Far Away; or, Sketches of scenery and society in Mauritius

Front matter

FAE AWAY. -DANSONIA DIGITATA. FAR AWAY; OR, SKETCHES OF SCENERY AND SOCIETY IN MAURITIUS. BY CHARLES JOHN BOYLE. Chacun voit avec des yeux differents. Me3 impressions sont ft moi. Je ne donne que celles-lil.— La Duchesse D'Abrantes, LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1867. [The right of Translation is reserved.] JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. TO SHOLTO DOUGLAS, ESQ. My dear Sholto, Without having asked your permission I dedicate my book to you and your good wife. Many of the letters, which, in fact, were its original shape, were written home from under your hospitable roof. Will you and Mrs Douglas accept them, in their present" form, as some ac knowledgment, however faint, of the affection I bear you, and of my gratitude for the unremit ting kindness and pleasant companionship, which so powerfully contributed towards rendering my year of widowerhood far less one of probation than, under other circumstances, it possibly could have been ?

Yours, My dear Sholto, Very affectionately, Charles J. Boyle. August, 1867. A WORD AT STARTING. My book pretends to be nothing more than what I call it on the title-page — Sketches. Although not the identical letters, which, during a three years' residence in Mauritius, I was in the habit of writing home, the following pages contain, more or less, the substance of them. In a different form and order they made up my ' monthly packet, so that my impressions of all I saw were on their passage to my ' far away' correspondents, almost as soon as I had myself received them. The better I become acquainted with the world, the more I see of its scenery and society, A WORD AT STARTING. VIII the more implicitly do I believe in first impres sions. It would be an untruth to assert I was sorry to leave Mauritius. 'Ad ogni uccello,' the Italians tell us, ' suo nido e bello/ but how doubly so, when the old bird has been long upon the wing, and the young brood perched upon the branches of the dear old familiar tree, anxiously looking out for his return.

Nevertheless to be honest, as I turned my face, for the last time, to the fast-fading outline of those purple peaks, which told me ' Maurice ' was still there, my eyes blinked with something very like a tear. True I was returning to all I love best on earth ; but the echo of no mere passing words of affection were still in my ears — the ' good-bye ' had been said, the parting squeeze of the hand had been given ; yet I was bearing away with me memories of much friendly inter course henceforth to be broken up, and of many pleasant hours never to come back ; nay, more, I was leaving behind me some, into whose kind A WORD AT STARTING. IX faces, according to all human probability, I could never look again. I almost thought then, I had better never have known them, better if I had never had the good luck to set foot on the hospitable shores of their lovely, sunny, sea-girt home.

Chapter I

A NEW HOME. It will be long before I forget the morning A. and I set foot on the classic shores of ' Paul and Virginia.' Despair is a strong word, but I know no better to express, properly, what we both felt on being ushered into our apartment — the best we were assured, and I have lived long enough here already to believe it — in the ' Grand Hotel de l'Europe/ of Port Louis. We had sighted the island at daybreak. We might, and we did, heartily congratulate ourselves on being at last on the point of quitting the nutshell into which two kernels had been so long squeezed, and in which, since we had left Suez, we, the two ker nels aforesaid, had well nigh done nothing else but liquify night and day. Captain , to the last obliging, had offered to send us ashore in his own boat with an officer of the ship for our cicerone.

We landed early, and I will describe, as well as I can, into what. Heat, dust, dirt ; smells intolerable, clamour indescribable; screeching mules by the hundreds, all biting one another, aU kicking everything they could kick, with sweat ing, bellowing Malabars* incessantly belabouring them. Whew ! there goes a pair of hind legs bang up into the air ! there follows a whack from a bamboo ! — such a whack, such a bamboo ! — and down again come those two legs quivering. Then there were carts, going and coming, which re quired you to cast your eyes as quickly as you could before and behind, — one should have been provided with a pair out of a chameleon's head for the occasion, so as to have been able to look both ways at once. If nothing ran up against you, you were next to certain to run up against some thing, even if, while your eyes were occupied, your feet did not stumble over piles and piles of fat sugar-bags heaped up on every side, for the ' coupe' t was now in full swing, or, more strictly speaking, it was the moment for shipping the sugar.

