After the advent of the first balch of Indians in Natal as contract laborers on the sugar plantations, ii took some years before the first Indian traders reached South Africa. Perhaps or. ,interesting feature of the flow of Indians as traders is that they first came from Mauritius. They had, of course, been settled in that island for many generations. having been connected, as it were, with those important trading voyages which adventurous Indians made along the East Coast of lhe continent further north.