The coral reef fringing the shores is well seen--the pale green of the shoal water is separated from the deep blue of the ocean by a line of snow-white surf.
THE CEMETERY.
For entomological purposes I frequently visited the Cemetery, numbers of insects being attracted by its flowers and trees.

The road leading to it, one of the principal evening drives, is shaded by rows of magnificent casuarinas, from Madagascar.

Some five or six widely-separated religious creeds may each here be seen practising their peculiar modes of interment--Chinese, Mahomedan, Hindoo, and Christian; and among the last it was a novelty to me to observe, for the first time, the pleasing custom of decking the graves with fresh flowers, often renewed weekly for years, disposed in jars of various kinds, from the richly ornamented vase down to the humblest piece of crockery.

All the low land hereabouts has been borrowed from the sea; it is a mixture of sand and fragments of coral; and the land-crabs have established a colony in one part of the cemetery, and run riot among the graves.
Although well aware of the productiveness of this fine island in marine objects, I was yet unprepared for the sight of upwards of one hundred species of fish, which I frequently witnessed of a morning in the market at Port Louis; but this to me was diminished by the regret that the most skilful taxidermist would signally fail, either to retain upon the prepared skin, or to reproduce, the bright colours for which so many of them are remarkable.

Dredging in the harbour was perfectly unsuccessful; outside the margin of the coral reefs which fringe the entrance to Port Louis one finds a zone of loose blocks of living Maeandrinae, Astraeae, and other massive corals, where dredging is impracticable; to this succeeds a belt of dead shells and small fragments of coral; and the remainder of the channel is tenacious mud, in which I found nothing of interest.
LEAVE MAURITIUS.
After a pleasant stay of twelve days, we left Mauritius, on May 17th, as soon as the last set of sights for rating the chronometers had been obtained, and in due time rounded the north end of the island to a light wind off the land.