Above all, Chamarel is the story of a family, as is so often the case in different parts of the island. The estate stretches over several thousand acres and regroups various parcels of land with evocative names like Le Nuage, Eden, Cachette and even Coin du Mouchoir (The Cloud, Eden, Hiding-place and Corner of a handkerchief). It was the father-in-law, Jean Lousteau, a notary in Ile de France, the French name for Mauritius, who bought the land when he was looking for land concessions for a countess, Françoise de Noailles. In 1786, he left Le Nuage, a land concession of 650 acres, to his two sons-in-law, Toussaint and Charles Antoine, who gave it the Chamarel name. Their father, who died in 1772, had been a career officer in the army, who had landed in Ile de France in 1770. The first settler in the family, in 1763 and at the age of 25, was their uncle, François de Chazal de la Geneste, who had previously spent several years in the French East India Company. Member of the Supreme Council of the Ile de France, he obtained many land concessions, especially at Ripailles and Crève Coeur. As a naturalist, he also introduced several utilitarian plants.

Charles de Chazal was sent to Paris in 1787, but in view of the threats posed by the Revolution, decided to return to Ile de France in 1791. He spent some time on his uncle's lands, before acquiring the Nuage estate and setting up a business commercialising wood and shingles, which he supplied to the state. With his legal knowledge and his experience in foreign trade, he was one of those to prosper on the island, by then temporarily free of its French yolk. In fact, Mauritius was experiencing its first taste of a local and very ambitious government, that took full advantage of each and every local commercial opportunity. Ile de France armed the corsairs, who swelled their coffers from the raids that were part of their privateering activities. It was at this time, too, that paper money was introduced. De Chazal acquired the adjoining lands including Eden, Bouton des Mares and also Moka in order to build up his estate. In 1802, he built a road to link his lands to the sea, passing through Coteau Raffin. He devoted himself to growing coffee, cotton and even indigo, before branching out into sugar cane. However, in 1803, the colonial assemblies were dissolved and replaced by the imperial government. Ile de France became a veritable nest of corsairs and seriously threatened British interests in this part of the world, leading to the British acquisition of the island in 1810. A few years later, Charles de Chazal decided to return to France with his family, having amassed a sizeable fortune and consolidated his lands. Was his departure linked to the signing of the Treaty of Paris officially ceding Ile de France to the British? Was it because of doubts and concerns about the future of the island that had passed into foreign hands? Or was it rather the prospect of inheriting La Sablonni&eagrave;re from his uncle, who died in France in June 1815? Even though, in a letter to his brother, he announced his intention of returning to Mauritius, he never set foot there again and died in France in 1829.

A factory on the mountain top In 1844-045, Jeanne Amélie de Chazal de Chamarel returned to the country that she had left thirty years before and renewed the rights to all her father's lands. Her husband built the first sugar factory in the region, but the financial crisis that affected the small sugar estates did not spare Chamarel and Jeanne Amélie resigned herself to selling her lands before she died at the Bon Secours convent in Port Louis. Nor did Chamarel escape the wave of morcellements, the dividing of lands into smaller units. Even the village of Chamarel would find itself on a land concession that was divided up in the 1840s, after the death of François Maissin at La Montagne. The estate was spared, however, from the dividing up of the agricultural lands for the benefit of the labourers, in the 1880s. No one was very bothered about giving them the privilege of becoming small landowners. In 1881, the property was seized by the Crédit Foncier, and subsequently purchased by Charles Edward Duffield. There was "then the factory, the inhabitants, a hospital and a school," the main house with its shingle roof and the camp for the 350 indented labourers. There were also mules and cattle and 21 train wagons. At the time, the sugar cane fields covered some 850 acres, of which some 340 were at Chamarel itself, including 9 acres of vanilla. In 1888, it was sold to The Oriental Bank Corporation Ltd and sold on again, in 1891, to the British company, Mauritius Estate and Assets. In 1894, the factory was completely renovated, the machinery for it being transported to the top of the mountain by carts, pulled by mules. This new beginning was short-lived and expectations died with the closure of the factory in 1897, meaning ruin for the poor and isolated neighbourhood and the local sugar workers. The estate was saved, however, from dismemberment. The village, that grew up on the fringes of the plantations in the 19th century, is occupied by the descendants of slaves, former apprentices and the descendants of labourers who worked on the sugar cane plantations, and in particular a small Marathi community which had installed itself there.

Agriculture The rugged nature of the landscape, and the particular microclimate, gave rise to various attempts to exploit the land. It was mixed farming that imposed itself rather than sugar cane. A small area of coffee could be found here, there a vanilla plantation with a banana plantation next to it - plants which had not acclimatised to the flat landscape of the plains and the plateaus. The diversity of the landscape has always meant activities and a way of life different to that of elsewhere in the island. Nevertheless, even here, the major planting cycles followed one after the other: subsistence crops, coffee, vanilla, cotton and indigo, sugar cane and, more recently, tea and bananas. Sugar cane research led to an increase in sugar cane planting to the detriment of other, less profitable crops, and especially due to its resistance to cyclones. Due to its isolation and inaccessibility, major works had had to be carried out on the plantations and, meanwhile, slaves and their descendants had been replaced with indented labourers from India. They came particularly from Maharashtra. The rural Marathi population wove historic links with the plantations and helped to found the villages, where they lived perfectly happily alongside the descendants of the former slaves, in this south-western part of the island. The fringes of the estate were, at one time, safe havens for runaway slaves. But the mountainous area was also a refuge when epidemics hit the hot coastal regions. There are few, if any, remains. Low-altitude cotton and the little cotton factory at Case Noyale have disappeared from the landscape. The more recent culture of tea has been abandoned. Indigo disappeared here as elsewhere on the island. The forests mainly supplied wood for making shingles and tiles for the roofs of houses, which may explain the absence today of large, established trees and the profusion of plants such as the voyager tree. Soil erosion and the loss of fertility in the soil defeated the tea and sugar cane. It is mainly coffee and its processing plant, as well as the vanilla plantations, that have survived the wave of changes in the agricultural cycles. In fact, Chamarel is one of the rare estates to have resisted some of the winds of change. Today the land is still largely given over to agriculture with pineapple and banana plantations, palm groves and fruit orchards, as well as animal farming, especially of deer. Chamarel is perfect for walks in the countryside before stopping at the site of the seven-coloured earth, for the restaurants that offer superb panoramic views and the houses where you can have a meal and a taste of genuine Mauritian hospitality.