Then from this little flowery paradise of rest and quietness we went across the road to another enclosure in which there were two long, white buildings, a prison and a row of offices, at right angles to each other. This was the “bad” side. On the other there had been invalids and invalid lunatics; here there were only lunatics, and mostly dangerous at that—men who, after being criminals, had become madmen; not like the dwellers in Broadmoor, who are only criminal because they are mad.

I once paid a visit to the worst part of the men’s side at Broadmoor, but I don’t think it was quite as bad as the long corridor which led through that gruesome home of madness. On either hand were heavy black-painted, iron doors, and inside these a hinged grating through which the prisoner could be fed.

The cells were about nine feet by six feet. They had neither furniture nor bedclothes in them. The furniture would have been smashed up either in sheer wanton destruction or for use as missiles to hurl through the grating, and the bedclothes would have been torn up into strips for hanging or strangling purposes.

It has been my good or bad luck to see poor humanity in a good many shapes and guises, but I never saw such a series of pitiful parodies of manhood as I saw when those cell doors were opened.

Some were crouched down in the corners of their cells, muttering to themselves and picking the sacking in which they were clothed to pieces, thread by thread. It was no use giving them regular prison clothing, for they would pick themselves naked in a couple of days. Others were walking up and down the narrow limits of their cells, staring with horribly vacant eyes at the roof or the floor, and not taking the slightest notice of us.

One man was lying down scraping with bleeding fingers at the black asphalted floor under the impression that he was burrowing his way to freedom; others were sitting or lying on the floor motionless as death; and others sprang at the bars like wild beasts the moment the door was opened.

But the most horrible sight I saw during that very bad quarter of an hour was a gaunt-faced, square-built man of middle-height who got up out of a corner as his cell door opened, and stood in the middle facing us.

He never moved a muscle, or winked an eyelid. His eyes looked at us with the steady, burning stare of hate and ferocity. His lips were drawn back from his teeth like the lips of an ape in a rage, and his hands were half clenched like claws. The man was simply the incarnation of madness, savagery, and despair. He had gone mad in the Black Cell, and the form that his madness had taken was the belief that nothing would nourish him but human flesh. Of course he had to be fed by force.

When we got outside a big warder pulled up his jumper and showed me the marks of two rows of human teeth in his side. If another man hadn’t stunned the poor wretch with the butt of his revolver he would have bitten the piece clean out—after which I was glad when the Doctor suggested that I should go to his quarters and have a drink with him.

V
A CONVICT ARCADIA

I visited two or three other industrial camps and the farm-settlements before I left Ile Nou, but as I had yet to go through the agricultural portions of the colony it would be no use taking up space in describing them here.

There are practically no roads to speak of in New Caledonia outside a short strip of the south-western coast. In September, 1863, Napoleon the Little signed the decree which converted the virgin paradise of New Caledonia into a hell of vice and misery—a description which is perhaps somewhat strong, but which history has amply justified. In the following year the transport Iphigénie took a cargo of two hundred and forty-eight galley-slaves from Toulon and landed them where the town of Noumea now stands. This consignment was added to by rapidly following transports, and for thirty years at least the administration of New Caledonia has had at its disposal an average of from seven to ten thousand able-bodied criminals for purposes of general improvement, and more especially for the preparation of the colony for that free colonisation which has been the dream of so many ministers and governors.

Now the area of New Caledonia is, roughly speaking, between six thousand and seven thousand square miles, and after an occupation of nearly forty years it has barely fifty miles of roads over which a two-wheeled vehicle can be driven, and these are only on the south-western side of the island.

The only one of any consequence is that running from Noumea to Bouloupari, a distance of about thirty miles. At Bourail, which is the great agricultural settlement, there are about twelve miles of road and a long ago abandoned railway bed. Between La Foa and Moindou there is another road about as long; but both are isolated by miles of mountain and bush from each other and are therefore of very little general use.

One has only to contrast them with the magnificent coach roads made in a much shorter space of time through the far more difficult Blue Mountain district in New South Wales to see the tremendous difference between the British and the French ideas of colonisation, to say nothing of the railways—two thousand seven hundred miles—and thirty-three thousand miles of telegraph lines.

