"After the passage of the act abolishing slavery, an arrangement was sanctioned by the Colonial Government, for the introduction of a great number of Indian labourers into the colony. They were engaged at five rupees, equal to ten shillings, a month, for five years, with also one pound of rice, a quarter of a pound of dhall, or grain, a kind of pulse, and one ounce of butter, of ghee, daily. But for every day they were absent from their work they were to return two days to their masters, who retained one rupee per month, to pay an advance made of six months' wages, and to defray the expense of their passage. If these men came into Port Louis to complain of their masters, they were lodged in the Bagne prison, till their masters were summoned. The masters had a great advantage before the magistrates over their servants: the latter being foreigners, but few of them could speak French, and they had no one to assist them in pleading their cause. They universally represented themselves as having been deceived with respect to the kind of labour to be exacted from them. But perhaps the greatest evil attendant on their introduction into the Mauritius was the small proportion of females imported with them, only about two hundred being brought with upward of ten thousand men. It was evident that unless the system of employing them were closely watched, there was a danger that it might ultimately grow into another species of slavery."[113] We see thus that while the females of India are deprived of all power to employ themselves in the lighter labour of manufacture, the men are forced to emigrate, leaving behind their wives and daughters, to support themselves as best they may. The same author furnishes an account of the Indian convicts that had been transported to the island, as follows:-- "Among the Indian convicts working on the road, we noticed one wearing chains; several had a slight single ring round the ankle. They are lodged in huts with flat roofs, or in other inferior dwellings, near the road. There are about seven hundred of them in the island. What renders them peculiarly objects of sympathy is, that they were sent here for life, and no hope of any remission of sentence is held out to them for good conduct. Their's is a hopeless bondage; and though it is said by some that they are not hard worked, yet they are generally, perhaps constantly, breaking stones and mending the road, and in a tropical sun. There are among them persons who were so young when transported that, in their offences, they could only be looked on as the dupes of those that were older; and many of them bear good characters."[114] At the date to which these passages refer there was a dreadful famine in India; but, "during the prevalence of this famine," as we are told,--