April 20 Monday – In Curepipe, Mauritius, Sam wrote in FE:

April 20. — This is the only place in the world where no breed of matches can stand the damp. Only one match in 16 will light.

The roads are hard and smooth; some of the compounds are spacious, some of the bungalows commodious, and the roadways are walled by tall bamboo hedges, trim and green and beautiful; and there are azalea hedges, too, both the white and the red; I never saw that before.

As to healthiness: I translate from today’s (April 20) Merchants’ and Planters’ Gazette ….This daily paper has a meteorological report which tells you what the weather was day before yesterday.

One is never pestered by a beggar or a peddler in this town, so far as I can see. This is pleasantly different from India [ch LXIII 622-3].