“It is a land of extraordinary quarantines.  They quarantine a ship for anything or for nothing; quarantine her for 20 and even 30 days.  They once quarantined a ship because her captain had had the smallpox when he was a boy.  That and because he was English.

“The population is very small; small to insignificance.  The majority is East Indian; then mongrels; then negroes (descendants of the slaves of the French times); then French; then English.  There was an American, but he is dead or mislaid.  The mongrels are the result of all kinds of mixtures; black and white, mulatto and white, quadroon and white, octoroon and white.  And so there is every shade of complexion; ebony, old mahogany, horsechestnut, sorrel, molasses-candy, clouded amber, clear amber, old-ivory white, new-ivory white, fish-belly white—­this latter the leprous complexion frequent with the Anglo-Saxon long resident in tropical climates.

“You wouldn’t expect a person to be proud of being a Mauritian, now would you?  But it is so.  The most of them have never been out of the island, and haven’t read much or studied much, and they think the world consists of three principal countries—­Judaea, France, and Mauritius; so they are very proud of belonging to one of the three grand divisions of the globe.  They think that Russia and Germany are in England, and that England does not amount to much.  They have heard vaguely about the United States and the equator, but they think both of them are monarchies.  They think Mount Peter Botte is the highest mountain in the world, and if you show one of them a picture of Milan Cathedral he will swell up with satisfaction and say that the idea of that jungle of spires was stolen from the forest of peg-tops and toothpicks that makes the roofs of Curepipe look so fine and prickly.

“There is not much trade in books.  The newspapers educate and entertain the people.  Mainly the latter.  They have two pages of large-print reading-matter-one of them English, the other French.  The English page is a translation of the French one.  The typography is super-extra primitive—­in this quality it has not its equal anywhere.  There is no proof-reader now; he is dead.

“Where do they get matter to fill up a page in this little island lost in the wastes of the Indian Ocean?  Oh, Madagascar.  They discuss Madagascar and France.  That is the bulk.  Then they chock up the rest with advice to the Government.  Also, slurs upon the English administration.  The papers are all owned and edited by creoles—­French.

“The language of the country is French.  Everybody speaks it—­has to.  You have to know French particularly mongrel French, the patois spoken by Tom, Dick, and Harry of the multiform complexions—­or you can’t get along.

“This was a flourishing country in former days,