Oh what a hubbub ! what discordant sounds from men and brutes, perhaps the latter term would do as well for both here. What unceasing turmoil and confusion ! Every hue of skin and * The common appellation given here to the whole Indian population. f The sugar harvest is so called. MA URITIUS. 3 shade of every hue. Black men, brown men, whity brown men — all of them streaming with perspira tion ; some loading, some unloading ; each gang performing its work, as it were, mechanically, to the accompaniment of a shrill, low, monotonous chant, which the one half of these all but stark naked labourers caught up in admirable time as the other half let it drop — four or five notes four or five times repeated over and over again : more than this that hymn of reeking labour seemed to me never to vary that morn ing, or on any other I chanced to be on the quay.

How even now, as I copy out from an old letter, it rings in my ears still ! It was, I may say, the first utterly strange sound I heard in Mauritius, * and as such it will ever be specially connected with it. Nothing, I think, recalls the past as vividly as sounds. I have left the place never to go back, but my ear is like the rare shell in its cotton shroud and glass case ; that plaintive sound is retained — plaintive it seemed to me, and its echo lingers with me still. Almost the first object you encounter, on landing on the quay of Port Louis, is the bronze statue of ' La Bourdonnais,' of which and of whom in a future letter. " That is the statue of La Bourdonnais," ob- * Not the Mauritius, as you ladies ' of England who live at home at ease ' persist in calling it. served our good-natured guide, " who figures, you know — " " Oh, yes, I have just read Paul and Virginia again," — feeling I was in for an epitome of what I knew by heart, while standing under that red hot sun, and before that nearly red-hot bronze figure.

As it was, I already wished La Bourdon nais, statue and all, and Paul and Virginia too, at the bottom of the sea we had just come off, for getting, at the moment, the poor young lady had been there already. Well ! on we walked, and reached the Hotel at last. We passed through a wide gate-way, crossed an untidily-kept, half-planted court and along a broad verandah crowded with parties of coffee-complexioned young gentlemen sitting and sprawling about in attitudes more easy than graceful. They were sipping all sorts of liquids, transparent and opaque, from very large glasses, and alternately puffed out clouds of tobacco and stared most unceremoniously at the new arrivals. In a minute more we found ourselves ' au 1"; ' and with an air as if we were about to be ushered into the best apartment of the ' Grand Hotel ' par excellence, a door was dashed open, and in we walked. ' Is this your best apartment ? ' I said almost meekly, standing aghast.

The idea flashed across me we were treated shabbily in accordance with our appearance. We had landed with the intension of dressing comfortably on shore. A. was rumpled, and I unshaven. "Monsieur peut choisir,' quietly replied the shoeless, stockingless, wool-headed waiter, show ing his magnificent teeth from between his thick lips. Then whisking over his shoulder a napkin scarcely whiter than his skin, not darker than his shirt — -jacket he had none — he opened a door on the opposite side of the passage. I followed him, looked through the open door, and was quickly back into the first room. Sambo grinned — they always do grin, especially when it is most aggravating they should. The dirty state of this apartment was — no, not better — less bad than the extra filthiness of the other. A. threw up her eyes despairingly ; she was gasping for fresh air.

It was intensely hot without, and as close within, with the peculiar smell in addition of a room shut up too long. Spasmodically rushing to the great big window she called to me to help her open it. It was cob-webbed, and apparently had been, for some days past, the tomb of several generations of very strange-looking, long-legged, lanky insects ; or perhaps it were a better de scription to call it the larder of an excellent illus tration of a ' bloated aristocrat ' in the shape of a huge brown spider all over golden spots, who seemed to be drowsily counting the numerous items of future banquets hung up all round him by their heads and their heels. A. gave a faint shriek, and bang went up the window : the aristo crat scuffled off in a very undignified hurry, the larder was rent asunder, and the stock of pro visions disappeared in a trice.

