108 THE RISE OF THE FRENCH POWER IN INDIA. c hap. Portugal — an appointment carrying with it several orders and titles. La Bourdonnais accepted the offer, 1746. and made an expedition to Mozambique, and several cruises in the Indian seas. But the situation of a foreigner in the service of another country can never be wholly satisfactory, and at the end of two years La Bourdonnais found that the annoyances to which he was constantly subjected were not compensated by either the pleasure or profit of his command. He therefore threw it up and returned in 1733 to France. There he married, and, in 1735, he was appointed to succeed M. Dumas as Governor of the Isles of France and Bourbon. 1710. To understand all that La Bourdonnais accomplished in his new position, it is necessary that we should refer to the connexion of the French with those islands from the time of their earliest occupation. We have already* given a brief sketch of their history from their first discovery by the Portuguese to the occupation of Bour- bon by a small number of the baffled colonists of Madagascar in 1672, and the settlement in the Isle of France at some period between 1710 and 1719. It is probable, that the remnants of the Madagascar colonists, never much caring for labour on its own account, would, had they been able, have taken an early opportunity of leaving an island, in which they seemed entirely cut off from association with the outer world. But they had escaped — a mixed crew of men and women — the latter, it is stated, being natives — in two canoes, and they had no means of proceeding in any direction. They betook themselves therefore perforce to the erection of huts, and to the cultivation of articles of food. Fortunately the nature of the soil was such that a very small expenditure of labour was sufficient to enable them to live in abundance. Soon after, their numbers were increased by the wreck upon their coast of a piratical
- Chapter I.