The result of this scarcity of roads and absolute absence of railways is that when you want to go from anywhere to anywhere else in New Caledonia you have to take the Service des Côtes, which for dirt, discomfort, slowness, and total disregard of the convenience of passengers I can only compare to the Amalgamated Crawlers presently known as the South-Eastern and Chatham Railways. Like them, it is, of course, a monopoly, wherefore if you don’t like to go by the boats you can either swim or walk.

The whole of New Caledonia is surrounded by a double line of exceedingly dangerous reefs, cut here and there by “passes,” one of which Captain Cook failed to find, and so lost us one of the richest islands in the world. The navigable water both inside and outside the reefs is plentifully dotted with tiny coral islands and sunken reefs a yard or so below the surface and always growing, hence navigation is only possible between sunrise and sunset. There is only one lighthouse in all Caledonia.

Thus, when I began to make my arrangements for going to Bourail, I found that I should have to be on the wharf at the unholy hour of 4.30 a.m. I packed my scanty belongings overnight. At 4.15 the cab was at the door. The cochers of Noumea either work in relays or never go to sleep. I was just getting awake, and the gorged mosquitoes were still sleeping. I dressed and drank my coffee to the accompaniment of considerable language which greatly amused the copper-skinned damsel who brought the coffee up. She also never seemed to sleep.

Somehow I got down to the wharf, and presented myself at the douannerie with my “Certificat de Santé,” which I had got from the hospital the previous evening. The doctor in charge gave me a look over, and countersigned it. Then I went with my luggage into an outer chamber. My bag and camera-cases were squirted with phenic acid from a machine which looked like a cross between a garden hose and a bicycle foot-pump. Then I had to unbutton my jacket, and go through the same process. The rest of the passengers did the same, and then we started in a strongly smelling line for the steamer.

As we went on board we gave up our bills of health, after which we were not permitted to land again under penalty of forfeiting the passage and being disinfected again. Our luggage now bore yellow labels bearing the legend, “colis désinfecté,” signed by the medical inspector. These were passed on to the ships by Kanakas, who freely went and came, and passed things to and from the ship without hindrance. As Kanakas are generally supposed to be much better carriers of the plague than white people, our own examination and squirting seemed a trifle superfluous.

The steamer was the St. Antoine, which may be described as the Campania of the Service des Côtes. Until I made passages on one of her sister-ships—to be hereafter anathematised—I didn’t know how bad a French colonial passenger-boat could be. Afterwards I looked back to her with profound regret and a certain amount of respect; wherefore I will not say all that I thought of her during the eleven hours that she took to struggle over the sixty-odd miles from Noumea to Bourail.

There is no landing-place at the port of Bourail, save for boats, so, after the usual medical inspection was over and I had made myself known to the doctor, I went ashore in his boat. The Commandant was waiting on the shore with his carriage. I presented my credentials, and then came the usual consommations, which, being literally interpreted, is French for mixed drinks, after which we drove off to the town of Bourail, eight kilometres away. As we were driving down the tree-arched road I noticed half a dozen horsewomen seated astride à la Mexicaine, with gaily coloured skirts flowing behind.

“Ah,” I said, “do your ladies here ride South American fashion?”

“My dear sir,” he replied, “those are not ladies. They are daughters of convicts, born here in Bourail, and reared under the care of our paternal government! But that is all stopped now, later on you will see why.”

“Yes,” I said, “I have heard that you have given up trying to make good colonists out of convict stock.”

“Yes,” he replied; “and none too soon, as you will see.”

From which remark I saw that I had to do with a sensible man, so I straightway began to win his good graces by telling him stories of distant lands, for he was more of a Fleming than a Frenchman, and was therefore able to rise to the conception that there are other countries in the world besides France.

