HOME OF THE DODO.

North Otago Times, 22 May 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

HOME OF THE DODO.

A BEMAKKABLE MUTISII COLONY. Mauritius is a Uritish African possession with a Hutch name where Asiatic settlers predominate and arc governed by Englishmen administering French laws. Hut it is a mistake to imagine dial Hie island lias in consequence become as much a back number as the Podo which was once its most famous production. It is, on the contrary, amongst th? most advanced of the Crown Colonies, as well as n ii outstanding example of the Anglo-Savon genius for welding discordant elements into a loyal community, and maintaining that loyalty through dilliculty and disaster.

I'icture Surrey sol down in the Indian Ocean, due west of Madagascar, and about 2,000 miles from the African mainland, and you will have tonic idea of the size mid shape of Mauritius ; its area being almost identical with that of Ihe English county, and its outline very much the same. Port Louis, the island capital, is about where Kingston .stands in Surrey.

Almost every voyager, who approaches Mauritius remarks how welcome the sight of it is owning to the refreshing green of the sugar plantations, with which its plains arc now covered almost from end to end. It is much loss frequently observed that the island contributes to the safety of innumerable ships that never see it, to the regulation of agriculture in Egypt a nd India, and oven to the avoidance of danger as far afield as Japan, 'these things are due to Ihe development of the Uoyal Alfred Observatory, whose foundation-stone was laid by the laic Dale of Edinburgh when he visited Mauritius nearly forty years ago. Since then it has been connected by cable with the outer world, and from it systematic reports are. sent of cyclones likely to affect shipping-, of weather appearances forerunning Nile Hoods and Indian monsoons, and of .seismic indications which may, or may not. eventuate in earthquakes in ' the region of the Yellow Sea. Mauritius holds, in fact,, what isproIvJily tin' most important meteorological station in the Southern hemis[heic.

It is even more than that. As .you enter the picturesque roadstead of Port Louis you see a crescent of white, live-encircled houses fringing tlie hay underneath a rampart of nigged hills rising to ihe feet of Pietcr Holle, whose -peculiar shaped peak looks exactly like a n Aunt Sally set up for a cock shy. In front of the town are docks, coal hulks, and coal wharves. So far as these are concerned, the bay might he that of Gibraltar, and it is, in fact, the Gibraltar of the South lnd'an Ocean as regards repaiis and coaling. H was so in other ways in the old days when the French usee! it as their chic*/ base against the \VriY\sh Yi\ Asia. :\l one yerioil, indeed, I'ort Louis was substituted for roniliclrvry as the centre of French Government in the Fast. There was one reason why the British sciv.ed it in ISin, and retained it when peace followed Waterloo. Thereafter the island proved to be somewhat of a white elephant, and the opening of the Suez Canal, by throwing it out of the line of world tratlic, threatened its very existence as a colony. Itecent developments have, however, altered this again, so that now Port Louis has become a groat coaling station on the Cape route to and from the Fast, as well as a hospital to which crippled craft resort from over several thousand miles of surrounding ocean. When you land at Port Louis you niht e'a i'y thin' I hat you had arri id : n Calcutta or Pom! ay, for twotliin's of the Mauritian population, which totals close upon 10ii,ono, is Indian, less than eie.hty years ago, nine-tenths of the inhabitants Were \irican, of whom there are now i) 00 in the while island. Tlrs remarkable civ.ngo has been brought about by the circumslan-c thai, when slavjry wa : ; abolished, the emawipa'cd negroes almost univer.-a'ly objected to regular work, and, as thev could not be permitted to live in the idleness they craved, they had to clear out. Indian coolie labour was imported in their stead, and these Indians now nm almost everything in the colony except the Government. They own fully one-third of the who'e cultivated area, and the commerce of the island, both wholesale and retail, e\po"t and import, is lar e!v in their hands. The only iTon-h they have not control of.is the irrocery stove business, which the Chinese, of whom there are about !l,f>M, have got hold of it, mainly because it is worked in comvetion with a li'-uor licence system which astute .lohn Chinaman uses for all it is worth. lie offers his " dry " goods cheap for the sake of attracting customers for the drink upon which he has big profits, and. having made his pile, he departs with it to the Flowery Land. It is highly characteristic of the Chinese that this business is worked upon a per/cot system. The Yellow men hardly ever bring their wives with them or their families. They come, make their fortunes, and depart smiling at the rale of one man in ten per annum. This proportion is faithfully adhered to under a voluntary arrangement amongst, the Chinese themselves, but it does not tend to make them desirable colonists, and some day the authorities may see fit to extinguish their liquor licences without much talk about compensation.

The white population numbers only about 5,00 ft, although, besides, fully 100,000 of the inhabitants are of mixed European descent. The pure whites are chiefly French, descendants of those who occupied Mauritius when it was the "lie dc France," and representative of much Unit was good in Old l'Yancc as it existed previous to the Terror. They arc whole-hearted subjects of King Edward, but take comparatively little active part in the flovernment vif the colony, although, under a clause of the treaty by which the island was transferred, it is still ruled by the French Code of laws.

This strangely-assorted community lias come, shoulder to shoulder, through trials that might have daunted a much more homegeneous people. .Forty years ago malaria threatened to depopulate the island, but it has been largely banished by costly systems of sanitation and drainage. About ten years ago it was similarly threatened by a fearful outbreak of plague, spread by the rats with which the island swarms. Hut the rats have had a bad lime'of it since then, and another such visitation is unlikely. On April 29th, a hurricane of unexampled violence swept Mauritius almost bare of buildings and crops, and a .year later l'ort Louis was destroyed by fire. But the colonists, down even to the Indian field labourers, contributed to repair the damage, the Home Government guaranteed a loan of £600,000, and the colony became even more prosperous than before. Finally, about five years ago, a strange epidemic practically exterminated the draught animals, including rattle, upon which the colonists depended to move the sugar (top, which is their mainstay. This disaster was met by the construction of a lierfcct network of small transpnrl lines so extensive that Mauri- ■ frs i as now prohably more railways |k.t square mile of area than pj Qt,h.ej district in thq world. Of

heavy lines there are alMit 130 miles. All this Ims necessarily destroyed any chance thai ever existed of the Dodo having remained alive in some remote part of the islaiitl. Humours used to go about that specimens had been seen, hut it is now practically certain that Die last big pigeon—for the Dodo was nothing else-was knocked on Hie head at least a century ago. Quantities o( its bones me occasionally discovered, but it is now mainly remembered as the emblem of the .remarkable colony established in the island of which at one time the great uncouth bird was the only inhabitant.—"Weekly Telegraph."