Mauritius

Mauritius, or Isle of France (372), a volcanic island in the Indian Ocean, 550 m. E. of Madagascar, as large as Caithness, with mountains 3000 feet high, a tableland in the centre, and many short streams; the climate is cool in winter, hot in the rainy season, and subject to cyclones; formerly well wooded, the forests have been cut down to make room for sugar, coffee, maize, and rice plantations; sugar is the main export; the population is very mixed; African and Eastern races predominate; descendants of French settlers and Europeans number 110,000; discovered by the Portuguese in 1510, they abandoned it 90 years later; the Dutch held it for 112 years, and abandoned it in turn; occupied by the French in 1721, it was captured by Britain in 1810, and is now, with some other islands, a crown colony, under a governor and council. Port Louis (62), on the NW., is the capital, and a British naval coaling station.

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)

Mauritania * Maury, Abbé
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Maunday-Thursday
Maupassant, Guy de
Maupeou
Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau de
Maur, St.
Maurepas
Maurice, Frederick Denison
Maurice of Nassau
Maurists
Mauritania
Mauritius
Maury, Abbé
Maury, Matthew Fontaine
Mausole`um
Mausolus
Max Müller, Friedrich
Maxim, Hiram S.
Maxim Gun
Maximilian, Ferdinand Joseph
Maximilian I.
Maxwell, James Clerk

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Agathias
Barlæus, Gaspard
Boscawen, Right Hon. Edward
James, Sir William
Nicephorus, St.