Colonial memories

“The Star and the Key of the Indian Ocean” lay smiling before me on Easter Sunday, April 1878.

The little schooner in which I had come across from Natal had just dropped her anchor in the harbour of Port Louis after seventeen days of light and baffling winds. The tedium of that past time slipped quickly out of my mind, however, as the fast-growing daylight revealed the beauties of Mauritius, a little island which I had so often read of and yet so little expected ever to behold. The interest of the tragic tale of “Paul and Virginia” had riveted my wandering attention during the French reading-lessons of my youth, though I always secretly wondered why Virginia had been such a goose as to decline help from a sailor, apparently only because he was somewhat insufficiently clad. But I should not have dared to give utterance to this opinion, so prudish was the domestic atmosphere of those early days.

The first real interest I felt in Mauritius arose from the frequent mention of the little island as a health-resort, in some charming letters of Miss Eden’s published about five-and-twenty years ago, but written long before that date, when she was keeping house for her brother, Lord Auckland, then Governor-General of India. Miss Eden speaks of many friends as well as of Indian tourists (for “Paget, M.P.’s” existed apparently even in those distant times) having gone for change of air to “the Mauritius” and coming back quite strong and robust. She mentions one instance of a whole opera company, whose health gave way in Calcutta, and who made the excursion, returning in time for their next season with restored health, and she often longs in vain for such a change for her hard-worked brother.

But all this must have been many years before the first mysterious outbreak of fever which ravaged the place in 1867. I was assured that before that date the reputation of the pretty little island had stood very high as a sanatorium, but no doctor could give me any reason for the sudden appearance of this virulent fever. There were, of course, many theories, each of which had earnest supporters. Some said the great hurricane which had just before swept over the island brought the malaria on its wings. Others declared the déboisement which had been carried on to a devastating extent in order to increase the area available for sugar-cane planting was to blame; whilst a third faction put all the trouble down to the great influx of coolie immigrants introduced about that date to work in the cane-fields. Perhaps the truth lies in a blending of these three principal theories. Anyway, I felt it sad and hard that so really lovely an island should have such dark and trying days behind as well as before it.

But, after seventeen days of glaring lonely seas and dark monotonous nights, one is not apt to think of anything beyond the immediate “blessings of the land,” and I gazed with profound content on the chain of volcanic hills, down whose rugged sides many cascades tumbled their gleaming silver. Coral reefs, with white foam tossing over them, in spite of the calm sapphire sea on which we were gently floating into harbour, seemed spread all around us, and indeed I believe these récifs circle the whole island with a dangerous though protecting girdle. Sloping ground, covered with growth of differing greens, some showing the bluish hue of the sugar-cane, others the more vivid colouring of a coarse tall grass, led the eye gently down to the flowering trees and foliage round the clustering houses of Port Louis, whose steep high-pitched roofs looked so suggestive of tropic rains. Port Louis was once evidently a stately capital, and large handsome houses still remain. These have, however, nearly all been turned into offices or banks, and the fine large Government House, or Hôtel du Gouvernement, is always empty as to its numerous bedrooms. Hardly a white person sleeps with impunity in Port Louis, though all the business—official and private—is carried on there, and it contains many excellent shops.

You must climb up, however, some few miles by the steep little railway before you realise how really lovely the scenery of Mauritius can be. All in miniature, it is true, but very ambitious in character. Except for the glowing tints of the volcanic rocks and the tropic vegetation, one might be looking at a bit of Switzerland through the wrong end of a telescope; but nowhere else have I ever seen such tints as the bare mountain sides take at sunset. The tufa rocks glow like wet porphyry, and so magical are the hues that one half expects to see the grand recumbent figure of the old warrior of the Corps de Garde hill outlined against the purple sky, rise up and salute the island which once was his.