I found Bourail a pretty little township, consisting of one street and a square, in the midst of which stood the church, and by dinner-time I found myself installed in a little hotel which was far cleaner and more comfortable than anything I had seen in Noumea, except the club. When I said good-night to the Commandant, he replied:

“Good-night, and sleep well. You needn’t trouble to lock your door. We are all criminals here, but there is no crime.”

Which I subsequently found to be perfectly true.

Everything in New Caledonia begins between five and half-past, unless you happen to be starting by a steamer, and then it’s earlier. My visit to Bourail happened to coincide with a governmental inspection, and early coffee was ordered for five o’clock. That meant that one had to get tubbed, shaved, and dressed, and find one’s boots a little before five. Bar the Black Death, I disliked New Caledonia mostly on account of its early hours. No civilised persons, with the exception of milkmen and criminals under sentence of death, ought to be obliged to get up before nine.

Still, there was only one bath in the place, and I wanted to be first at it, so I left my blind up, and the sun awoke me.

I got out of bed and went on to the balcony, and well was I rewarded even for getting up at such an unrighteous hour. The night before it had been cloudy and misty, but now I discovered with my first glance from the verandah that I had wandered into something very like a paradise.

I saw that Bourail stood on the slope of a range of hills, and looked out over a fertile valley which was dominated by a much higher range to the north-east. The sun wasn’t quite up, and neither were the officers of the Commission, so I went for my bath. There were no mosquitos in Bourail just then, and I had enjoyed for once the luxury of an undisturbed sleep. The water, coming from the hills, was delightfully cool, and I came back feeling, as they say between New York and San Francisco, real good.

The Commission, for some reason or other, did not get up before breakfast-time (11.30), and so we got a good start of them. The Commandant had the carriage round by six o’clock, and, after the usual consommations, we got away. It was a lovely morning, the only one of the sort I saw in Bourail, for the next day the clouds gathered and the heavens opened, and down came the floods and made everything but wading and swimming impossible; but this was a day of sheer delight and great interest.

We drove over the scene of a great experiment which, I fear, is destined to fail badly. The province of Bourail is the most fertile in all Caledonia, wherefore in the year 1869 it was chosen by the paternal French Government as the Arcadia of the Redeemed Criminal. The Arcadia is undoubtedly there, the existence of the redeemed criminal struck me as a little doubtful.

As soon as we got under way I reverted to the young ladies we had seen on horseback the evening before.

“You shall see the houses of their parents,” said the Commandant; “and afterwards you will see the school where the younger ones are being educated. For example,” he went on, pointing down the street we were just crossing, “all those shops and little stores are kept by people who have been convicts, and most of them are doing a thriving trade. Yonder,” he said, waving his hand to the right, “is the convicts’ general store, the Syndicat de Bourail. It was founded by a convict, the staff are convicts, and the customers must be convicts. It is what you would call in English a Convict Co-operative Store. It is managed by scoundrels of all kinds, assassins, thieves, forgers, and others. I have to examine the books every three months, and there is never a centime wrong. That is more than most of the great establishments in Sydney could say, is it not?”

I made a non-committal reply, and said:

“Set a thief to catch a thief, or watch him.”

“Exactly! There is no other business concern in Caledonia which is managed with such absolute honesty as this is. I should be sorry for the man who tried to cheat the management.”

I knew enough of Caledonian society by this time to see that it would not be good manners to press the question any further. Afterwards I had an interview with the manager of the syndicate, an estimable and excellently conducted forger, who had gained his rémission and was doing exceedingly well for himself and his wife, who, I believe, had blinded somebody with vitriol, and was suspected of dropping her child into the Seine.

He presented me with a prospectus of the company, which showed that it had started with a government loan of a few hundred francs, and now had a reserve fund of nearly forty thousand francs. He was a patient, quiet-spoken, hard-working man who never let a centime go wrong, and increased his personal profits by selling liquors at the back door.

Our route lay across the broad valley which is watered by the River Nera. On either side the ground rose gently into little hillocks better described by the French word collines and on each of these, usually surrounded by a grove of young palms and a dozen acres or so of vineyards, orchards, manioc, plantain, or maize, stood a low, broad-verandahed house, the residence of the redeemed criminal.

