1805.
September.
These statements will give a general idea of a plantation at Vacouas, the employments of the more considerable inhabitants, of the food of the slaves, &c, and will render unnecessary any further explanation on these heads.
It was considered a fair estimate, that a habitation should give yearly 20 per cent. on the capital employed, after allowance made for all common losses; and money placed on good security obtained from 9 to 18 per cent. in time of war, and 12 to 24 in the preceding peace. Had my planter put his 18,000 dollars out at interest, instead of employing them on a plantation at Vacouas, and been able to obtain 15 per cent., he would at the end of five years, after expending 150 dollars each month in the town of Port Louis, have increased his capital nearly 5,000 dollars; but it is more than probable that he would have fallen into the luxury of the place, and have rather diminished than increased his fortune.
The woods of Vacouas are exceedingly thick, and so interwoven with different kinds of climbing plants, that it is difficult to force a passage through; and to take a ride where no roads have been cut, is as impossible as to take a flight in the air. Except morasses and the borders of lakes, I did not see a space of five square yards in these woods, which was covered with grass and unencumbered with shrubs or trees; even the paths not much frequented, if not impassable, are rendered very embarrassing by the raspberries, wild tobacco, and other shrubs with which they are quickly overgrown. Cleared lands which have ceased to be cultivated, are usually clothed with a strong, coarse grass, called chien-dent, intermixed with ferns, wild tobacco, and other noxious weeds. In the low districts the grass is of a better kind, and supplies the cattle with tolerable food during three or four months that it is young and tender, and for most of the year in marshy places; at other times they are partly fed with maize straw, the refuse of the sugar mills, and the leaves and tender branches of some trees.
A few short-legged hares and some scattered partridges are