Mauritius is in many ways an object-lesson which is not without its significance just now. Here we have a little island thoroughly French in its history and people, and inhabited by many of the vieille roche who fled there in the Terror days. Battles between French and English by land and sea raged round its sunny shores in the first few years of the just-ended century. Dauntless attacks and valiant resistance have left heroic memories behind them. We took it by force majeure in 1811, but it was not until the great settling up at the Restoration in 1814 that the hatchet may be said to have been finally buried, and the two nationalities began to pull together comfortably. I was rather surprised to see how thoroughly French Mauritius still is in language and in characteristics; but the result is indeed satisfactory. I found it quite the most highly civilised of the colonies I then knew, and from the social point of view there was nothing left to be desired. The early class of French settler had evidently been of a much higher type than our own rough-and-ready colonist, and the refinement so introduced had influenced the whole place. Did I find any race-hatred, oppression, or heart-burnings? No, indeed; of all the dependencies of our Empire not one has come forward more generously or more splendidly with substantial offers of help than that little lonely isle, “the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean.” I venture to say, speaking from my experience of those days, that the King has no more loyal subjects than the Mauritians.

It may be that the trials and troubles we have all borne there side by side in the past half-century have knitted and bound us together. We have had hurricane, pestilence, and fire to contend with, besides the chronic hard times of the sugar industry. In these fast-following calamities French and English have stood shoulder to shoulder, and the only race or religious rivalry has been in good and noble deeds. In the Zulu War of 1881, when Sir Bartle Frere sent a ship down with despatches to my dear husband, then the Lieutenant-Governor of Mauritius, urgently asking for help to “hold the fort” until the English reinforcements could arrive, Mauritius sprang to her feet then as now, and gave willing and substantial help. Every soldier who was able to stand up started at twenty-four hours’ notice for Durban. The same day the mayor of Port Louis held a meeting, at which a volunteer corps of doctors and nurses was at once raised, with plenty of money to equip them, and they, as well as cooks and cows—both much needed—were on their way to Durban before another sun had set. It was indeed gratifying to hear afterwards that not only had our little military effort been of great service, but that the abundance of fresh milk supplied had helped many a case of dysentery among the garrison at Durban to turn the corner on the road to recovery.

Nothing can be much more beautiful than the view from the back verandah at “Réduit,” as the fine country Government House, built by the Chevalier de la Brillane for the Governors of Mauritius more than a century ago, is called. Before you spreads an expanse of English lawn only broken by clumps of gay foliaged shrubs or beds of flowers, and behind that again is the wooded edge of the steep ravine, where the mischievous “jackos” hide, who come up at night to play havoc with the sugar-canes on its opposite side. The only day of the week on which they ventured up was Sunday afternoon, when all the world was silent and sleepy.

It used to be my delight to watch from an upper bedroom window the stealthy appearance of the old sentinel monkeys, who first peered cautiously up and evidently reconnoitred the ground thoroughly. After a few moments of careful scouting a sort of chirrup would be heard, which seemed the signal for the rest of the colony to scramble tumultuously up the bank. Such games as then started among the young ones, such antics and tumblings and rompings! But all the time the sentinels never relaxed their vigilance. They spread like a cordon round the gambolling young ones, and kept turning their horribly wise human-looking heads from side to side incessantly, only picking and chewing a blade of grass now and then. The mothers seemed to keep together, and doubtless gossiped; but let my old and perfectly harmless Skye terrier toddle round the corner of the verandah, and each female would dart into the group of playing monkeys, seize her property by its nearest leg, toss it over her shoulder, and quicker than the eye could follow she would have disappeared down the ravine. The sentinels had uttered their warning cry directly, but they always remained until the very last, and retreated in good order; though there was no cause for alarm, as “Boxer’s” thoughts were fixed on the peacocks—apt to trespass at those silent and unguarded hours—and not on the monkeys at all!

This is a sad digression, but yet it has not led us far from that halcyon scene, which is so often before the eyes of my memory. The beautiful changing hues of the Indian Ocean binds the horizon in this and every other extensive island view, but between us and it there arises in the distance a very forest of tall green masts, the spikes of countless aloe blossoms. I have heard Mauritius described as “an island with a barque always to windward,” and there is much truth in the saying; though one could easily mistake the glancing wing of a huge seagull or the long white floating tail-feathers of the “boatswain bird” for the shimmer of a distant sail.