I could well have imagined myself driving through a thriving little colony of freemen in some pleasant tropical island upon which the curse of crime had never descended, and I said so to the Commandant.

“Yes,” he said, “it looks so, doesn’t it? Now, you see that house up there to the left, with the pretty garden in front. The man who owns that concession was a hopeless scoundrel in France. He finished up by murdering his wife after he had lived for years on the wages of her shame. Of course, the jury found extenuating circumstances. He was transported for life, behaved himself excellently, and in about seven years became a concessionnaire.

“He married a woman who had poisoned her husband. They have lived quite happily together, and bring up their children most respectably.”

I was too busy thinking to reply, and he went on, pointing to the right:

“Then, again, up there to the right—that pretty house on the hill surrounded by palms. The man who owns that was once a cashier at the Bank of France. He was a ‘faussaire de première classe,’ and he swindled the bank out of three millions of francs before they found him out. He was sent here for twenty years. After eight he was given a concession and his wife and family voluntarily came out to him. You see, nothing was possible for the wife and children of a convict forger in Paris. Here they live happily on their little estate. No one can throw stones at them, and when they die the estate will belong to their children.”

“That certainly seems an improvement on our own system,” I said, remembering the piteous stories I had heard of the wives and families of English convicts, ruined through no fault of their own, and with nothing to hope for save the return of a felon husband and father into a world where it was almost impossible for him to live honestly.

“Yes,” he said; “I think so. Now, as we turn the corner you will see the house of one of our most successful colonists. There,” he said, as the wagonette swung round into a delightful little valley, “that house on the hillside, with the white fence round it, and the other buildings to the side. The owner of that place was a thief, a forger, and an assassin in Paris. He stole some bonds, and forged the coupons. He gave some of the money to his mistress, and found her giving it to some one else, so he stabbed her, and was sent here for life.

“He got his concession, and married a woman who had been sent out for infanticide, as most of them are here. If not that, it is generally poison. Well, now he is a respectable colonist and a prosperous farmer. He has about forty acres of ground well cultivated, as you see. He has thirty head of cattle and a dozen horses, mares, and foals, to say nothing of his cocks and hens and pigs. He supplies nearly the whole of the district with milk, butter, and eggs, and makes a profit of several thousand francs a year. I wish they were all like that!” he concluded, with a little sigh which meant a good deal.

“I wish we could do something like that with our hard cases,” I replied, “instead of turning them out into the streets to commit more crimes and beget more criminals. We know that crime is a contagious as well as an hereditary disease, and we not only allow it to spread, but we even encourage it as if we liked it.”

“It is a pity,” he said sympathetically, “for you have plenty of islands where you might have colonies like this. You do not need to punish them. Remove them, as you would remove a cancer or a tumour, and see that they do not come back. That is all. Society would be better, and so would they.”

I could not but agree with this since every turn of the road brought us to fresh proofs of the present success of the system, and then I asked again:

“But how do these people get their first start? One can’t begin farming like this without capital.”

“Oh no,” he said, “the Government does that. For the first few years, according to the industry and ability of the settler, these people cost us about forty pounds a year each, about what you told me it costs you to keep a criminal in prison. We give them materials for building their houses, tools, and agricultural implements, six months’ provisions, and seed for their first harvest. After that they are left to themselves.

“If they cannot make their farm pay within five years or so they lose everything; the children are sent to the convent, and the husband and wife must hire themselves out as servants either to other settlers or to free people. If they do succeed the land becomes absolutely theirs in ten years. If they have children they can leave it to them, or, if they prefer, they can sell it.

“Some, for instance, have got their rehabilitation, their pardon, and restoration of civil rights. They have sold their farms and stock and gone back to France to live comfortably. Their children are, of course, free, though the parents may not leave the colony without rehabilitation. After breakfast I will take you down the street of Bourail, and introduce you to some who have done well in trade, and to-morrow or next day you can see what we do with the children.”

VI
SOME HUMAN DOCUMENTS

Society in Bourail, although in one sense fairly homogeneous, is from another point of view distinctly mixed. Here, for example, are a few personal items which I picked up during our stroll down the main and one street of the village.

First we turned into a little saddler’s shop, the owner of which once boasted the privilege of making the harness for Victor Emmanuel’s horses. Unfortunately his exuberant abilities were not content even with such distinction as this, and so he deviated into coining, with the result of hard labour for life. After a few years his good conduct gained him a remission of his sentence, and in due course he became a concessionnaire. His wife, who joined him after his release, is one of the aristocrats of this stratum of Bourailian society.

There is quite a little romance connected with this estimable family. When Madame came out she brought her two daughters with her. Now the elder of these had been engaged to a young man employed at the Ministry of Colonies, and he entered the colonial service by accepting a clerkship at Noumea. The result was naturally a meeting, and the fulfilment of the proverb which says that an old coal is easily rekindled. The engagement broken off by the conviction was renewed, and the wedding followed in due course. The second daughter married a prosperous concessionnaire, and the ex-coiner, well established, and making plenty of properly minted money, has the satisfaction of seeing the second generation of his blood growing up in peace and plenty about him. Imagine such a story as this being true of an English coiner!

A little further on, on the left hand side, is a little lending library, and cabinet de lecture. This is kept by a very grave and dignified-looking man, clean-shaven, and keen-featured, and with the manners of a French Chesterfield. “That man’s a lawyer,” I said to the Commandant, as we left the library. “What is he doing here?”

“You are right. At least, he was a lawyer once, doing well, and married to a very nice woman; but he chose to make himself a widower, and that’s why he’s here. The old story, you know.”

Next door was a barber’s shop kept by a most gentle-handed housebreaker. He calls himself a “capillary artist,” shaves the officials and gendarmerie, cuts the hair of the concessionnaires, and sells perfumes and soaps to their wives and daughters. He also is doing well.

A few doors away from him a liberé has an establishment which in a way represents the art and literature of Bourail. He began with ten years for forgery and embezzlement. Now he takes photographs and edits, and, I believe, also writes the Bourail Indépendent. As a newspaper for ex-convicts and their keepers, the title struck me as somewhat humorous.

Nearly all branches of trade were represented in that little street. But these may be taken as fairly representative samples of the life-history of those who run them. First, crime at home; then transportation and punishment; and then the effort to redeem, made in perfect good faith by the Government, and, so far as these particular camps and settlements are concerned, with distinct success in the present.

Unhappily, however, the Government is finding out already that free and bond colonists will not mix. They will not even live side by side, wherefore either the whole system of concessions must be given up, or the idea of colonising one of the richest islands in the world with French peasants, artisans, and tradesmen must be abandoned.

Later on in the afternoon we visited the Convent, which is now simply a girls’-school under the charge of the Sisters of St. Joseph de Cluny. A few years ago this convent was perhaps the most extraordinary matrimonial agency that ever existed on the face of the earth. In those days it was officially styled, “House of Correction for Females.” The sisters had charge of between seventy and eighty female convicts, to some of whom I shall be able to introduce you later on in the Isle of Pines, and from among these the bachelor or widower convict, who had obtained his provisional release and a concession, was entitled to choose a bride to be his helpmeet on his new start in life. The method of courtship was not exactly what we are accustomed to consider as the fruition of love’s young or even middle-aged dream.

After Mass on a particular Sunday the prospective bridegroom was introduced to a selection of marriageable ladies, young and otherwise. Of beauty there was not much, nor did it count for much. What the convict-cultivator wanted, as a rule, was someone who could help him to till his fields, look after live-stock, and get in his harvests.

When he had made his first selection the lady was asked if she was agreeable to make his further acquaintance. As a rule, she consented, because marriage meant release from durance vile. After that came the queerest courtship imaginable.

About fifty feet away from the postern door at the side of the Convent there still stands a little octagonal kiosk of open trellis-work, which is completely overlooked by the window of the Mother Superior’s room. Here each Sunday afternoon the pair met to get acquainted with each other and discuss prospects.

