“MY DEAR ——: In my letter to you from Mauritius, which I suppose you will have long ago received, you saw that I was much disappointed by not getting on shore through the quarantine regulations, which are very strictly carried out. Round about Mauritius there are several islands, viz., Flat Island, where a quarantine station is, Round Island, where a light-house stands 365 feet above the level of the sea, behind these Sugar Loaf Island, which rises with precipitous cliffs, and is merely a bare rock, also the Islôt Gabriel. In sailing without steam, vessels come to Port Louis at the windward side (east) of the island, and sail in a kind of channel between these islands and the mainland, as I will call it. We sighted the south corner of Mauritius about 4 P. M., but kept off until daybreak next morning (Saturday) when we made for our anchorage at the Bell buoy about three-quarters of a mile from the shore. The coasting round the island which we made was very pleasant. It was a beautiful sunshiny morning, with a gentle eight knots an hour breeze. We passed the Gunner’s Quoin, near which the English landed when they took the island from the French, Nov. 29th, 1810, and very close to it we went, within a stone’s throw. It is a large bluff which juts out with perpendicular cliffs all around. The water is deep enough, but it would be a frightful place to run against in the night. After rounding this headland we stood closer in, and got pretty views of the island, and the district of Pamplemouse, the background being closed in by the lofty mountains, of which the Pieter Botte forms one of the principal features, towering 2,676 feet above the sea like a Titanic obelisk. We could see the green fields where ‘de sugar cane grows,’ the mills with their smoky chimneys, the houses of the planters, with their steep thatched roofs, beautiful verandahs and grassy lawns, well cut and kept, running down in some places to the beach. As I gazed I pictured to myself the poor groaning coolies, doomed to sweat in the mills and to toil painfully in the fields; yet this even was a far easier task than to conceive how the ‘Reaper, whose name is Death,’ who during the last few years has been stalking through this island,[17] could ever have used his sickle so keenly in such a pleasant place. We were soon at Port Louis, passing by a barque from Newcastle, N. S. W., and anchored just opposite a fort bristling with guns, over which the Union Jack, ‘The flag that’s braved a thousand years, the battle and the breeze,’ was proudly flying.