I fear it is a very prosaic confession to make, but one fact which added considerably to my comfort in Mauritius was the excellence of the cook of that day. I hear that education and Board schools have now improved him off the face of the island, but he used to be a very clever mixture of the best of French and Indian cookery traditions. The food supply was poor. We got our beef from Madagascar, and our mutton came from Aden. We found it answer to import half-a-dozen little sheep at a time; they cost about £1 apiece for purchase and carriage, but could be allowed only a month’s run in the beautiful park of five hundred acres which surrounded Réduit. More than that made them ill, so rich and luscious was the grass; for sheep, like human beings, seem to need a good deal of exercise, and, as Abernethy advised the rich gourmet to do, ought to “live on a shilling a day and earn it.”

These same sheep, however, or rather one of the servants, gave me one of the worst frights of my life. We were at luncheon one day when an under servant, who never appeared in the dining-room, rushed in calling out, “Oh, Excellence, quel malheur!” then he lapsed into Hindustani mixed with patois, declaring there had been a terrible railway accident and that all were injured and two killed outright! As this same line, which had a private station in the Park about a mile away, constantly brought us up friends at that hour, I nearly fainted with horror; and yet I remember how angry, though relieved, I felt when the same agitated individual wailed out, “and they were all so fat!” One is apt to be indignant at having been tricked into emotion before one is grateful for the relief to one’s mind.

Almost the first thing which struck me in Mauritius was the absence of cows as well as sheep. I never saw a cow grazing, and yet there seemed plenty of good milk, and even a pallid pat of fresh butter appeared at breakfast. But there were really plenty of cows, only the coolies kept them in their houses, to the despair of the sanitary inspectors, who insisted on proper cowsheds being built at an orthodox distance from the little case or native house, only to find that the family moved down and lived with the cow as before. One year there was an outbreak of pleuro-pneumonia among the poor cows, and I heard many pathetic stories of the despair of the owners when sentence of death had to be pronounced in the infected districts against their beloved cows. It was impossible to make the coolies understand that this was a precautionary measure, and the large and liberal compensation which they received seemed to bring no consolation whatever with it. I was assured that in many instances the owner of the doomed animal would fling himself at the inspector’s feet, beseeching him to spare the life of the cow, and to kill him (the coolie) instead!

The roads in Mauritius were admirably kept, but very hard and very hilly. The big horse, usually imported from Australia, soon knocked his legs to pieces if much used up and down these hills; but an excellent class of hardy, handsome, little pony came to us from Pégou and other parts of Burma, as well as from Timor and Java. These animals were very expensive to buy, but excellent for work, and I should think would have made splendid polo ponies; but polo did not seem to be much played in Mauritius at that date.

Since my day another frightful hurricane has devastated the poor little island, but I heard many stories of former ones. During the summer season—that is, from about November until March or April—the local Meteorological Office keeps a sharp eye on the barometer, and every arrangement is cut and dry, ready to be acted upon at a moment’s warning, for a coup de vent is a rapid traveller and does not dawdle on its way.

We had many false alarms during my stay, for it sometimes happens that the hurrying winds are diverted from the track they started on, and so we escaped, quitte pour la peur. When the first warning gun fired all the ships in harbour began to get ready to go outside, for the greatest mischief done in the big hurricane of 1868 was from the crowded vessels in the comparatively small harbour of Port Louis grinding against each other; to say nothing of those ships which, as Kipling sings, were

At the second signal gun, which meant that the force of the wind was increasing and travelling towards us, the ships got themselves out of harbour, and every business man who lived in the country betook himself to the railway station, as after the third gun, which might be heard within even half-an-hour, the trains would cease to run. I chanced to be returning from Port Louis on one of these occasions, and certainly the railway station presented a curious sight. All my acquaintances seemed to be there, hurrying home with anxious and pre-occupied faces. Each man grasped a ham firmly in one hand and his despatch-box in the other, whilst his pion, or messenger, was following, closely laden with baskets of bread and groceries, and attended by coolies with live fowls and bottles of lamp oil! My own head servant, “Monsieur Jorge,” always made the least sign of a “blow” an excuse for demanding sundry extra rupees in hand for carriole money, and started directly in one of these queer little vehicles for a round of marketing in the neighbourhood.

