Far Away Charles — John Boyle

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:CHAPTER III. THE LAND WE LITE IN. A Story is told of a lady who persisted in placing Mauritius in the West Indian Islands, merely because the gentleman she was conversing with, a native of the place, talked of his sugar canes. Sugar, we may conclude, and the West Indies were as inseparably associated with each other in the good woman's mind as roast pigs were with babies in Mrs Nickleby's. And yet I dare say a good many other ladies—no insinuations—would be puzzled, if suddenly called upon to put down their finger exactly where it lies on the map. As I am going to give a brief sketch of its history, I had best start with its whereabouts. For the edification, then, of all ladies let me at once state that we, the children of Mauritius, slumber in a cradle rocked by the waves of the Indian Ocean, just within the tropics. The cradle, probably of volcanic formation, is shaped like a pear. Its greatest length is 39 miles, its greatest breadth about 33; south latitude 20, east longitude 57. Somewhere about 700 square miles form the area, so that, in fact, it is not much bigger than several of our English counties. Those who come and see us, and choose to do so via the Cape of Good Hope, have to traverse upwards of 11,000 miles. If by the Mediterranean, the overland route, and Aden, about 7000. I may then with reason, I think, say that we are ' far away.' Mauritius was discovered by the Portuguese under Don Pedro de Mascaregnhas, quite at the beginning of the 16th century. Don Pedro is reported to have named it 'Itha do Cernos,' Island of Swans; if so, the Don's swans, like many other people's, were geese, for the feathered creature which suggested the name to Don Pedro, peculiar, it is believed, to this part of the worlfl, which the French have called ' Dronte' and we ' Dodo/ wa...