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diff --git a/old/60960-0.txt b/old/60960-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 5255b07..0000000 --- a/old/60960-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7153 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of In an Unknown Prison Land, by George Griffith - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: In an Unknown Prison Land - An account of convicts and colonists in New Caledonia with - jottings out and home - -Author: George Griffith - -Illustrator: Harold Piffard - -Release Date: December 18, 2019 [EBook #60960] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN AN UNKNOWN PRISON LAND *** - - - - -Produced by deaurider and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - -[Illustration: _Frontispiece._] - - - - - IN AN UNKNOWN - PRISON LAND - - AN ACCOUNT OF CONVICTS AND - COLONISTS IN NEW CALEDONIA - WITH JOTTINGS OUT AND HOME - - BY - - GEORGE GRIFFITH - - AUTHOR OF “MEN WHO HAVE MADE THE - EMPIRE,” “THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN,” - A TALE OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU, - “BRITON OR BOER?” A STORY OF THE - FIGHT FOR AFRICA, ETC., ETC. - - WITH A PORTRAIT AND NUMEROUS - ILLUSTRATIONS - - London: HUTCHINSON _&_ CO - Paternoster Row [Illustration] 1901 - - PRINTED BY - HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LD. - LONDON AND AYLESBURY - - - - -To - -THE EARL OF DUNMORE - -WHOSE KINDNESS AND HOSPITALITY MADE MY SOJOURN IN PRISON-LAND MUCH MORE -PLEASANT THAN IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - Part I - - _A STREAK THROUGH THE STATES_ - - I. DUTIES AND DOLLARS 3 - - II. CONCERNING CITIES, WITH A PARENTHESIS ON MANNERS 17 - - III. THE QUEEN OF THE GOLDEN STATE 34 - - A SEA-INTERLUDE 51 - - Part II - - _PRISON LAND_ - - A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON CONVICTS AND COLONISTS 83 - - I. SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS 96 - - II. SOME SOCIAL SIDELIGHTS 109 - - III. ILE NOU 128 - - IV. MEASUREMENT AND MANIA 143 - - V. A CONVICT ARCADIA 160 - - VI. SOME HUMAN DOCUMENTS 176 - - VII. THE PLACE OF EXILES 194 - - VIII. A PARADISE OF KNAVES 202 - - IX. USE FOR THE USELESS 219 - - X. A LAND OF WOOD AND IRON 236 - - XI. MOSTLY MOSQUITOS AND MICROBES 262 - - Part III - - _HOMEWARD BOUND_ - - I. “TWENTY YEARS AFTER” 279 - - II. DEMOS AND DEAR MONEY 290 - - III. A COSMOPOLITAN COLONY 303 - - - - -NOTE - - -The last sentence on p. 137 should read: - -“The Cachots Noirs were never opened except at stated intervals,—once -every morning for inspection, and once every thirty days for exercise -and a medical examination of the prisoner.” I am glad to be able to -state on the authority of the Minister of Colonies that this terrible -punishment has now been made much less severe. Every seventh day the -prisoner is placed for a day in a light cell; he is also given an hour’s -exercise every day; and the maximum sentence has been reduced to two -years, subject to the medical veto. In the text I have described what I -saw; but this atrocity is now, happily, a thing of the past.—G. G. - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - - Portrait of the Author _Frontispiece._ - - Two Snapshots up and down the Rio Sacramento, taken as the - train was crossing the bridge _Page_ 30 - - Diamond Head, Honolulu ” 54 - - Sanford B. Dole. First Governor of the Territory of Hawaii ” 62 - - A Lake in the interior of New Caledonia ” 86 - - The Plague Area at Noumea. Offices of the Messageries - Maritimes, with Sentries in front ” 100 - - The Convict Band playing in the Kiosk in the Place des - Cocotiers, Noumea ” 116 - - The Town and Harbour of Noumea ” 120 - - In the Harbour, Noumea ” 122 - - The Inner Court of the Central Prison, Ile Nou ” 136 - - The Central Prison, Ile Nou ” 142 - - The Bureau of Anthropometry, Ile Nou ” 146 - - An Arab Type of Convict. A combination of Ideality and - Homicidal Mania ” 148 - - The Courtyard of a Disciplinary Camp, Ile Nou ” 150 - - The Avenue of Palms, leading to the Hospital, Ile Nou ” 154 - - Part of the Hospital Buildings, Ile Nou ” 156 - - The Island of “Le Sphinx,” one of the tying-up places on - the south-west coast of New Caledonia ” 162 - - A Native Temple, New Caledonia ” 168 - - Permit to visit a Prison or Penitentiary Camp _en détail_ ” 176 - - The Kiosk in which the Convict Courtships were conducted at - Bourail ” 180 - - Berezowski, the Polish