At the first gun heard at Réduit an army of gardeners used to set to work to move the hundreds of large plants out of the verandahs into a big empty room close by. They were followed by the house-carpenter and his mates, armed with enormous iron wedges and sledge-hammers. These worthies proceeded to close the great clumsy hurricane shutters, which so spoil the outer effect of all Mauritian houses, and besides putting the heavy iron bars in their places, wedged them firmly down. It really looked as if the house was being prepared for a siege. Happily, my own experience did not extend beyond a couple of days of this state of affairs, nor was any storm I assisted at dignified by the name of a hurricane, but I could form from these little experiences only too good an idea of what the real thing must be like. Personally, my greatest inconvenience arose from the pervading smell of the lamps, which were, of course, burning all day as well as all night, and from our never being able to get rid of the smell of food. One was so accustomed to the fresh-air life, with doors and windows always open, that these odours were very trying.

But the noise is, I think, what is least understood. Even in a “blow” it is truly deafening, and never ceases for an instant. At Réduit there was a long well-defended corridor upstairs, and I thought I would try and walk along its length. Not a breath of wind really got in, or the roof would soon have been whisked off the house; but although I flatter myself I am tolerably brave, I could not walk down that corridor! Every yard or so a resounding blow, as if from a cannon-ball, would come thundering against the outer side, whilst the noise of many waters descending in solid sheets on the roof, and the screams of the shrieking, whistling winds outside, were literally deafening. It was impossible to believe that any structure made by human hands could stand; and yet that was not a hurricane! Never shall I forget my last outdoor glimpse, which I was invited to take just before the big hall-door on the leeward side was finally shut and barricaded. I could not have believed that the sky could be of such an inky blackness, except at one corner, where a triangle of the curtain of darkness, with sharply defined outlines, had apparently just been turned back to show the deep blood-red colouring behind. It was awful beyond all words to describe; but “Monsieur Jorge,” who held the door open for me, said: “Dat not real bad sky.” He seemed hard to please, I thought.

However, a couple of days’ imprisonment was all we suffered that time, and the instant the gale dropped, at sunrise on the second day, the rain ceased and the sun shone out. It was a curious scene the rapidly-opened shutters revealed. Every leaf was stripped off the trees, which were bare as mid-winter. A few of the smaller ones had been uprooted bodily and whisked away down the ravine. Some were found later literally standing on their heads a good way off. It was quite a new idea to me that roots could be snowy white, but they had been so completely washed bare of soil by the down-pouring rain that they were absolutely clean and white. A few hours later I was taken for a drive round some neighbouring cane-fields. Of course, the road was like the bed of a mountain torrent, and how the pony managed to steer himself and the gig among the boulders must ever remain a mystery. Already over three hundred Malagashes (coolies) were at work covering up the exposed roots of the canes, for each plant stood in a large hole partly filled with water, which was rapidly draining away. The force of the wind seemed to have whirled the cane round and round until it stood, quite bare of its crown of waving leaves, in the middle of a hole. Had the sun reached these exposed roots nothing could have saved the plant.

