Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-05-29
The Big Blow In MauritIus,

The storm which wrecked houses, blew
ships far inland and killed hundreds of peo-
pie in Mauritius the other day seems oddly
out of accord with the traditions of the
island home of Paul and Virginia The
placidity and prodigality of nature in that
corner OF the tropics were what Bernardn
de Saint Pierre dwelt most upon, but doubt
less the queer chum of Jean Jaques Rous-
seau wonld have appreciated the superb
contrast in the wild winds furry and would
have watched that mighty wall of water
thunder upon the docks of Port Louis,
crowded with craft, with considerable satis-
faction to his artistic sense, provided of
course that the talented word-painter stood
in no danger himself But the fact is that
Mauritius to-day has very little OF that
Lotus land languor which Saint Pierre
found so refreshing to his soul. Railways
and steam machinery, the wonderful trans
forming power of the century's civilization,
have nowhere worked more complete
change than in the beautiful Isle of France
In Saint Pierre's time, as he put it. there
was in Mauritius ''an extreme indifference
manifested for everything that goes to consti
tute the happiness of respectable people. "
By this the Frenchman of the Napoleonic
era, as would his countrymen today, meant
that Mauritius hadn't a thing in common
with his beloved Paris, and indeed lacked
such little conveniences as passable roads,
permanent dwellings, furniture, or codifed
morals
But with nearly 100 miles of railroad
and Maurftius is only Sc miles long and %
broad altogether, with systematic cultiYa-
ton of the rich soil, sugar plantations
and factories on all sides, the island is pretty
nearly hive of industry, where the busiest
bees by the way are the Chinese coolies.
But neither time nor trade can trample out
altogether the air of romance that the Paul
and Virginia legend filings over the island.
There is no danger of these creations of
Saint Pierre's Imagination being forgotten.
The haekmen, who rival their brethren at
Niagara, take care that there shall be plenty
of excuse for Juggling visitors out to see the
tombs of Paul and Virginia at Pample-
mousse. Indeed it is said that these patri-
otic cab drivers buy new granite monu-
ments for their patron saints every year, in
order that visitors may feel perfectly at
liberty to carry away scraps OF the tombs as
relics. .'-
1t will be noticed that most of the people
killed were of the poorer class, from the
very mixed population OF Port Louis, Him
docs, negroes and Chinese. The reason for
this is that the white citizens, from the En-
glish Governor down to the clerks in the
shipping offices, almost all of them reside in
the uplands back some little distance from
the coast, where the climate is far more
salubrious and cool. At Curepipe, the
oddly named town which has grown up in
these highlands, there are frequently to be
found European invalids who prefer to win
ter in Mauritius, and declare that the eli
mate is more balmy than that. of Southern
France. The hideous hurricane of last week
seems not to have reached the high ground,
but it must have Jared the nerves of every
body in the. island.
JoHNS-KAUFMAN.