Anarchist who attempted to murder - Napoleon III. and the Tsar Alexander II. in the Champs - Elysées ” 184 - - One of the Lowest Types of Criminal Faces ” 190 - - The Peninsula of Ducos ” 194 - - The remains of Henri Rochefort’s House ” 200 - - The Bedroom of Louis Chatelain, ”The Caledonian Dreyfus” in - Ducos ” 200 - - The “Market” in the Convent, Isle of Pines ” 212 - - The Convict Railway at Prony ” 240 - - The Mines of the International Copper Co., Pilou, New - Caledonia ” 266 - - The Saloon of the Ballande Liner, _St. Louis_ ” 270 - - The Quarantine Station, North Head, Sydney ” 282 - - The Storage House at Seppeltsfield, forty years ago ” 309 - - The Present Storage House ” 308 - - Grape-crushing by machinery, at Seppeltsfield ” 312 - - A Vineyard at Seppeltsfield, South Australia ” 316 - - - - -Part I - -_A STREAK THROUGH THE STATES_ - - - - -I - -_DUTIES AND DOLLARS_ - - -It was on the fifth night out from Southampton that the threatening -shadow of the American Custom House began to fall over the company in the -saloon. - -One could see ladies talking nervously together. The subject was the -one most dear to the female heart; but the pleasure of talking about -“things” was mingled—at least in the hearts of the uninitiated—with an -uneasiness which, in not a few cases, amounted to actual fear; for that -evening certain forms had been distributed by the purser, and these forms -contained questions calculated to search out the inmost secret of every -dress-basket and Saratoga trunk on board. - -By the time you had filled in the blanks, if you had done it honestly—as, -of course, no one except myself did—you had not only given a detailed -list of your wardrobe, but you had enumerated in a separate schedule -every article that you had bought new in Europe. - -You were graciously permitted to possess one hundred dollars’, or, say, -twenty pounds’ worth of personal effects. If you had more than that you -were treated as a commercial traveller importing dry goods, and had to -pay duty in case you sold them again, and thus came into competition with -the infant industries of Uncle Sam. - -At the foot of the schedule was a solemn declaration that you had given -your wardrobe away to the last pocket-handkerchief, and the next day you -had to repeat this declaration verbally to an urbane official, who was -polite enough to look as though he believed you. - -When it came to the actual examination in the wharf-shed, I found myself -wondering where Uncle Sam’s practical commonsense came in. You had to -take a paper, given to you on board in exchange for your declaration, to -a desk at which sat a single clerk. - -As there were about four hundred first- and second-class passengers, this -took some little time, and provoked considerable language. When you had -at length struggled to the desk the clerk gave you a ticket, beckoned to -a gentleman in uniform, handed him your paper, and remarked: - -“Here, George, see to this.” - -In my case George seemed to have a pressing engagement somewhere else, -for he went off and I never set eyes on him again. My modest effects, a -steamer trunk, a Gladstone-bag, and a camera-case, lay frankly open to -the gaze of all men in cold neglect, while small mountains of trunks were -opened, their contents tickled superficially by the lenient fingers of -the examiners, closed again, and carted off. - -A couple of hours later, when I had interviewed every official in the -shed on the subject of the missing George, and made a general nuisance of -myself, I was requested to take my things out and not worry—or words to -that effect. Outside I met a fellow-voyager, who informed me that he and -his wife had taken thirteen trunks full of dutiable stuff through without -paying a cent of duty—at least not to the Exchequer of the United States -Customs. - -He had been through before and knew his man. It may have cost him -ten dollars, but Uncle Sam would have wanted three or four hundred; -wherefore it is a good thing to know your man when you land at New York -with a wife and a two years’ wardrobe. - -From this it will be seen that there was none of that turning out of -trunks and shameless, heartless exhibition of things that should only -be seen in shop windows before they are bought, which one heard so much -about a few years ago. That is practically stopped now, and it was -stopped by the officials themselves. - -They didn’t scatter precious, if unmentionable, garments around the -shed floor out of pure devilry or levity of soul. The American official -is like any other; he wants to earn his salary as easily as possible, -and the new tariff regulations gave him a tremendous lot of work, so -he took counsel with himself and came to the astute conclusion that if -he systematically outraged the tenderest sentiments of the wives and -daughters of millionaires, senators, congressmen, political bosses, and -other American sovereigns for a certain period either the regulations -would have to be considerably watered down or there would be another -civil war. - -His conclusions were perfectly correct. The big customs officials faced -the music stubbornly for a time; then invitations to dinner and the most -select social functions began to fall off. Their wives and daughters -lost many opportunities of showing off the pretty frocks which they had -smuggled in from Europe. - -Election time came near—in other words, Judgment Day for every American -official from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was openly hinted in high -places that the authors of such outrages on America’s proudest matrons -and most dainty maidens were soulless brutes who weren’t fit to hold -office, and then the United States Customs Department came down on its -knees, kissed the hems of the garments it had scattered around the shed -floor, and, as usual, the Eternal Feminine had conquered. - -In Paul Leicester Ford’s delightful word-picture of American political -life, “The Honourable Peter Sterling,” the worthy Peter delivers a -dinner-table homily on the immorality of five hundred first-class -steamboat passengers conspiring to defraud the revenue of their native -land by means of false declarations such as most of us signed on the _St. -Louis_. - -I was surprised to find that Peter, a shrewd politician and successful -ward-boss, knew so little of human nature. - -Never from now till the dawn of the millennium abolishes the last Customs -House will men and women be convinced that it is immoral or even wrong to -smuggle. It is simply a game between the travellers and the officials. If -they are caught they pay. If not the man smokes his cigars with an added -gusto, and the woman finds a new delight in wearing a dainty costume -which all the arts of all the Worths and all the Redferns on earth could -never give her—and of such were the voyagers on the _St. Louis_.[1] - -Before I got to bed that night I had come to the conclusion that no -country was ever better described in a single phrase than America was by -poor G. W. Steevens when he called it the Land of the Dollar. - -From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Maine to Mexico, you -simply can’t get away from it. In other countries people talk about -money,—generally and incidentally about pounds, or francs, or marks, or -pesetas,—but in America it is dollars first, last, and all the time. - -Where an Englishman would say a man was keen on making money, an American -would say “he’s out for dollars.” On this side we speak of making a -fortune, over there it’s “making a pile,”—of dollars understood,—and so -on. - -But there is another sense in which the pungent phrase is true. I am not -going to commit myself to the assertion that everything in the States is -a dollar, because there are many things which cost more than a dollar. -There are also some—a few—which cost less, such as newspapers and tramcar -tickets, but, as a rule, when you put your hand into your pocket a dollar -comes out—often several—and you don’t have much change. - -Thus, when I had released my baggage from the lax grip of the United -States Customs, I took a carriage ticket at the desk. Three dollars. In -London the fare from the station to the hotel would have been about half -a crown. The gentleman who put my luggage up received a quarter. If I -had offered him less he would probably have declined it and asked me, -with scathing irony, to come and have a drink at his expense. - -Still, that carriage was a carriage, and not a cab; well-hung, -well-cushioned, and well-horsed. In fact, I was not many hours in New -York before I began to see that, although you pay, you get. Everything -from a banquet to a boot-shine is done in better style than it is in -England. - -“We are very full, sir,” said the clerk at the Murray Hill Hotel; “but -I can give you a four-dollar room. I daresay you’ll like a comfortable -night after your passage.” - -I thought sixteen shillings