I thrust my head out of window. How the scene before me told me at a glance we were in deed ' far away,' in a strange land, in a new home ! There was a court, and a tall tree stretched out its crooked limbs over three parts of it ; the leaves were so broad that the shadows which it cast in chequered patches were intensely dark and large. Some scantily-dressed children, their single garment, once white, all torn and untied, stood half asleep, or lay about. There was a gorged duck or two, and some feverish-looking fowls, their feathers half off, and those on all ruffled. Here dozed a cat with her tail encircling her, and two mangy dogs, stretched at their full length, were at her side. They were all huddled up under the branches of the tree. It was too hot to snarl and fight ; yet the tongues of the women went apace — a contrast of activity to their languid listless way of moving about.

The tree was laden with enormous clusters of a brilliant flower, to me unknown. The shadows cast upon the ground were so still one might have imagined them painted on it. Nature, true to herself, did her utmost to embellish, and was lovely in herself. But the scene beneath that tree ! It is sufficient to say it was a Creole kitchen, Creole scullions cleaning fish and plucking poultry. We quickly turned our eyes again inward, the least sickening sight of the two, in spite of the unwashed floor, a tumbled bed calling itself made, tattered mosquito curtains, and a solitary bandy-legged table with what looked like plague-spots all over it. Such was the room, which, for all we knew at that instant, was to be our preliminary home for some weeks. I am bound to say that, since this, the ' Grand Hotel de l'Europe ' has changed hands.

I have never entered it since, and have never wished, but I have been repeatedly told it is bet ter; and I can imagine that far easier than that it should be worse. I think I can hear exclaiming, " Poor solus." Hold ! In three hours more we did not deserve any pity. We were under a hospitable roof, in a clean room, breathing country air, feasting our eyes on a lovely view, and meet ing with a reception that smacked rather of many years' acquaintance than of an utterly new and, by us, unexpected one. Well, here is all I can say to-day. To-morrow the mail sails. I will get up early and finish my sketch. Early rising is no penance here — the first hours of day are the most delicious of the twenty-four. Well ! to go on ! It may be imagined how I longed to look about me in the morning ; how eagerly I thrust my head out of my window to stare, at my ease, over all near me.

When I did, however, the strangeness and novelty, to the degree I expected, did not seem to be there. The general aspect scarcely induced me to fancy myself so ' far away ' — not, assuredly, to believe the real fact that I was for the first time in my life resident in a tropical country. The reality of the great difference comes on one by degrees, as one gets to scrutinize the details of the landscape. It is far more apparent, I am told, in the interior of the island. Of this I hope soon to be a judge. It is there, I hear, that one perceives oneself at once to be surrounded by a vegetation utterly dissimilar from the one left behind in the father land. To be sure, as I stood by the window of my dressing-room, a cluster of white blossoms waved to and fro in my face from the end of a long branch, and on examining it closer it proved to be stephanotis.

And coming along the road yesterday, I had glimpses of cocoa trees, with their drooping branches waving over their huge bunches of nuts ; but as yet these were the ex ceptions to the rule. The most startling sight, perhaps, on landing in Mauritius, for anybody at least who has not been in India, is the dress, always excepting the wn-dress, of the Malabars. Nine groups you see out of ten are composed of these picturesque people. They have a marvellous eye for colour, and somehow there is harmony in any two or three they choose to put together. Probably the swarthy polished skin so freely exposed to view has something to do with this. But a good effect is produced by mixtures we Europeans should never venture on. Two or three of these men and women, with their plump little children, squatting and chattering under a tamarind or mango tree, form groups I myself especially delight in, and would quickly transfer to a leaf in a sketch-book, if I could.

