MAURITIUS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3399, 28 July 1932, Page 2

MAURITIUS

ISLAND OF LONG LIFE. AN INTERESTING HISTORY. The little island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean —which now, after a long silence, breaks modestly into the news as a place which can boast many very aged men—has gone under several names. In 1598 the Dutch christened it Mauritius after Count Maurice of Nassau; later agents of the French East India Company renamed it He de France; and finally, when England acquired it as one of the spoils of the Napoleonic wars, its present Dutch name was restored. By that time, however, Mauritius had become, as it is to-day, largely French in manners, customs, and language. It was the scene of the widely read story of "Paul and Virginia." It is only in recent years, at most, that Mauritius has become a place conducive to long life. During the 19th century it gained notoriety for the number of its calamities. Cholera was succeeded in turn by malaria, a costly hurricane in 1892, a huge fire in 1893, and epidemics of smallpox and plague. So many improvements have been made during the present century, however, that a recent Blue Book of the island lists a number of very aged pensioners, including one who retired in 1887 as "old and infirm" and is still drawing his pension today at the age of 107. The census of 1921 listed four women who confessed ta being "over 120," one man who placed his age at 117, and twenty-seven men and thirty-seven women who said they had passed the century mark. The total non-Indian population of the island at that time was 110,9G1, and of these 2361 were 70 and over. j