and eightpence a good deal for a room, -but I found that the room was really a suite, a big bed-sitting-room, -beautifully furnished, with bathroom, lavatory, and clothes-cupboard -attached. - -The next morning I had a shine which cost fivepence, but that shine -lasted all the way to San Francisco. The boots simply needed dusting and -they were as bright as ever. Then I went and had a shilling shave, and -found that the American shave is to the English one as a Turkish bath is -to a cold tub; and so on throughout. You spend more money, far more, -than in England, but you get a great deal more for it. But to this rule -there is one great and glorious exception, and that is railway travelling. - -I presented my ordinary first-class tickets at the booking-office in the -Central Depôt, and then came from the lips of the keen-faced, but most -polite and obliging clerk, the inevitable “five dollars please—and if -you’re going on the South-Western Limited it will be one dollar more. -You see this is one of the fastest trains in the world, and we keep it -select. You’ll have a section to yourself all the way.” - -I checked my trunk in the baggage-office and said a thankful good-bye to -it for three thousand two hundred miles, after buying a new strap for it, -which, curiously enough, was not a dollar, but seventy-five cents. Then I -took possession of my cosy corner in the long, luxuriously furnished car -to be whirled over a thousand miles of iron road in twenty-three hours -and a half. - -Soon after we had pulled out of New York and the bogey wheels had begun -the deep-voiced hum which was to last day and night for the inside of a -week, I saw something which struck me again and again in the run across -the continent. A big American city is like a robe of cloth of gold with a -frayed and tattered border of dirty cotton. Its outskirts are unutterably -ragged and squalid. - -A few minutes after you leave the splendid streets and squares of Central -New York you are running through a region of mean and forlorn-looking -wooden huts—really, they can hardly be called houses—crowded up together -in terraces or blocks beside broad, unpaved roads, which may some day -be streets, or standing in little lots of their own, scraps of unkempt -land, too small for fields, and as much like gardens as a dumping-ground -for London rubbish. All the houses wanted painting, and most of them -repairing. The whole aspect was one of squalid poverty and mean -discomfort. - -But these soon fell behind the flying wheels of the South-Western -Limited. Another region was entered, a region of stately pleasure-houses -standing amidst broad, well-wooded lands, and presently the great train -swept with a stately swing round a sloping curve, and then began one of -the loveliest railway runs in the world, the seventy-mile-an-hour spin -along the level, four-track road which lies beside the eastern bank of -the broad and beautiful Hudson. - -It was during this delicious spin that I went into the smoking-room to -have a pipe and something else. I sat down in a seat opposite to a man -whose appearance stamped him as one of those quietly prosperous Americans -who just go to their work and do it with such splendid thoroughness that -the doing of it saves their country from falling into the social and -political chaos that some other Americans would make of it if they could. - -He gave me a light, and we began talking. If it had been in an English -train we might have glared at each other for five hundred miles without -a word. As it was, we had begun to know each other in half an hour. We -talked about the Hudson, and the Catskills, and West Point, and then -about the train, and so the talk came back to the inevitable dollar. - -“A gorgeous train this,” I said; “far and away beyond anything we have in -England. But,” I added with uncalculating haste, “it seems to me pretty -expensive.” - -“Excuse me,” he said, “I don’t think you’ve figured it out. You’re going -to San Francisco, thirty-two hundred miles from here. All the way you -have a comfortable train,”—that was his lordly way of putting it,—“you -have servants to wait on you day and night, a barber to shave you, a -stenographer to dictate your letters to, and you never need get off the -train except for the change at Chicago. - -“When you get to San Francisco you will find that the total cost works -out at about three cents a mile, say three halfpence. I believe the -legal first-class