Island of the Swan - Mauritius [antikvár]

PRELUDE It was a red-headed Tyneside second-engineer of a B.I. in Zanzibar harbour who first put the idea into our heads of going to Mauritius. He was not a romantically disposed person, but he said, simply, 'It's t' loovliest island in t' world' in a tone of quite irresistible nostalgia. Some weeks later, when we were in Johannesburg, the call of the Island, which he had echoed, became for us a Sirens' song against which we had no defence. To yield to it was not, however, easy. Not only were ships from South African ports rare; berths in them were rarer still. Moreover, outside Durban we only once found anyone in the Union who knew where Mauritius was and knew that it was a British, not a French, possession. The Jo'burg office of a world-famous travel agency assured us that we should never be allowed by the French Government to enter Mauritius because there was a rebellion going on in Madagascar ; and an equally famous bank in Pieter-maritzburg told us that we should never be able to get the necessary allocation of francs. We got there eventually, but it took eight months and a great deal of patient, and sometimes embarrassing, argument. In the Island itself we found that most Mauritians were resigned to British ignorance of their whereabouts and colour on the map. 'Judging from correspondence', they said, 'most people in "the motherland" seem to be under the impression that our Island is in the Caribbean, or in the Pacific or, for some reason or other, off the coast of China.' There were tales of Colonial Office despatches that had reached Mauritius via Jamaica. In the Municipalité of Port Louis we were shown by the Mayor a letter written by Queen Alexandra thanking the people of the city for a tribute of flowers sent to the flmeral of King Edward VII. The letter was framed and hung on the wall along with its envelope which read —not in the Queen's own hand—