few hours one of these terrible storms can destroy houses and plantations and undo the work of years. One of the worst of these, in recent years, struck the island in 1892; and here we see some of the damage done at Port Louis. The planter in 48 this beautiful island has truly many difficulties to contend with. It is possible that the growth of trade in Madagascar and on the neighbouring coasts of Africa may bring back a little of its past prosperity to Port Louis; but Mauritius can never regain the position which it enjoyed before the piercing of the Suez Canal. If we look at the map showing the depths of the Indian Ocean, (28) we notice that Mauritius, with the sister French island of Réunion, rests on a relatively shallow bank, raised above the ocean floor. Following this bank northwards for nearly a thousand miles, we come to a whole group of little islands which are connected by a similar bank with Madagascar. The most northerly of this group are the Seychelles. Another great bank runs southward from India with scores of islets on it. In the north are the Laccadives, close to the coast of India; in the middle are the Maldives; and in the far south, beyond the Equator, right out in the ocean, is the little Chagos Archipelago, including the coral island of Diego Garcia, where at one time there was a small coaling station used by vessels bound to Australia. All these islands are but the fragments of a sunken land-mass which at a very early period of the worlds history joined South Africa to India. They are widely separated if we look only at the surface of the sea, but really joined together if we look below.