fare in England—without sleeping-accommodation, in -fact without anything you have here except a place to sit down in—is -threepence a mile.” - -I didn’t make the calculation, because when we subsequently exchanged -cards I found I was talking to the President of the Mercantile -Transportation Company, a man who knows just about as much of travel by -land and sea as there is to be learnt. - -After this we got on to railroading generally. I learnt much, and in -the learning thereof came to think even less of British railway methods -than I had done before. I learnt why it was cheaper to carry grain a -thousand miles from Chicago to New York than it is to carry it a couple -of hundred miles from Yorkshire to London; why cattle can be carried over -thousands of miles of prairie at less cost than over hundreds of miles of -English railroads; and many other things all bearing on the question of -the dollar and how to save it—for your true American is just as keen on -saving as he is lavish in spending—which I thought might well be taught -and still better learnt on this side. - -It was during this conversation that I had an example of that absolutely -disinterested kindness with which the wanderer so often meets in America -and so seldom in England. - -“By the way,” said Mr. President, “have you taken your berth from Chicago -in the Overland Limited?” - -“No,” I said; “I was told I could telegraph for it from Buffalo.” - -“Well,” he said, “you know the train is limited and will probably be -pretty full. There’s quite a number of people going west just now. -However, don’t trouble; I guess I can fix that for you.” - -Now, I had never seen this man before, and the probability was that I -should never meet him again, and yet when I got to the North-Western -Depôt at Chicago there was a section in the centre of one of the newest -and most luxurious cars reserved for me. - -“Mr. Griffith?” said the clerk, as I presented my transportation tickets. -“That’s all right, sir. Your section’s engaged. Here’s your check, ‘2 D, -San Vincente.’ Got a porter? Well, you can have your baggage taken down -right away. She pulls out 3.30 sharp. Seventeen dollars, please.” - - - - -II - -_CONCERNING CITIES, WITH A PARENTHESIS ON MANNERS_ - - -I have seen cities in many parts of the world, from the smoke-grimed, -flame-crowned, cloud-canopied hives of industry of middle and Northern -England, of Belgium, and Northern France, to the marble palaces and -broad-verandahed bungalows which sleep among the palm-groves by the white -shores of tropic seas; but never—north, south, east, or west—have I seen -a collection of human habitations and workshops so utterly hopeless, so -irretrievably ugly as that portion of Chicago about which I wandered -during my three hours’ wait for the starting of the Overland Limited. - -The roadways—really one cannot call them streets—would of themselves have -been far inferior to similar streets in Manchester or Wolverhampton, -because here at least the streets are paved. In Chicago they are not. - -Many years ago an attempt seems to have been made to pave them, but the -stones have sunk, and the mud and slush have come up, and every variety -of filth covers them except about the lines over which the tramcars rush, -hissing and clanging on their headlong way. But the roadways of Chicago -are also tunnels, for over them stretches the solid, continuous iron arch -of the overhead railway whence come the roar of wheels, the snorting -of steam-engines, the shriek of whistles, and the wailing groan of the -brakes. - -Now and then you reach a crossing or open place where you emerge from the -tunnel, out of semi-darkness into comparative light, and you see vast -shapes of stiff-angled, steep-roofed buildings lifting their sixteenth or -seventeenth storey up into the murky, smoke-laden sky. They are part and -parcel of Chicago—huge, ugly, dirty, and exceedingly useful. - -There are big buildings in New York, but they are to the Chicago -buildings as palaces compared to factories. There are others in -San Francisco which are merely eccentricities and not altogether -unpicturesque, but the Chicago sky-scraper is a sort of architectural -fungus, an insulting excrescence from the unoffending earth, which makes -you long to get big guns and shoot at it. Still, it is useful, and serves -the purpose for which it was built, and that is why Chicago is not only -content with it, but even proud of it. - -Believing many