It is now time to take a view of the political and commercial aspect of Bourbon. By the Revolu tionists it was called Reunion ; but this name, which was never fully established among us, may be now supposed to have again given place to its ancient appellation. The Island is divided into eleven pa rishes, St Denis; containing the capital of that name, St Marie, St Susanne, St Andre, St Be noit, St Rose, St Joseph, St Pierre de la Riviere d'A bord, St Louis du Gaul, St Leo, and St Paul, St Denis can scarcely be called a city ; the streets resemble roads in the country, being covered with grass and sand, under which are often concealed sharp pointed stones, which inflict severe wounds on the feet. The houses are built of wood, and are agreeable ; they are constructed entirely with a view to coolness. The furniture is slender, and many of the room not even carpeted ; a deficiency not arising from absolute poverty, but from the difficulty, in this remote situation, of procuring the artificial con veniences of life. The houses in the country are of a peculiar construction, very long, very narrow, and tapering to a point.
The Island is distinguished into the windward and leeward sides ; of which the former, descending by a gentle slope, and refreshed by continual breezes, is fertile and smiling ; while the latter is compara tively rude, dry, and barren. The torrents, conti nually washing away the soil, are supposed to aug ment the sterility. Only a narrow slope, about a league and a half inward from the sea, is under re gular' The interior consists of immense forests, inhabited by a species of fugitive Mulattoes, who live almost in a state of nature. The reports as to the amount of the population are very various.
M. Bory understood it, in 1763, to contain 4000 whites, and 15,000 slaves, and supposes that they have not much increased since that time ; but the narrator of the expedition 4n 1811 gives the numbers then at 16,400 Europeans, 8496 free negroes, and 60,450 slaves. The precision of the numbers seems to indicate an actual enumeration.
The staple production of this Island is coffee. The first plants were early brought from Arabia, and soon flourished to such a degree, that the coffee of Bourbon was only second to that produced in the parent district. During the Revolution, the want of a regular market, by diminishing the encouragement to carefW cultivation, sensibly lowered the quality. It is still, however, produced in large quantity. Next to it ranks the article of cloves. The clove-tree is of very easy cultivation ; the chief disadvantage is the precariousness of the produce. It has been known in one year to yield only 1000 lbs., and in the next 500,000 lbs. Cotton, likewise, has been long a staple of the bland ; but a violent hurricane in 1801, and a disease which afterwards made its ap pearance among the plants, discouraged a number of the planters, who as began tg employ their lands in the 4Adture of 1,488,800 piastres'.
The imports consist of a great variety of European goods, the regular amount of which is stated at 280,000 piastres, besides a large contraband. Bour bon labours under the serious disadvantage of not possessing a single harbour, nor any roadstead in which vessels can ride with safety. The trade, therefore, can be conducted only through the me-' dium of Mauritius, and is entirely in the hands of the merchants of that Island. (a.)