But my memories must not be all meteorological. Rather let me return in thought to the merry and happy intercourse with pleasant friends, of which so many hours stand brightly out. In all the colonies I know hospitality is one of the cardinal virtues, and nowhere more so than in pretty little Mauritius. I heard many lamentations that in these altered times the gracious will far outran the restricted possibilities, but still there used to be pleasant dances, without end and number, most amusing cameron-fishing déjeuners, and chasses au cerf in the winter months. It so chanced that we had a guest hailing from Exmoor, who was bidden to one of these popular forms of le sport, and never shall I forget his horror at finding he was required to carry a gun and shoot a stag if he could! No fox-hunter invited to assist at a battue of foxes in the Midlands could have been more shocked and disgusted, and it was quite in vain that we cited Scotch deer-stalking in excuse. This was not deer-stalking he vowed, for you sat on a camp-stool in a thick forest and took pot shots at the poor animals as they were driven past certain spots! An excellent luncheon was served in the middle of the chasse, so it was always a favourite diversion, but the hospitable owner of one of the best deer districts told me that he had to inflict fines on these sportsmen who only wounded the poor deer. Some very handsome “heads” could be got among them however. But, indeed, I am constrained to say that the idea of sport, as we understand it, seemed rather undeveloped in that fairy island, and it was difficult to keep one’s countenance when, in answer to the Governor’s inquiry as to the success of a morning among the cane-fields in pursuit of red-legged partridges and quail, the sportsman rose in his place, bowed low, and answered, “Excéllence, j’ai tué un, mais j’ai blessé deux.”

The annual race-meeting, held on the Champ-de-Mars outside Port Louis, was remarkable for the crowds of coolies it attracted from all parts of the island. The horses were the least important or interesting part of the performance, and the betting on even the principal races appeared to be confined to a few Arab merchants, who certainly did not look at all “horsey” in their gay and flowing robes. It so chanced that I was being driven home very late the night before the third principal day of one of these race-meetings, and I thought the shuffling, sheeted crowds with which the roads were thronged by far the most curious and suggestive part of the proceedings. No cemetery giving up its silent sleepers could have furnished a more ghostly crew. Young and old, babes astride on their mothers’ hips, older children carried by their fathers, aged men and girls in their shrouding veils, all gliding, barefooted, in absolute silence along the dusty roads in such a dense and never-ending crowd that my carriage could only move, and that with difficulty, at a foot’s pace. It was a lovely starlight, cold night, and I had the hood of the victoria lowered so as to better take in the weird scene, to which the dangling cooking-pots carried by all, added a grotesque touch. At various parts of the road the wily Chinaman had hastily set up a little booth of palm branches, from which he dispensed refreshments of sorts doubtless at a high price. These moving masses were perfectly orderly, nor did they seem to require any restraining or even guiding force.

Next day I naturally looked out from my beautiful rose-wreathed stand on the Champ-de-Mars for these white-clad crowds, and there they were, sure enough, covering the slopes of the encircling natural amphitheatre, but to my astonishment, though it was barely noon and the principal race was yet to be run, the massed mob was rapidly dispersing. As a matter of fact, none of these fifty thousand coolie spectators cared in the least about the races. That final Saturday of the race week had come to be regarded as a public holiday. Work was suspended at the sugar estates all over the Island, and the race meeting was just an occasion on which all expected to meet their friends. Every coolie had washed his garment to a snowy whiteness, and this, taken in conjunction with the vivid touches of colour dear to the Oriental eye, furnished by the babies’ little scarlet caps and the red edging of the women’s veils, made up an enchanting picture set against the vivid green and glowing blue of earth and sky.

It was always great fun when the flagship of the East Indian squadron paid us an all too brief visit; and, indeed, the arrival of any man-of-war used to be made an excuse for a little extra gaiety. It was my special delight to get the midshipmen to come in batches and stay at Réduit, although I often found myself at my wits’ end to provide them with game to shoot at, for that was what their hearts were most fixed on. They all brought up weird and obsolete fowling-pieces, which the moment they had finished breakfast they wanted to go and let off in the park. What fun those boys were, and what dears! One chubby youth, being questioned as to whether midshipmen were permitted to marry, answered, “No, but sometimes there was a candlestick marriage.”

“A what?”

“A candlestick marriage, sir,—not allowed, you know.”

“Clandestine” was the proper word, but the mistake had great success as a joke.

My young soldier guests were quite as gallant and susceptible to the charms of the bright eyes and pretty, gentle manners of my pet French girls, but I often felt disconcerted to find that at my numerous bals privés there was a difficulty in getting them to dance with each other, because the red-coated youths would not or could not speak one word of French, whereas that difficulty never seemed to weigh with the middy for a moment.

