for it made then and still makes the best sugar in the world; but first the Suez Canal severed it from the world and left it out in the cold and next the beetroot sugar helped by bounties, captured the European markets.  Sugar is the life of Mauritius, and it is losing its grip.  Its downward course was checked by the depreciation of the rupee—­for the planter pays wages in rupees but sells his crop for gold—­and the insurrection in Cuba and paralyzation of the sugar industry there have given our prices here a life-saving lift; but the outlook has nothing permanently favorable about it.  It takes a year to mature the canes—­on the high ground three and six months longer —­and there is always a chance that the annual cyclone will rip the profit out of the crop.  In recent times a cyclone took the whole crop, as you may say; and the island never saw a finer one.  Some of the noblest sugar estates in the island are in deep difficulties.  A dozen of them are investments of English capital; and the companies that own them are at work now, trying to settle up and get out with a saving of half the money they put in.  You know, in these days, when a country begins to introduce the tea culture, it means that its own specialty has gone back on it.  Look at Bengal; look at Ceylon.  Well, they’ve begun to introduce the tea culture, here.

“Many copies of Paul and Virginia are sold every year in Mauritius.  No other book is so popular here except the Bible.  By many it is supposed to be a part of the Bible.  All the missionaries work up their French on it when they come here to pervert the Catholic mongrel.  It is the greatest story that was ever written about Mauritius, and the only one.”

CHAPTER LXIII.

The principal difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives. 
                                  —­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

April 20.—­The cyclone of 1892 killed and crippled hundreds of people; it was accompanied by a deluge of rain, which drowned Port Louis and produced a water famine.  Quite true; for it burst the reservoir and the water-pipes; and for a time after the flood had disappeared there was much distress from want of water.

This is the only place in the world where no breed of matches can stand the damp.  Only one match in 16 will light.

The roads are hard and smooth; some of the compounds are spacious, some of the bungalows commodious, and the roadways are walled by tall bamboo hedges, trim and green and beautiful; and there are azalea hedges, too, both the white and the red; I never saw that before.

As to healthiness:  I translate from to-day’s (April 20) Merchants’ and Planters’ Gazette, from the article of a regular contributor, “Carminge,” concerning the death of the nephew of a prominent citizen: