Philippe Lenoir, Mauritius: former Isle de France. Port Louis: Le Editions du Cygne, c.1979.
Large octavo, hard cover, dustwrapper, 237 pages, illustrated.
A little damage to the dustwrapper, some foxing, slight cockle in bottom margins of the last few leaves. Generally, in presentable condition.
'The beauty of islands is like that of women: after the initial blind adoration, the discovery of their imperfections adds to, rather than detracts from, their charms. By then it is too late: one will love them forever... and never forget. Mauritius is not just lagoons and beaches, strange mountains, tropical flowers and fruit, exotic trees and rare birds all bathed in glorious sunshine. It is also subjected to the occasional fury of the elements and the destructive force of cyclones. But time soon washes all trace of lovers, feuds in the passion of a new embrace. Soon the waves heavy with sand and disturbed weeds will come to lap the golden beaches. Soon the island will again become the "garden which a God, no less, placed in the ocean" as the Mauritian born poet Paul Jean Toulet described his native land. A garden spared the extremes of a tropical climate and whose summer helps one to forget the frosts of Europe. And once there one cannot resist dreaming about the past of an island whose history, reaching well beyond its geographic boundaries, associates three continents in its present, its past and its future A mere speck on the ancient maps, long neglected by sailors before attracting its first settlers, it has now earned a place of doubtful honour on the strategic maps of to-day. And it remains the Star and the Key of the Indian Sea, the coveted prize of many a conflict between the colonial powers. And whatever its strategic significance, it is still the Sugared Pearl of the Indian Ocean, mentioned by Conrad. Its destiny is linked to its sugar, to its sunshine and its seas as that of other lands is linked to their petrol or their wheat. Mauritius is a still uncrowded touristic paradise. The breeze which reaches it has blown across unpolluted expanses of sea. And it remains free of those industrial smokes which poison man and nature alike. There is not only the sun and the sea. Until recently a British Colony, it is also the old Ile de France, the Mauritius left behind by the Dutch, the Ilda do Cirne or Island of the Swan of the Portuguese. And further back in time, the Dinarobin of Arab navigators.'