Meanwhile the Mother Superior sat at her window, too far away to be able to hear the soft nothings which might or might not pass between the lovers, but near enough to see that both behaved themselves. Along a path, which cuts the only approach to the kiosk, a surveillant marched, revolver on hip and eye on the kiosk ready to respond to any warning signal from the Mother Superior.

As a rule three Sundays sufficed to bring matters to a happy consummation. The high contracting parties declared themselves satisfied with each other, and the wedding day was fixed, not by themselves, but by arrangement between those who had charge of them.

Sometimes as many as a dozen couples would be turned off together at the mairie, and then in the little church at the top of the market-place touching homilies would be delivered by the good old curé on the obvious subject of repentance and reform. A sort of general wedding feast was arranged at the expense of the paternal Government, and then the wedded assassins, forgers, coiners, poisoners, and child-murderers went to the homes in which their new life was to begin.

This is perhaps the most daring experiment in criminology that has ever been made. The Administration claimed success for it on the ground that none of the children of such marriages have ever been convicted of an offence against the law. Nevertheless, the Government have most wisely put a stop to this revolting parody on the most sacred of human institutions, and now wife-murderers may no longer marry poisoners or infanticides with full liberty to reproduce their species and have them educated by the State, to afterwards take their place as free citizens of the colony.

The next day we drove out to the College of the Marist Brothers. It is really a sort of agricultural school, in which from seventy to eighty sons of convict parents are taught the rudiments of learning and religion and the elements of agriculture.

During a conversation with the Brother Superior I stumbled upon a very curious and entirely French contradiction. I had noticed that families in New Caledonia were, as a rule, much larger than in France, and I asked if these were all the boys belonging to the concessionnaires of Bourail.

“Oh no!” he replied; “but, then, you see, we have no power to compel their attendance here. We can only persuade the parents to let them come.”

“But,” I said, “I understood that primary education was compulsory here as it is in France.”

“For the children of free people, yes,” he replied regretfully, and with a very soft touch of sarcasm, “but for these, no. The Administration has too much regard for the sanctity of parental authority.”

When the boys were lined up before us in the playground I saw about seventy-six separate and distinct reasons for the abolition of convict marriages. On every face and form were stamped the unmistakable brands of criminality, imbecility, moral crookedness, and general degeneration, not all on each one, but there were none without some.

Later on I started them racing and wrestling, scrambling and tree-climbing for pennies. They behaved just like monkeys with a dash of tiger in them, and I came away more convinced than ever that crime is a hereditary disease which can finally be cured only by the perpetual celibacy of the criminal. Yet in Bourail it is held for a good thing and an example of official wisdom that the children of convicts and of freemen shall sit side by side in the schools and play together in the playgrounds.

On our way home I was introduced to one of the most picturesque and interesting characters that I met in the colony. We pulled up at the top of a hill. On the right hand stood a rude cabin of mud and wattles thatched with palm-leaves, and out of this came to greet us a strange, half-savage figure, long-haired, long-bearded, hairy almost as a monkey on arms and legs and breast, but still with mild and intelligent features, and rather soft brown eyes, in which I soon found the shifting light of insanity.

Acting on a hint the Commandant had already given me, I got out and shook hands with this ragged, shaggy creature, who looked much more like a man who had been marooned for years on a far-away Pacific Island, than an inhabitant of this trim, orderly Penal Settlement. I introduced myself as a messenger from the Queen of England, who had come out for the purpose of presenting her compliments and inquiring after his health.

This was the Pole Berezowski, who more than thirty years ago fired a couple of shots into the carriage in which Napoleon III. and Alexander II. were driving up the Champs Elysées. He is perfectly harmless and well-behaved; quite contented, too, living on his little patch and in a world of dreams, believing that every foreigner who comes to Bourail is a messenger from some of the crowned heads of Europe, who has crossed the world to inquire after his welfare. Through me he sent a most courteous message to the Queen, which I did not have the honour of delivering.