I was but little prepared for the amount of life and bustle one finds oneself in the midst of on first landing. I do not only mean of the kind I have already described. There are few towns, I imagine, of the sort in any part of the world, in proportion to the size, with a greater number of carriages of one sort or another in daily circula tion.* The fact is, that a conveyance on wheels of some kind is here no luxury, but a necessity. Most people that can, if not all the year round, some portion of it, live out of town, and come into it early of a morning for the performance of daily office work. Some distant planters are the exception to this in-and-out-of-town life, together * In 18G5 there were upwards ofl300 carriages declared, and which paid the tax. Evasions of this and every other tax are numerous.

There was about the same return of ' earioles ' — the ' cabs ' of Mauritius — of nearly 3000 carriage and saddle horses. The population of Port Louis was about 78,000. with their women-kind : the love of gadding is not, I take it, as yet one of the small sins Creole ladies have to make clean breasts of in the Con fessional. The town of Port Louis rises prettily in the form of an amphitheatre, at the base of a low range of mountains green to their very tips. A more fantastic collection of peaks, and ridges, and slopes, it would be difficult to imagine. Their volcanic origin is palpable at the first glance. The houses are shut out from the street by walls or iron railings, and over these some bright coloured creeper is sure to be clustering unre buked, or running up and along the roofs high or low.

These roofs, at the first glance of a stranger's eye, have the appearance of being tiled ; but are covered with the ' bardeau,' a kind of shingle of a dark reddish-coloured wood. A broad verandah almost invariably runs round one or two sides of the house, if not on all four ; and here, during the great heat of the day, large blinds of various sorts of grass matting, or canvas, or a diminutive bamboo, are let down, and effectually keep out the glare of the flaming sun. In the evening they are raised in front, and generally display a family group languidly sunk down in deep cane arm-chairs. Some of these over-easy seats have exceedingly broad arms running out to a dispro portionate length, which struck me, when I first saw them, as very awkward-looking bits of furniture. I soon learnt both to value and make use of them, a use, I need scarcely observe, reserved for the male sex.

The legs of a gentleman so seated are stretched out full length, and repose along the chair's broad arms ; and, if he be really comfort able, the chair being exceedingly concave, the tips of his feet and his knees rise much above his head. Stand exactly opposite and look at him straight, and two lines of rail running down an inclined plane to a given point — his nose, give no bad idea of one of the many easy, indolent attitudes we Mauritians decidedly de light in. If company be expected, the female por tion of the group, at any rate, is exceedingly well ' got up ; ' but if no visit be anticipated, very loose and often not very fresh-looking garments, defying both ' corset ' and ' cage,' predominate. Palms of many kinds and other trees stare, or peep, or hang over into the street. At the time I am writing, the ' Bois noir,' * an acacia introduced originally from India, and very common now throughout the island, is in full flower.

It is one, I find, of a very limited number of trees, to be seen at any time of the year in Mauritius, quite bare of leaves. When I say it is in full flower, I ought equally to say it is in full seed ; for the seed of the former blow is still hanging * Acacia odoratissima, I believe. thickly on almost every branch, in the shape of enormous metallic-looking pods. They are quite dried up, and of a yellow that glistens like gold in the sun, and when slightly agitated by the wind they almost clink. The flower is a brush like, greenish-white tuft, not very large, and would be nothing out of the common but for the profusion of it with which the tree is loaded. It is positively snowed with blossoms, while, in addition, the perfume is quite exquisite. Taken altogether with its dense masses of flower, its fragrance, and its glittering pendant pods, the tree is remarkable, and struck me much the first day I saw it.

