I visited the village of “_Pamplemouses_,” where is situated the church—as the delightful story, hath it —in which worshipped the mother of Paul and the mother of Virginia. Not far from this building, in the grounds of a resident, placed on either side of an artificial lake containing red and gold fish, are two square cemented pedestals, surmounted by rude urns, entirely overgrown with the pretty “Pride of Barbadoes.” These are the tombs of Paul and Virginia—so said the good old lady who accompanied us to the sentimental spot, and called our attention to the fact that they were drowned, when these cocoa, palm, and camphor trees around, were not so large as now. Mauritius being an English colony, of course we paid a shilling. Some sentimental Laura Matilda perhaps “in tears and white muslin,” has striven for affectionate immortality, by writing on the tomb of Virginia, in a rather masculine hand, her name; and also lets admiring gazers know, that when she is “to hum,” she is in Massachusetts.
Next you have a view of Tomb Bay, where the young unfortunate went to her death by shipwreck, and after thinking about the height of the breakers, and the hardness of the coral reef, you soothe the fervid mood by a stroll through one of the most attractive botanical gardens that the whole East presents. The sun poured down his hottest rays, but the lofty and strange trees that meet above your head, as a Gothic archway, afford shade, and the great moisture produced under foot, by this exclusion of the sun, brings up a thick green moss, so you walk on a thick velvet carpet, while on both sides of you, rivulets of clear water run gurgling all the time. Whether there was ever such people as the two little loving recipients of morality, Paul and Virginia, or not, or that the Saint Giran was ever wrecked, it is a beautiful spot apart from the story.
But there is reality as well as romance in the Isle of France; the present owner, John Bull, supplies it. On the iron gateway under which you pass, in landing, is “Victoria Regina,” and Victoria Regina levies heavy taxes on the planters. A walk on the esplanade shows you a fence of half-buried cannon—the trophies of the English when they captured the island from the French. In front of the house of the governor, who gets ten thousand dollars more salary than our president, red-coats continually mount guard. Policemen throng the streets in the same uniform I saw in Canada, and in the barrack is quartered a fine regiment of fusiliers to keep the people in subjection.