things that were said to me afterwards, I doubt not that -Chicago, elsewhere and other than I saw it, is one of the finest and most -beautiful cities on earth. Far be it from me to believe otherwise, since -some day I hope to see it again; and he who thinks ill of Chicago will -have about as good a time there as a man who thinks well of New York. - -Still, common honesty obliges me to say that the impression which I took -away with me in the Overland Limited was one of vastness, uncleanness, -and ugliness, redeemed only by that sombre, Plutonic magnificence which -seems to be the one reward of an absolute and unhesitating sacrifice to -blank utility. - -And yet I did find one view in Chicago which qualified this, and that -was from the western end of the Lake Front. The ragged steamboat piers, -the long rows of posts marking the shoals, the piles of the groynes, one -or two dilapidated and almost prehistoric steamboats, and blistered, -out-of-date yachts laid up along the lake wall, the stately sweep of -houses, the huge bulks of the factories in the east, with their towering -chimneys pouring out clouds of smoke and steam—these, with the smooth -water of the horizonless lake, made a pleasanter mental photograph to -take away with one than the unlovely roaring streets and the hideous -wealth-crammed stores and warehouses. - -From Chicago to Ogden the route of the Union Pacific is about as -uninteresting as the central section of the Canadian Pacific, only here -the towns and villages are more frequent and the country is naturally far -more advanced in cultivation. - -Cities, of course, are numerous. They vary in size from two to fifty -thousand inhabitants; but structurally they are all the same—tin-roofed -houses of weather-board, banks and offices, stores and factories, and -elevators of brick ranged along wide and mostly unpaved roads with plank -side-walks. - -No apparent attempt has been made at order or uniformity. Where a big -building is wanted there it is put, and where a little wooden shanty -serves its purpose there it remains. - -There is plenty of elbow-room, and so the village spreads itself into -the city in a quite promiscuous fashion, something like a boy left to -grow up into a man according to his own sweet will. But be it well noted -that he becomes a man all the same, for every one of these cities, big -or small, wood or brick, or both, was teeming with life and humming with -business. - -One of the many visible signs of this could be seen in the number of -telegraph-wires slung on huge unsightly poles running up both sides of -the unkempt streets; in fact, an American inland city of five thousand -inhabitants seems to do a good deal more telegraphing and telephoning -than an English town of fifty thousand. - -One other feature of the villages, towns, and “cities” along the route -struck me rather forcibly. Nearly all of them, big and little, have very -fine stations—I beg pardon, depôts. In fact, the practice seems to be -to build a fine, big depôt and let the city grow up to it. Thus, for -instance, at Omaha City, where we had a half-hour’s wait changing horses -and looking out for hot boxes, I found the depôt built of grey granite, -floored with marble, and entered by two splendid twin staircases curving -down through a domed and pillared hall to spacious waiting-rooms and -offices opening on to a platform about a quarter of a mile long. - -It was the sort of station you would expect to find in a go-ahead English -or European city that possessed streets and squares and houses to match. -Now Omaha is go-ahead, and big, and busy, but for all you can see of it -from the train and station it is scattered promiscuously around hill and -dale, and the palatial station itself stands in the midst of a waste -of sloppy roads traversed as usual by the hurrying electric trams, and -bordered by little, shabby, ill-assorted wooden houses which don’t look -worth fifty pounds apiece. For all that, Omaha is one of the busiest and -wealthiest cities of the Middle States. - -At Ogden, where the iron roads from every part of the continent seem -to meet, and where big, high-shouldered engines from Mexico and Texas -whistled their greetings to brother monsters from Maine and California, I -felt sorely tempted to stop off and take the thirty-mile run to Salt Lake -City, but - - “The steamer won’t wait for the train,” - -and I should have risked missing my boat to Honolulu—added to which I -had made