Mauritius is a planned destination in the overseas journey undertaken by the Babel students, significant less as a fully visited setting than as a point where the expedition’s imperial geography, language politics, and instability become visible. It is named alongside Canton and Macau as part of a route that links Babel’s academic training to the wider colonial world.

Place in the Itinerary

Mauritius appears in the students’ projected return voyage from China. Robin Swift says that they are more likely to be sent somewhere like Mauritius and suggests that Letitia Price and Victoire Desgraves could make use of their French there. The remark places Mauritius within Babel’s practical deployment of linguistic skill: the students are not merely studying languages for intellectual distinction, but are being prepared for assignments distributed across the British imperial network.

The official itinerary later specifies that the students will spend three weeks in China, divided between two weeks in Canton and one week in Macau, before stopping in Mauritius for ten days on the journey home. The notice describes the destinations as temperate and warns them to bring thick coats because the sea voyage may be chilly. Mauritius is therefore presented as a scheduled stage of a tightly organized circuit rather than as an independent destination chosen by the students themselves.

Linguistic Complexity

Mauritius also introduces a problem of linguistic comparison. Letitia Price asks whether Mauritian Creole is anything like Haitian Creole, and Victoire explains that both are French-based but may not be mutually intelligible. She identifies different grammatical influences, noting that Haitian Creole takes cues from Fon, while Mauritian Creole cannot be readily consulted through a Grammatica because no such reference work is available to them.

This exchange makes Mauritius important to Babel’s conception of translation. Shared linguistic ancestry does not guarantee understanding, and the absence of a Grammatica exposes the limits of the students’ formal tools. Their training depends on classification, comparison, and documented knowledge, yet Mauritius represents a linguistic environment that resists easy entry into those systems. The island thus becomes a reminder that colonial language work encounters living, hybrid speech rather than only the stable structures of textbooks.

Disruption of the Journey

The planned visit is overtaken by a sudden change in circumstances. After Professor Richard Linton Lovell confronts Robin Swift and orders the students to gather their belongings, he tells them that the Hellas is waiting in the bay. When Letitia Price points out that they are supposed to go to Macau next, Professor Richard Linton Lovell replies that the situation has changed and that early passage back to England has been booked.

The altered order of travel means that the students are recalled before the itinerary can proceed as announced. Mauritius consequently remains both destination and absence: it belongs to the plan they were given, but the emergency return interrupts the route through which that plan was meant to unfold. The change also reveals how little control the students possess over their movements. Their education and assignments may be presented as orderly and prestigious, yet their actual travel is subject to decisions made above them and to circumstances they are not told.

Memory and Aftermath

When the students return, Billings refers to their voyage as a journey involving Canton and Mauritius and asks whether they saw local ceremonies or were fed anything unusual. His questions frame the trip through the superficial language of travel and imperial curiosity, while the students respond with uncertainty about what can safely be said; Letitia Price begins to cry rather than offer an account.

Mauritius therefore carries an afterlife beyond its geographical appearance. It is remembered as part of an expedition whose official description cannot contain the students’ experience. The contrast between Billings’s cheerful questions and Letitia’s tears exposes the distance between the voyage as institutional itinerary and the voyage as lived event. Mauritius remains a named stop in the public story of their return, but its presence is shadowed by what the students cannot or will not disclose.