are aux Joncs was sold for 500 dollars, whilst
the same quantity of land at Vacouas was worth six times that sum.

[* The original concessions of land in Mauritius were usually of 1561/2
_arpents_, of 40,000 French square feet each, making about 1601/2 acres
English; this is called _un terrein d'habitation_, and in abridgment a
_habitation_, although no house should be built, nor a tree cut down; by
corruption however, the word is also used for any farm or plantation,
though of much smaller extent.]

Upon the high land near the Grand Bassin and in some other central parts
of Mauritius, a day seldom passes throughout the year without rain; even
at Vacouas it falls more or less during six or eight months, whilst in
the low lands there is very little except from December to March. This
moisture creates an abundance of vegetation, and should have rendered the
middle parts of the island extremely fertile; as they would be if the
soil were not washed down to the low lands and into the sea, almost as
soon as formed. Large timber, whose roots are not seen on the surface,
and a black soil, are here the exterior marks of fertility; but near the
Grand Bassin the trees are small, though thickly set, and the roots,
unable to penetrate below, spread along the ground. The little soil which
has accumulated seemed to be good, and it will increase, though slowly;
for the decayed wood adds something to its quantity every year, whilst
the trunks and roots of the trees save a part from being washed away.
Both these advantages are lost in the cleared lands of Vacouas, which
besides are made to produce from two to four crops every year; the soil
is therefore soon exhausted, and manuring is scarcely known. A plantation
covered with loose rocks is found to retain its fertility longest;
apparently from the stones preserving the vegetable earth against the
heavy rains, as the roots of the trees did before the ground was cleared.

Much of the lower part of Wilhems Plains has been long cleared and
occupied, and this is one of the most agreeable portions of the island;
but Vacouas is in its infancy of cultivation, three-fourths of it being
still covered with wood. This neglect it owes to the coldness and
moisture of the climate rendering it unfit for the produce of sugar and
cotton, to its being remote from the sea side, and more than all to its
distance from the town of Port Louis, the great mart for all kinds of
productions. Mauritius is not laid