some friends on the train who were going to show me round San -Francisco in case I had a day or so there, so I read my Kipling instead, -and saw the Mormon city with keener eyes than mine. - -By the way, American manners appear to have altered very much for the -better since Kipling made his journey “From Sea to Sea.” I traversed a -good deal of the same ground, and stayed at some of the same hotels that -he did, but I never met with more straight-spoken, dignified courtesy in -any part of the world. - -I never saw hotel clerks who blazed with diamonds, or who treated me -like a worm. As a matter of fact I never met more polite, obliging, -well-informed men in any similar position. Certainly they could give many -points to hotel managers and clerks in England and Australia. - -The waiters, too, both white and black, must have vastly improved. The -white waiter in America, as I found him, is quite the smartest, most -intelligent, and, in his own manly way, the most polite of his class—a -class very well typified by the bugler of the _St. Louis_. His coloured -_confrère_ does his work deftly, silently, and well. - -Kipling relates a conversation which took place in the Palace Hotel -between a coloured waiter and himself, in which George—every servant in -America whose name you don’t know is George—made the remark: - -“Oh ——! Wages like that wouldn’t keep me in cigars!” - -I stayed at the Palace in San Francisco, and from what I heard and saw I -should say that a waiter who made a remark like that nowadays would very -soon find that cigars were an unattainable luxury to a man out of work. -He would be “fired” on the spot. - -My own experience certainly is that the Americans are the politest people -on earth, or, perhaps I ought to say, the most courteous, because any -one can be polite if it pays him. Only a gentleman can be courteous. -They have learnt, apparently at the hands of Mother Nature herself, that -subtle blending of politeness and dignity which we call courtesy. - -For instance, an American waiter, or barber, or shoeblack says “Sir” -quite differently to anybody else in the world, except perhaps the -American gentleman who may be worth his millions. There is no suspicion -of cringing or inferiority about it, whether it comes from the shoeblack -or the millionaire. It seems to say equally from the one as from the -other “our circumstances may be different, but we are both of us -gentlemen in our way, and so we will behave to each other as gentlemen,” -and politeness of that sort is the pleasantest of all politeness. - -Now, in Australia—but Australia is still seven thousand miles away -across the broad Pacific, so we will talk about that later on. Meanwhile -a couple of iron giants have been harnessed to the long line of -palace-cars, the mails have been exchanged from train to train, the bells -begin to swing and clang out soft musical warning notes, the mellow -whistles sing good-bye from engine to engine; “all aboard” is the word, -and the Overland Limited threads its way through the maze of shining -metals, and heads away westward to where a long, gleaming line of silver -backed by a black screen of mountains tipped with diamonds shows the -position of the Inland Sea of the Wilderness. - -Salt Lake, the Dead Sea of the Mormon Land of Promise, is smaller now by -a good many scores of square miles than it was some thirty years ago, -when the Southern Pacific was connected up with the Union Pacific, and so -completed the iron chain which links the Hudson with the Sacramento. - -For three or four hours the train runs over embankments surrounded -by vast salt mud-flats, which in those days were covered by the -fast-shrinking waters. It is the old story, the story of nearly all these -upland desert regions. Every year less rain falls in the valleys and -less snow on the mountains. As the clouds grow thinner and fewer the sun -blazes hotter and sucks up more and more vapour, and so year by year the -waters of the Great Salt Lake are getting less great and more salt. - -With all due deference to American susceptibility on such points, I must -say that the scenery of the Rockies which one sees from the windows of -a car on the Union Pacific does not begin to compare with the scenery -along the Canadian Pacific line. Even Echo Cañon and Weber Cañon, the -show places of the line, struck me as comparatively insignificant when I -remembered the splendours of Eagle Pass and the grandeurs of Bear