That night the storm-clouds came over the mountains in good earnest, and I was forced to abandon my intention of returning to Noumea by road, since the said road would in a few hours be for the most part a collection of torrents, practically impassible, to say nothing of the possibility of a cyclone. There was nothing more to be seen or done, so I accepted the Commandant’s offer to drive me back to the port.

On the way he told me an interesting fact and an anecdote, both of which throw considerable light upon the convict’s opinion of the settlement of Bourail.

The fact was this: There are in New Caledonia a class of convicts who would be hard to find anywhere else. These are voluntary convicts, and they are all women. A woman commits a crime in France and suffers imprisonment for it. On her release she finds herself, as in England, a social outcast, with no means of gaining a decent living. Instead of continuing a career of crime, as is usually the case here, some of these women will lay their case before the Correctional Tribunal, and petition to be transported to New Caledonia, where they will find themselves in a society which has no right to point the finger of scorn at them.

As a rule the petition is granted, plus a free passage, unless the woman has friends who can pay. Generally the experiment turns out a success. The woman gets into service or a business, or perhaps marries a liberé or concessionnaire, and so wins her way back not only to respectability as it goes in Caledonia, but sometimes to comfort and the possession of property which she can leave to her children.

As a matter of fact, the proprietress of the little hotel at the port was one of these women. She had come out with a few hundred francs that her friends had subscribed. She now owns the hotel, which does an excellent business, a freehold estate of thirty or forty acres, and she employs fifteen Kanakas, half a dozen convicts, and a Chinaman—who is her husband, and works harder than any of them.

The anecdote hinged somewhat closely on the fact, and was itself a fact.

There is a weekly market at Bourail, to which the convict farmers bring their produce and such cows, horses, calves, etc., as they have to sell. Every two or three years their industry is stimulated and rewarded by the holding of an agricultural exhibition, and, as a rule, the Governor goes over to distribute the prizes. One of these exhibitions had been held, I regret to say, a short time before my arrival, and the Governor who has the work of colonisation very seriously at heart, made speeches both appropriate and affecting to the various winners as they came to receive their prizes.

At length a hoary old scoundrel, who had developed into a most successful stock-breeder, and had become quite a man of means, came up to receive his prizes from his Excellency’s hands. M. Feuillet, as usual, made a very nice little speech, congratulating him on the change in his fortunes, which, by the help of a paternal government, had transformed him from a common thief and vagabond to an honest and prosperous owner of property.

So well did his words go home that there were tears in the eyes of the reformed reprobate when he had finished, but there were many lips in the audience trying hard not to smile when he replied:

“Ah, oui, mon Gouverneur! if I had only known what good chances an unfortunate man has here I would have been here ten years before.”

What his Excellency really thought on the subject is not recorded.

The hotel was crowded that night for the steamer was to sail for Noumea, as usual, at five o’clock in the morning; but as Madame was busy she was kind enough to give up her own chamber to me; and so I slept comfortably to the accompaniment of a perfect bombardment of water on the corrugated iron roof. Others spread themselves on tables and floors as best they could, and paid for accommodation all the same.

By four o’clock one of those magical tropic changes had occurred, and when I turned out the moon was dropping over the hills to the westward, and Aurora was hanging like a huge white diamond in a cloudless eastern sky. The air was sweetly fresh and cool. There were no mosquitos, and altogether it was a good thing to be alive, for the time being at least.

Soon after the little convict camp at the port woke up. We had our early coffee, with a dash of something to keep the cold out, and I made an early breakfast on tinned beef and bread—convict rations—and both very good for a hungry man. Then came the news that the steamboat La France had tied up at another port to the northward on account of the storm, and would not put in an appearance until night, which made a day and another night to wait, as the coast navigation is only possible in daylight.

I naturally said things about getting up at four o’clock for nothing more than a day’s compulsory loafing, but I got through the day somehow with the aid of some fishing and yarning with the surveillants and the convicts, one of whom, a very intelligent Arab, told me, with quiet pride, the story of his escape from New Caledonia twelve years before.

