disgusts them with their billets. Men, like sailors, who have been accustomed to a stirring, active life, ever on the alert to anticipate the storm king’s movements, cannot at once divest themselves of their sea-going habits; hence their uneasiness and determination to desert. When we left Mauritius, two of them, who had been part of the force for several months, were snugly stowed away aboard our ship, preferring life in a whaler’s forecastle, to ease and comfort ashore. The boatmen comprise two distinct classes: the white and the native. The whites are generally seamen, and in this avocation I saw manual labor performed by them only. The principal and most business-like of these aquatic carriers was a man who had fled the city of New Bedford for no less a crime than manslaughter, and thereby escaped punishment by the laws of his country; but being now doomed to perpetual exile from home and kindred, he could feelingly say, “Verily, the way of the transgressor is hard!”