The houses are very pretty, however, in spite of their being all doorway. The polished floors--unhappily, mine are painted _red_, which is a great sorrow to me--the large rooms, with nice furniture and a wealth of flowers, give a look of great comfort and elegance to the interior. The wide, low verandas are shaded on the sunny side by screens or blinds of ratan painted green, and from the ceiling dangle baskets, large baskets, filled with every imaginable variety of fern. I never saw anything like the beauty of the foliage. The _leaves_ of the plants would give color and variety enough without the flowers, and they too are in profusion. Every house stands in its own grounds, and I think I may say that every house has a beautiful shrubbery and garden attached to it. Of course, with all this warm rain constantly falling, the pruning-knife is as much needed as the spade, but the natives make excellent and clever gardeners, and every place is well and neatly kept. Mine is the only overgrown and yet empty garden I have seen, but, all the same, I have more flowers in my drawing-room than any one else, for all my neighbors take compassion on me and send me baskets full of the loveliest roses every morning. Then it is only necessary to send old Bonhomme, the gardener, a little way down the steep side of the ravine to pick as much maiden-hair or other delicate ferns as would stock the market at Covent Garden for a week. If it were not for everybody being in such a terror about their health, this lonely little island would be a very charming place. But ever since _the_ fever a feeling of sanitary distrust seems to have sprung up among the inhabitants, which strikes a newcomer very vividly. The European inhabitants _look_ very well, and the ladies and children are far more blooming--though I acknowledge it is a delicate bloom--than any one I saw in Natal. Still, you can detect that the question of health is uppermost in the public mind. If a house is spoken of, its only recommendation need be that it is healthy. There is very little society at night, because night air is considered dangerous: even the chief attraction of lawn-tennis, the universal game here, is that "it is so healthy." And to see the way the gentlemen wrap up after it in coats which seem to have been made for arctic wear! Of course they are quite right to be careful, and it is a comfort to know that with proper care and the precautions taught by experience there is no reason why, under the blessing of God, a European should not enjoy as good health in Mauritius as in other places with a better reputation. There are nearly always cases of fever in Port Louis, and three or four deaths a day from it; but then the native white and creole population is very large, and the proportion is not so alarming.