[^0]
[^0]:    6 Teduigh, Rolle waarbij pertinent aangewesen werd boedanig 's E. comp: dienaren lijffeigenenen gecondem neerdens in de goutmijnen bescheijden aan de werken verdeelt sijn, s.l., 4 December 1691. NA, VOC/8495, f. 229 .  
7 Anonymous, Extract from a census of the Mascarene Islands, s.l. 1787-88. ANOM, Depository of public records from the colonies (DPPC), G1/505, s.f.
8 Letter from Van Diemen to Heeren XVII, 12 December 1642. NA, VOC/1047, f. 70. It should be observed that Cauche mentions the passage of a Dutch slave ship at Sainte-Luce in 1640, but this is likely to have been part of the same expedition. Morisot 1651, pp. 22-23.
9 Leibbrandt, 1896, pp. 48-50; Vaughan, 2005, pp. 9-19; Letter from Diodati to the Cape, Mauritius, 30 September 1695.  
The French retook the island some years later and renamed it Île de France (Isle of France). From a very early stage, the French too were under threat from deserters: in 1723, nineteen of the sixty-five enslaved people who disembarked from the Ruby deserted, and by 1725 there were equal numbers of enslaved people and deserters. ${ }^{10}$ As Turpetin, a priest from the diocese of Orléans, France, observed at the time:  
There are presently forty or fifty negro deserters who have taken negresses with them and are growing in number, being familiar with all the most secluded locations on the island, committing all kinds of crimes and even attacking the guard force and their quarters; these are almost all negroes owned by the Company, who have escaped to the forest one by one, and are now a source of considerable disruption (Turpetin's voyage, 1725-1726. BNF, Arsenal/3552, s.f.).  
Some ten years later, the maroon chief Sans Souci launched unrelenting attacks against the French. The colonists might have been the victims of the maroons' descendants. ${ }^{11}$