I dare say things are now different, and that improved mail and cable services have changed the loneliness of my day, when there was no cable beyond Aden and only a mail steamer once a month. I always felt as though we ourselves were on a ship anchored in the midst of a lonely ocean, and that once in four weeks another ship sped past us, casting on board mail bags and cablegrams. But even as we stood with stretched-out hands, craving for more news or more details of what news was flung to us, the passing steamer had sunk below the horizon, and we were left to possess our souls in what patience we might until the next mail day came round.

The consequence of this comparative isolation was that few visitors came our way, so that it aroused quite a little excitement in our small community to hear that the Government of Madagascar—a curious mixture in that day of power vested in the hands of a Queen, who was always expected to marry her prime minister—intended to send three delegates to Europe viâ Mauritius to protest against the proposed French protectorate. These delegates were dignified by the name of Ambassadors, and their mission was to seek the intervention of Great Britain and other European powers. We were instructed to receive them with all official courtesy, including salutes from big guns and guards of honour and so forth; the worst of all this ceremonial being that the idea became firmly impressed on their minds that England was quite prepared to take up their quarrel, or, at least, to remonstrate with France. So it was a very happy and hopeful trio of “Ambassadors” who presented themselves, with a number of attendants, including several interpreters, at Réduit one evening to go through the ordeal of a formal banquet.

I confess to a certain amount of curiosity when I heard that the ambassadors were not only as black as jet, but they were quite unused to the forms of society, and that, in fact, their only experience of the ways of English folk was gathered from Wesleyan missionaries near their chief towns. Indeed, the only English entertainment they had ever seen was a school-feast to little native children, at which they had been onlookers, and which, as one of the interpreters informed me, had seemed to them a strange and puzzling performance.

However, when the dinner-hour arrived I beheld three fine, dignified and stately gentlemen, quite as black nevertheless as their faultless evening dress, the only false note being a massive gold watch chain, from which dangled rather an aggressive bunch of lockets and other ornaments, and with which each ambassador was decorated. Beautiful bows were exchanged, and nothing could be more correct than the fashion in which the senior dignitary offered me his arm. With an interpreter on my left hand we got on famously all through dinner, with absolutely no mistakes in essentials, though I often observed some anxiety in the interpreter’s face. I suppose he felt responsible for their manners. But the false hopes were there all the time, and I felt myself to be quite a cruel monster when I had to whisper to the interpreter to explain to his black Excellency, that it was only the usual custom for the Governor to propose after the toast of our own Queen the health of the sovereign of any foreign guests at table. Poor ambassadors! they thought this commonplace courtesy meant a public announcement of England’s intention of ranging herself on their side of the question at issue. One did not realise at the time what a deadly importance they attached to all these trifles, nor would we perhaps have wondered at it so much had we known that they felt their own lives depended on the success of the mission. They considered it a most hopeful sign when I asked them after dinner to write their names in my little birthday-book; and most astonishing names they were, each name occupying three lines, but all apparently forming one syllable! They seemed quite familiar with a pen, and each letter was beautifully formed, only they were all joined together.

There is an excellent and most comfortable rule in the Colonial Service which forbids a Governor to receive any gifts. I suppose it would also apply to a Governor’s wife if the said gifts were of any intrinsic value; but I did not see my way to wounding the feelings of my poor guests that evening by sheltering myself behind official etiquette when they tendered a hideous little glass biscuit-box and a sort of native quilt (spoiled by vivid aniline dyes) for my acceptance. Yet I had terrible misgivings all the time that they thought they were securing my interest and co-operation in their affairs, and I even edged in a word or two in my thanks through the interpreter to imply that acceptance of their gifts must be taken “without prejudice.” I do not believe, however, that he had the heart to pass my remark on, for the ambassadors beamed joyously on me and the rest of the company all the time.

I heard afterwards that they had made desperate efforts at all the European Courts, beginning with that of St. James’s to secure intervention, and that it was impossible to make them understand that no one was able or willing to take up their quarrel. So in the fulness of time, their money being all spent, they had to return to their own land, where failure meant death, which I believe they welcomed rather than the new order of things.