It is in Mauritius, in fact, very much what the lilac is to us in an English spring — the spring left out; we have none, nor winter either; summer is always with us. Here, really, as Titania tells us, " the mazed world knows not which is which." The houses for the most part are wooden. By a late municipal regulation, however, if you build in the town, stone is indispensable ; his Worship the Mayor having, it seems, ex ojfieio the feelings of a burnt child, and dread ing fire. The kitchen, a propos of fire, for generally speaking it is the only one spot where there is one, is almost invariably detached, as are the rooms for strangers and the household servants. The last arrangement, in my opinion, is a most advantageous one, judging from the general appearance of their untidy and dirty habits, if negroes, and of their offensive dissimi larity, in one respect, to the flower of the ' Bois noir.' According to the number of these separ ate ' pavilions ' a house is reckoned a large or a small one.

When to the rest of my description I add that, on paying a visit, you with rare exception at once plunge ' in medias res,' walking slap into the salon from the verandah, and that the half-glazed windows, the upper half consisting of 'jalousies,' perform the part of doors as well, I shall have given, I hope, a tolerable idea of a Mauritian dwelling of the higher class in town and country. Of interiors anon. There is often, when the blinds are down, a very bird-cage look about them. The eye does not take long in familiarizing itself with novelty, and these Creole houses are already losing the look of strangeness they had in mine the day I landed. My first impression was of something unsolid and unreal, and more like portions of a scene on the stage than bond fide dwellings of living human beings.

Chapter II

A NEW POPULATION. Having attempted to give some idea of the houses and streets of Port Louis, I want now to set before you, reader, as vividly as I can, some of the animate and inanimate objects you meet in and about them. Motley is scarcely more the word in dress than in complexion. You can have no idea how striking and varied a feature of life in Port Louis is its population. You have natives from every part of the vast continent of India, all differing not less in feature than in form. Weedy and athletic men, imperial looking, by far the rarest of the two ; and miserable, insignificant women. They are of all hues and shades. In the course of half an hour's walk, you stumble on Parsees, Arabs, Cingalese, Chinamen, Lascars, Malays, Mosambiques, and Malgaches (natives of Madagascar). Add to these the negro, the mu latto, the French Creole, the English Creole ; nor do I throw in all the other Europeans.

Picture to yourself the confusion of tongues and diversity of costume of all this small Babel. Nothing can MA URITIUS. 15 be more diverting to the eye, at least to mine, than a drive or stroll through the most frequented thoroughfares of Port Louis. I never tire of it, and I find myself for ever staring quite as much as I did the first day, and longing more and more for such a gifted pencil as 's. But just come with me into the Bazaar. Here, in a con centrated group, I can bring them almost all be fore you at once. It is early. The morning is still tolerably cool. There are men of all sorts, properly clothed and improperly, at least so one continues to consider the last for a week or two. They are sauntering about smoking, alone, or chattering together. Some are solemn, some exceedingly merry.

Some, like clockwork dolls, just roll their eyes from right to left and back on the passers-by, and then on the goods they would tempt you to purchase, while some point at them vehemently, gesticulating as if the conviction of their cheapness of the commodity comes necessarily from the finger-tips. There are several Creole ladies, both bedizened and dowdy, seeking their day's provisions of fruit and vegetables. Verily, there is a choice where with to fill those quaint bamboo baskets hanging from their own arms or, oftener, from that of a black maid, who lazily follows, barefooted or slip shod, close at her mistress' heels. This latter damsel is usually dressed entirely in black, unless the kerchief on the head be, for a change, white or of a bright colour. It is oftenest of black silk, folded on the temples, and knotted after the fashion once common in provincial French towns, and which a few years back you still occasionally saw in London streets, when you listened to poor sentimental Queen Hortense's ' Partant pour la Syrie,' that famous air, of late revived, with an almost invariable cracked harp accompaniment.

