MAURITIUS

[s. 459] : An island lying in the Indian Ocean, 500 mQes east of Madagascar. Area, 708 square miles. Together with its dependencies, Rodriguez and Diego the Seychelles group, Garcia (total area, 172 square miles), it forms a colony of Great Britain. Climate tropical, and very malarious and unhealthful on the coast. Population in 1901 was nearly 376,000; of this number 261,550 are Indians, and the remainder are Africans, mixed Chinese number 3,935. and whites. The The people are divided races, in their religious belief as follows: Hindus, 206,000; Roman Catholics, 113,000; Mohammedans, State aid is 41,000, and Protestants, 6,644. granted to both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. English, French, and the languages of the different races represented are spoken there. The island was originally a French colony, and a stronghold of pirates in the Indian Ocean. In 1810 the English took po e ion of it, and in 1834 the 90,000 negro slaves were emancipated. The island is one of the foremost sugar-producing places of the globe, and the emancipation of the slaves nece itated the importation of labor from China and India, with the resulting con glom erE ducat i on is conducted partly ate population. in government and partly in state-aided schools. There is also a Royal College. Mi ionary work was commenced here in 1814 by the LMS. After the Society gave up the mi ion in 1832 Mr. Le Brun, their mi ionary, returned to the island and took the pastoral care of the people, and the When persecution in church of 50 members. ManritlnH McAU Mi ion Madagascar (1836) drove out both Christians and mi ionaries, one of the latter, Mr. Johns, went to Mauritius, and continued to labor among the Malagasy. A plot of land was procured, and a congregation of Malagasy refugees was gathered together in 1845, after Mr. Johns’ death, and theological instruction was given to young men from Madagascar, to prepare them for work, as In the mean so on as the persecution ceased. time Mr. Le Brun continued his labors among the were there 173 church and in 1850 natives, members at the stations of Port Louis and Moka. The SPG and the CMS are practically confining their efforts to the immigrants from India, who engaged in work on the sugar plant a These form two-thirds of the population. The language difficulty is a very serious one. A are tions. mi ionary writes that a cla of thirty received English, languages the instruction in five French, Creole, Tamil, and Hindi. Even in this difficult field harvests have been gathered, and the CMS has received over 5,000 in the course of — its work. A MAURITIUS-CREOLE LANGUAGE: dialect of the French which has become the medium of busine in Mauritius and is the society language of the Creoles of the island. 460