He had got to Australia in an open boat, with a pair of oars, the branch of a tree for a mast and a shirt for a sail. He made his way to Europe, roamed the Mediterranean as a sailor for nine years, and then, at Marseilles, he had made friends with a man who turned out to be a mouchard. This animal, after worming his secret out of him under pledge of eternal friendship, earned promotion by giving him away, and so here he was for life.

He seemed perfectly content, but when I asked him what he would do with that friend if he had him in the bush for a few minutes, I was answered by a gleam of white teeth, a flash of black eyes, and a shake of the head, which, taken together, were a good deal more eloquent than words.

La France turned up that afternoon, so did the Commission of Inspection from Bourail with several other passengers. I was told that we should be crowded, but until I got on board in the dawn of the next morning I never knew how crowded a steamer could be.

I had travelled by many crafts under sail and steam from a south sea island canoe to an Atlantic greyhound, but never had the Fates shipped me on board such a craft as La France. She was an English-built cargo boat, about a hundred and thirty feet long, with engines which had developed sixty horse-power over twenty years ago. She had three cabins on each side of the dog-kennel that was called the saloon.

If she had been allowed to leave an English port at all she would have been licensed to carry about eight passengers aft and twenty on deck. On this passage she had twelve first-class, about fifteen second, and between fifty and sixty on deck, including twenty convicts and relégués on the forecastle, and a dozen hard cases in chains on the forehatch.

She also carried a menagerie of pigs, goats, sheep, poultry, geese, and ducks, which wandered at their own will over the deck-cargo which was piled up to the tops of her bulwarks. Her quarter-deck contained about twenty square feet, mostly encumbered by luggage. The second-class passengers had to dine here somehow. The first-class dined in the saloon in relays.

The food was just what a Frenchman would eat on a Caledonian coast-boat. It was cooked under indescribable conditions which you couldn’t help seeing; but for all that the miserable meals were studiously divided into courses just as they might have been in the best restaurant in Paris.

Everything was dirty and everything smelt. In fact the whole ship stank so from stem to stern that even the keenest nose could not have distinguished between the smell of fried fish and toasted cheese. The pervading odours were too strong. Moreover, nearly every passenger was sick in the most reckless and inconsiderate fashion; so when it came to the midday meal I got the maître d’hôtel, as they called the greasy youth who acted as chief steward, to give me a bottle of wine, a little tin of tongue, and some fairly clean biscuits, and with these I went for’rard on to the forecastle and dined among the convicts.

The forecastle was high out of the water, and got all the breeze, and the convicts were clean because they had to be. I shared my meal and bread and wine with two or three of them. Then we had a smoke and a yarn, after which I lay down among them and went to sleep, and so La France and her unhappy company struggled and perspired through the long, hot day back into plague-stricken Noumea. When I left La France I cursed her from stem to stern, and truck to kelson. If language could have sunk a ship she would have gone down there and then at her moorings; but my anathemas came back upon my own head, for the untoward Fates afterwards doomed me to make three more passages in her.

To get clean and eat a decent dinner at the Cercle was something of a recompense even for an all-day passage in La France. But it is not a very cheerful place to come back to, for the shadow of the Black Death was growing deeper and deeper over the town. The plague was worse than ever. The microbe had eluded the sentries and got under or over the iron barriers, and was striking down whites and blacks indiscriminately, wherefore I concluded that Noumea was a very good place to get out of, and, as I thought, made my arrangements for doing so as quickly as possible.

VII
THE PLACE OF EXILES

My next expedition was to include the forest camps to the south-west of the island, and a visit to the Isle of Pines, an ocean paradise of which I had read much in the days of my youth; wherefore I looked forward with some anticipation to seeing it with the eyes of flesh. There would be no steamer for three or four days, so the next day I took a trip over to the Peninsula of Ducos, to the northward of the bay.

The glory of Ducos as a penal settlement is past. There are now only a few “politicals,” and traitors, and convicts condemned a perpétuité; that is to say, prisoners for life, with no hope of remission or release. A considerable proportion of them are in hospital, dragging out the remainder of their hopeless days, waiting until this or the other disease gives them final release.