MAURITIUS.*
AMERICAN literature of travel is beating ours completely. Here is another work, exhaustive in its character, and profound without being dull in its treatment, written by an American gentleman, who possesses every mental requisite for the task of investigating a little known country ; taste, science, industry, and a practical knowledge of how to turn natural resources to account, which gives the book a speculative value, in additionto its actual interest. Consul Pike has done his work with exemplary thoroughness, • Sub-Tropical Rambles in the Land of the Aphanapteryx: Personal Erperienees, Admitures, and Wanderings in and around the Island of Maiiritius. By Nicholas Pike. London: Sampson Low and Co.
leaving us nothing to complain of, except the absence of the Aphanapteryx. The huge extinct bird looks most dignified and imposing on the title-page, but he is reserved for the future. We have the" Land" in this volume, in an ensuing one we shall have the Aphanapteryx.
The author records his impressions of travel with a pleasant and impartial minuteness. He is keenly alive to the variety and beauty of nature, and also to the practical side of every scene, so that his shrewd observations upon social points, commercial interests, and national character, come in with a quaint simplicity and downrightness in the midst of his unaffectedly picturesque descriptions of landscape, natural productions, and bird and beast life. He is evidently very fond of the animal world, his obser- vations are so close, and little bits of distinctive description turn up constantly which show he individualises the creatures he sees; for instance, when he describes the " Passaic) Public° " at Rio, he tells us about two manittas, or sea cows, animals rarely seen in confinement, but who "seem quite happy" in the stream which winds through the garden, " are on the best terms with their feathered comrades, and follow the black swans about every- where." The introductory chapters devoted to Rio, the forests, the Corcorada, Tristan d'Acunha, and Cape Town are exceedingly pleasant, and give the reader a strong interest in the author's many- sided mind and the vigorous intensity of character which lends the book a charm apart from its scientific and narrative value. We see the man, as well as what the man saw, and we never tire of him, though he is rather diffuse as well as profuse, and though he does not arrange his materials very skilfully.
When Mr. Pike was appointed as Consul to Mauritius, he sought in vain for information respecting the island ; but with the exception of Baron Grant's book, a hundred years old, and a few magazine articles, he found none. Then he resolved to note everything he saw, and to gain information in every possible quarter relative to " the gem of the ocean " ! To the history of Mauritius, from the year 1505, when it was discovered and taken possession of by the Portuguese, Mr. Pike devotes a considerable space. It is a dreary history enough, but conscientiously written, and its vicissitudes are rendered interesting by the vivid way in which the author deals with the organisation introduced by Labourdon- nais, under the French occupation. The energetic Governor has all his sympathies. The later history of the island, since it has become an English colony—which, he thinks, might be made "one of the most fertile and productive" of our possessions—is told with surprising detail. The author has indeed studied his subject closely, and mastered statistics which would have turned away many a writer of such power of imagination and sentiment as he possesses. The more personal portion of the book is that which we follow with the greatest interest, especially the author's explorations in the geological sense, when he explains the " upheaval" of the island by the force of a tremendous submarine volcano :—
"The whole interior of Mauritius was one vast crater, and the remains of the walls which encircled it, as it emerged from the ocean, now water-worn and degraded, forming gentle slopes, and filling the valley with debris, are still evident to the eye of a geolo-
gist. The mountain peaks were the first to rise out of the deep, and the enormous fissures made by rivers of liquid fire forcing their way to the ocean, leaving behind large plains of lava, are visible in all parts of the island. At Flacq the flow of the lava currents is distinctly seen, and these streams I have traced to the grand crater in the central districts. Near Turtle Bay, there are many large boulders,-twenty feet above the level of the sea, which present the appearance of having been for a length of time submerged. Numer- ous coral fill their cavities, built there by the animals that inhabit the cells. These boulders are covered with a thick encrustation of lava, and in some instances are embedded in it. Between Mount Ory and the Corps de Garde Mountains, a stream of lava, many miles in width, flowed to the sea. Between the Corps de Garde and Rempart Moun- tains there is another break in the great wall, through which a current of molten matter discharged itself. After the great volcano became extinct, leaving high inward curved walls, a number of active vol- canoes appeared on the seaboard-side of the walls, in the opening occa- sioned by the subsidence of the great crater. Port Louis lies in one such crater, the Vallee des Pretres in another, and there are ten between that city and the Morne. Rampart Mountain forms the limit of a crater ten miles in diameter, with a good-sized adventitious one in the centre, just at the back of Tamarind Bay."
So Port Louis and the other places lie on the lid of the kettle ; and an " adventitious " crater suggests to us,—suppose anything were to set the kettle " on the boil " again ! But this is all over ; scientific people say " igneous action " is past in the dead immeasurable ages, and the scene of its pheno- mena is clothed with wonderful, living beauty and fertility. The soil grows, in one word, everything ; the rarest, tiniest flowers are found in the vicinity of the grandest of giant trees ; and the loveliest spots in the island are garlanded with luxuriant creepers, and carpeted with magnificent ferns. The mountain peaks are, with few exceptions, accessible, and the author writes of them with enthusiasm ; also of the Tamarind and Chamarel Falls, and of the Grand Bassin, though the latter did not come up to his expecta- tions. Monster eels abound in the great lake, and indeed generally, one having been caught in Bapou Bay which measured twelve feet in length. What would not the Crystal Palace or the Brighton Aquarium give for an octopus which stretched himself out to ten feet across his horrid tentacles ! Mr. Pike forces us to believe in Victor Hugo,—on this occasion only. Though the still life of the island and its little volcanic neighbours occupies the greater share of the author's attention, he allots some space to the inhabitants, their manners, customs, and industries. The British planter has striven courageously against terrible drawbacks, chiefly of climate, into which Mr. Pike enters fully. He made several valuable scientific studies in meteorology, and gives us a chapter on cyclones, curious and interesting in itself, and character-
istic of the activity and thoroughness of his mind. He never lost an hour or missed an opportunity during his voyages or his residence. The terrible scourges of hurricane, drought, and fever form the reverse of the picture which Mr. Pike paints in such fair colours. He was in the island during the terrible mortality of 1867-8, and he describes the aspect of Port Louis in most affecting terms. All classes and races suffered alike, the European, the Malabar, and the Chinese communities were equally stricken. For months the death-rate in the city alone averaged nearly 200 per diem, and in consequence of the overcrowded state of the old cemeteries, land was purchased for a new burial-ground, in which thousands of the victims of the fearful plague lie buried in long rows, each grave slightly separated from its neighbour. "It was with difficulty the dead could find sepulture, for the living had scarcely strength enough to follow their nearest and dearest. By a subsequent hurricane the raised mounds were almost entirely levelled, and now it would be impos- sible to say whose were the relics of humanity covered by the bright red earth and long grass." The chapters devoted to the Chinese and Malabars are very interesting ; the author has inves- tigated their customs with his usual thoroughness. The book is admirably illustrated, we think by the author—whom we especially congratulate on the portrait of his dog, Quilp—and is deficient in one respect only, an index, which is particularly missed, because the arrangement is rather desultory. The glimpses which Mr. Pike affords us of the fauna and flora of the "gem of the ocean" are tantalising, but judicious. The forthcoming book to be devoted to them will be welcome.
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