e stories one
hears be true. Some half dozen officials, whose duties oblige them to be
always close to the harbor, contrive, however, to live in the town, but
they nearly all give a melancholy report of the constant attacks of fever
they or their families suffer from.

Certainly, at the first glance, Port Louis is not a prepossessing place to
live, or try to live, in. I will say nothing of the shabby shops, the
dilapidated-looking dwellings, one passes in a rapid drive through the
streets, because I know how deceitful outside appearances are as to the
internal resources or comforts of a tropical town. Those dingy shops may
hold excellent though miscellaneous goods in their dark recesses, and
would be absolutely unbearable to either owner or customer if they were
lighted with staring plate-glass windows. Nor would it be possible to
array tempting articles in gallant order behind so hot and glaring a
screen, for no shade or canvas would prevent everything from bleaching
white in a few hours. As for the peeled walls of house and garden, no
stucco or paint can stand many weeks of tropical sun and showers.
Everything gets to look blistered or washed out directly after it has been
renovated, and great allowances must be made for these shortcomings so
patent to the eye of a fresh visitor. What I most regretted in Port Louis
was its low-lying, fever-haunted situation. It looks marked out as a
hotbed of disease, and the wonder to me is, not that it should now and for
ten years past have the character of being a nest for breeding fevers, but
that there ever should have been a time when illness was not rife in such
a locality. Sheltered from anything like a free circulation of air by
hills rising abruptly from the seashore, swampy by nature, crowded to
excess by thousands of emigrants from all parts of the coast added to its
own swarming population, it seems little short of marvellous that even by
day Europeans can contrive to exist there long enough to carry on the
enormous trade which comes and goes to and from its harbor. Yet they do
so, and on the whole manage very well by avoiding exposure to the sun and
taking care to sleep out of the town. This is rendered possible to all by
an admirable system of railways, which are under government control, and
will gradually form a perfect network over the island. The engineering
difficulties of these lines must have been great, and it is an appalling
sight to witness a train in motion. S