Page:History of the French in India.djvu/133

 THE ENERGY OF LA BOURDONNAIS. Ill that of Bourbon, but still capable of production ; and a chap. climate, mild, temperate, and healthy. The fact that it s _ ^ '_ t _. possessed a harbour gave to the Isle of France a great 1735. superiority in the eyes of La Bourdonnais over Bourbon, and he at once made it the seat of government. But the people ! Had La Bourdonnais been less of a real man than he was, he might well have been appalled at the task of making anything of a race to whom toil of any sort seemed the worst species of evil. Almost naked, defenceless, and starving, having preferred to be comfortless and miserable rather than to exercise even the small amount of labour which in such a clime would have amply supplied their necessities ; dwelling in wretched cabins ; possessing no energy, living in fear of their lives from the attacks of the Maroons — the free descendants of the slaves who had been kidnapped from Madagascar, and who had found refuge in the interior — endowed apparently merely with the animal love of existence — these so-called colonists were yet capable of combining to resist any lawful authority over them. But La Bourdonnais was not a man to be baffled. He taught them, in a hundred of instances, that he was resolved to be master. And yet, in doing this, he showed such tact, he was so gentle while so determined, his measures were so wise, and the benefits resulting from them so evident to all, that he forced these colonists, even whilst murmuring against him, to admit in their reasonable moods, that he was the wisest, gentlest, and best of governors, the only man who could have induced them to forego their old habits of indolence and sloth. By his own personal teaching — whether as regarded the merest rudiments or the higher requirements of agriculture — the first principles of mechanical labour or the acquirements of the skilled artisan ; by constantly impressing on the minds of these people the absolute necessity under which they lay to work, he succeeded