You have to know French particularly mongrel French, the patois spoken by Tom, Dick, and Harry of the multiform complexions--or you can't get along.
"This was a flourishing country in former days, for it made then and still makes the best sugar in the world; but first the Suez Canal severed it from the world and left it out in the cold and next the beetroot sugar helped by bounties, captured the European markets.

Sugar is the life of Mauritius, and it is losing its grip.

Its downward course was checked by the depreciation of the rupee--for the planter pays wages in rupees but sells his crop for gold--and the insurrection in Cuba and paralyzation of the sugar industry there have given our prices here a life-saving lift; but the outlook has nothing permanently favorable about it.

It takes a year to mature the canes--on the high ground three and six months longer -- and there is always a chance that the annual cyclone will rip the profit out of the crop.

In recent times a cyclone took the whole crop, as you may say; and the island never saw a finer one.