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The voyage was comparatively short, so they took care not to lose their senses altogether, and were tolerably sober when we came in sight of the Mauritius. I had never seen anything more beautiful than the scenery of Port Louis harbour. High above the town rises La Pouce, or the thumb mountain, clothed with trees to its very top.
The heights of horses are still expressed in hands. The inch is the length of the terminal joint of the thumb; as is clearly shown in France, where pouce means both thumb and inch. Then we have the inch divided into three barley-corns.
"Mais ce qu'il y a de remarquable, c'est que le gneis ne participe en rien de la pierre calcaire quoiqu'il n'en soit séparé que par une couche d'une pouce d'épaisseur de terre argileuse et calcaire, tandis que le rocher calcaire renferme beaucoup de fragmens de granit et de gneis, dans le voisinage de cette réunion.
Besides these mountains, the traveller sees the Corps de Garde du Port Loris de Mocca; Le Pouce, with its narrow peak projecting above the plateau like a thumb; and the precipitous Peter Botte. The last-named mountain recalls the memory of the daring Hollander who first reached its summit, long regarded as impracticable.
The next harbour in which we found ourselves was that of Port Louis in the Mauritius. The town stands at the head of the bay, and is enclosed on the east, and north, and south, by mountains rising but a short distance from the shore. The most lofty is the Pouce, which towers up 2800 feet immediately behind the town, and is a remarkable and picturesque object.
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