In 1769 an experiment station was established with a view to furnishing planters with the knowledge of which they were so sorely in need. Agricultural development, however, was not carried forward to any great extent while Mauritius remained under French rule. State interference with the planters had an unfortunate effect, and besides this the greater number of the inhabitants looked upon the colony not as a permanent home, but as a means to acquire sufficient money to enable them to return to France and live there in comfort. The authorities deemed it essential that the colony should produce the greater part of its foodstuffs, while the planter on his side was anxious to grow crops that he believed would give him the best results in money; for example, sugar, cotton, coffee, indigo and spices. In 1776 there were three small sugar factories on the island, and in 1789 the production of sugar was 300 tons. Disaster overtook the industry, owing to conditions that made the cost of the mills abnormally great and the extravagance with which they were operated. In consequence many of those who built factories were ruined. Shortly after the British occupation there was a change for the better. In 1816 the production of sugar was 4430 tons, and from that time forward the industry made continuous and steady progress. The planters were encouraged and, as far as could be, helped in their operations, while the policy of the government developed the colony’s resources and established for it trade relations on a firm basis with other countries. The method of extraction of sugar from the cane employed at the beginning of the last century was primitive indeed. The apparatus consisted of a solid, heavy table made of thick planks carefully finished and having a perfectly smooth top. It was made in the shape of a parallelogram, with a groove or gutter on each of its four sides and an opening in the middle of each end gutter. Upon this table was a huge, heavy cylinder of hard wood, slightly longer than the width of the table. Three, four, or five stalks of cane were placed lengthwise on the table and submitted to pressure by rolling the cylinder over them from one end to the other and back again. The juice thus expressed from the cane ran into the gutters at the sides and ends and through the holes into two tubs placed to receive it. The cane stalks were then removed, put in the sun to dry and afterward used as fuel in the boiling of the sugar juice. This operation was repeated until a sufficient quantity of juice was obtained.