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54 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. CHAr. in. town during the early part of the day; and the inhabitants here also present an equal diversity of costume and character. Arab, Parsee, Bengalee or Chinese merchants, or traders from Muscat or Bombay, Tranquebar, Pondicherry, Madras, or Calcutta, Singapore or Canton; with English and French mer chants and sailors; English military; the local police, wearing the same uniform as that of London, excepting that the tops of their hats are covered with white canvas instead of glazed oilskin, and the Indian police with their white robes and tur bans, and broad blue sashes or belts; the Arabian or Indian hawkers of the produce of their respective countries, and the Creoles of Africa or Madagascar, carrying large flat baskets of vegetables or fruit on their heads, and inviting custom for their goods in tones more attractive than the cries of London; ' —all these, and many others, may be met with in a short walk through some parts of the town, or found gathered round a public auction, of which there are at times several in a day; and the language of all these different nations may also at times be heard, though French is perhaps the most common. Few places, perhaps, of equally limited extent present a population so perfectly cosmopolitan as that of Port Louis. The streets of the town, which are many of them wide, cross each other at right angles, and are in some parts cooled by water-courses, and shaded by trees. The houses of the mer chants and more respectable inhabitants are good, being generally spacious and substantial stone buildings, chiefly after the French style. The large stone-walled warehouses are often delightfully cool in the middle of the day. Many of the inferior dwellings are of wood, and often stand de tached, even in the streets, which may probably prevent fires from proving so fearfully destructive as might otherwise be the case. The shops are of almost every imaginable kind, from the well-furnished English store to the little box-like room in which a Malabar or a Creole offers cigars or tobacco for sale. Many of the shops are well fitted up and furnished,