Le Morne

The palm-fringed beach of the Le Morne Brabant peninsula, in the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, is a tropical idyll with a tragic past. Its eponymous basalt monolith was a refuge for escaped slaves. Upon the abolition of slavery in 1835, it is said that British police sent to relay the news were misinterpreted as a punitive mission and the inhabitants chose to leap to their deaths rather than face recapture. Today the area is a UNESCO site and an integral part of the Mauritian weltanschauung.