Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/310

 drawback to all enjoyment, and few parties who have spent one season there, would willingly spend another. It is therefore very little frequented by officers from India, however much it may be prized by residents of the island.

2. MAURITIUS.—This has long been a favourite spot and the grand advantage is, that when the weather is hottest in India it is coolest there, its winter prevailing when it is summer in India. I believe no change during six months' leave could be better than a voyage to it and back; with the intermediate time spent on the island. Each voyage requires about a month to accomplish it. Invalids should take a couple of servants, four months' supplies, and their usual camp equipage, and engage a small house in the environs of Port Louis; a horse or a buggy is not much required where every one walks on foot and at all hours of the day. There are good hotels here,but enormously expensive and beyond the means of a subaltern. The island abounds in the most picturesque scenery, where the forest, the waterfall, the cane-covered slope and the craggy mist-shrouded mountain mingle in happiest combination. The temperature, especially during winter,is most congenial, constantly ventilated by the S.E. trade wind and varied by sunshine and shower. In the hot season many residents ascend to Plain Williams, where even in summer the