One of these Creole ladies may be attended by an Indian boy or ' chokerer,' who, if ' Grand Madame ' * be, by great chance, very particular about his personal appearance, is dressed in snowy white, without a spec upon him from his glossy head to his small feet, the latter bare, the Oriental mark of respect of servants to their betters. This dark-eyed youth has bound a crimson sash round his slim waist, and wears on his head either a turban or small cap, in shape like a melon that has been sliced in two and hollowed out. It is jauntily set on, the point pulled down towards the nose coquettishly, and worn cocked-hat fashion. These head-dresses denote the presidency whence the emigrant. Bombay or Madras claims the turban ; the half-melon is the badge of Calcutta. They are sometimes of a coarse bright-coloured cloth, sky-blue, orange, red, or apple-green, and covered with embroidery of gold or silver.

But the smartest servants have * The usual appellation of the mistress of a Creole household. MAURITIUS. 17 it in white linen, starched, with or without a coloured hem. These, with the flowing, well oiled, carefully-combed hair underneath, have a very good effect. The Bazaar is a large square, shut in at each end by iron railings, and broad gates opening into 'parallel streets. A road wide enough for a carriage, though little else but a chance cart, I imagine, is ever seen to enter, runs down the middle, the open sky overhead, and the road cutting the Bazaar into two equal parts. On each side are spacious pavements for the display of the various marketable productions. They are roofed over and have a passage down the centre, so that as you walk from end to end you can look on either side and see almost at a glance everything that is spread out to tempt you.

All over these stone floors, before their respective heaps of vegetables and fruits and flowers, of which some are tumbling over out of the brimful baskets, some piled up on the ground, you see squatted little parties of Indian women. Num berless plump, small, stark naked urchins of both sexes are running and frisking about, or sprawl ing and playing at their mothers' sides. They look like so many pieces of dark polished marble, or still more like the little chocolate figures in the bonbons shops on the Paris Boulevards. These market women are, with few exceptions, very handsomely dressed, and evidently the Bazaar is held to be worth the pains of a little daily coquetry. Fresh buds and leaves are often twisted into their black silken shining hair, along with a profusion of gold or silver ornaments.

The ear and nose are loaded with rings. In the nose one rarely sees more than one, but often large enough to fall below the lips, and so far convenient, as it is possible to eat through it. Sometimes, instead of this, there is a flat piece of metal, cunningly worked and richly ornamented, which falls just on the lips. It puts me in mind of those pieces of white porcelain which flap over the mouths of the letter pillars in London. This in their estimation may be a very coquettish fashion, but it must be somewhat inconvenient. In a single ear I have counted as many as five rings of different shapes, while in the other you may see but one. Indians do not consider such a want of conformity in bad taste, and I rather agree with them. These ear-rings are generally set with roughly cut emeralds or rubies, or pearls, but they are seldom of any size.

Look at that woman before yonder pile of red and yellow fruits and huge, broad, odd-shaped leaves, which have the appearance of being varnished, they are so glossy. Her round plump shoulders are quite bare. A bright apple-green muslin drapery with a crimson or lilac border is drawn across her full and scarcely concealed bosom. With this she wears a tight-fitting silk jacket of some dark rich colour. A mass of deep orange folds of a thicker material twines about her legs, which, however, are left sufficiently uncovered to display the anklets and numberless toe rings. She holds up part of a banana leaf with three or four different sorts of mangoes thrown together upon it; some of an empur pled dark green, some of a deep rose colour shot with amber, some oval, some long, some curved at the end.

The woman looks up at you rather shyly with her large round oriental eye, darkly stained and fringed with its up-curling lash. The cross divisions of her hair between the roots are bedaubed with a blood-coloured sort of paste. A round spot of the same about as big as an official wafer is on her forehead, and the inside of her mouth is nearly as red with the juice of the betel nut she is chewing. Some times the paint descends in a straight line to the very tip of the nose. Such is their idea of what is becoming — but is it more barbarous than many a fashion of our own ? Her arms are tattooed and loaded with broad circles of gold or silver crowded together between the shoulder and elbow, and again from the wrists upwards nearly to meet the others. These women often look as if they were half in armour.