Cañon. - -But when the wilderness of Nevada had been cast behind our flying wheels, -and we began to climb up the wooded foothills of the Sierra Nevada—that -snow-crowned mountain wall which divides one of the dreariest from one -of the most beautiful regions on earth, the Great American Desert from -“God’s own country”—it was time to sit up and use both your eyes and do -your best to look out at both sides of the car at once. - -It was here that the last and most beautiful stretch of the -thirty-two-hundred-mile run began. Up the straight grades and round -and round the twice and thrice-tiered loops the great train twined -and circled; now skirting the shore of a still, pine-fringed lake, -filling the bottom of a mountain valley; and now burrowing under the -long snow-sheds, groaning under their weight of snow far away up the -mountain-side, and so, mile by mile of distance, and yard by yard of -height, the top of the Great Divide was reached. - -The iron horses took a rest and a long drink at Alta, the summit station, -and then, - - “Down the valley with our guttering breaks a-squeal,” - -we started on our way to that lovely land which lies between the -mountains and the sea. - -The snow vanished; first from the sides of the track, and then from the -gullies between the hills round which we twined. The mist-clouds rolled -away behind us up the wooded slopes. The snow-peaks far beyond gleamed -out above them, and ahead and below the dropping sun shone on a land of -broken red hills, and, beyond them, over a vast level stretch of green -grass and fruit-land, with a broad river flowing through it. - -Beyond this again it glimmered far and faintly on a long streak of -flickering silver. The red hills were the native land of Truthful -James; the green plains below were the Valley of the Sacramento; and -the shimmering silver in the far distance was the Pacific Ocean, whose -character I propose hereafter to revise. - -Then we rushed down through the last cañon out on to an open slope, and -pulled up at Red Gulch. That is not its name on the time-tables, but it -ought to be. - -A freight truck had got off the line about two miles lower down. So, -instead of a stop of ten minutes, we had to wait two hours, which I -thankfully employed in making a little excursion through Bret Harte -Land, the land of red earth and yellow gold, of towering pines and -flower-filled valleys, of deliciously mingled beauty and ugliness; where -the skies are as blue as they are above the Isles of the South, and the -air seems like what one would expect to breathe in Paradise. - -Climbing down from the car was like getting out of the world of reality, -as represented by the Overland Limited (which, remember, had brought me -from Chicago) into the Garden of Romance. I had left the comfortable but -emphatically materialistic gorgeousness of the Pulman Palace-car, and I -was actually standing on the same earth that Jack Hamlyn had trodden, -and I was breathing the same air that he had inspired when he sang that -famous song. - -All around I could see gashes of red amid the green and brown of the -slopes along the river banks—just such gulches as the one Tennessee lived -in with his immortal partner. Somewhere up in the dark valleys through -which the Overland Limited had just thundered the Outcasts of Poker -Flat had found their last refuge, and John Oakhurst, after pinning that -inscribed Deuce of Spades to the pine-tree with his bowie-knife, had -passed in his checks like a gambler and a gentleman. - -In just such a little schoolhouse as stood near the depôt, Mliss had -flung down her astronomy book and paralysed one part of her audience -and ecstasied the other by that famous heresy of hers re the Miracle of -Joshua. - -“It’s a damned lie. I don’t believe a word of it.” - -Down yonder, in the lowlands across the river, not very far from its -junction with a tributary, might have been North Fork and Poverty Flat; -and just such a red hole as I found a hundred yards or so from the track -might have been the forty-foot grave into which Dow descended “with a -derringer hid in his breast,” making his last despairing search for -water—and finding gold. - -The clang of the bell and the soft “hoo-too” of the whistle called me -back out of my dream as I was having a drink at just such a bar as the -gallant Colonel Starbottle might have slaked his immortal thirst at. A -few moments more and the tireless wheels had begun to revolve again, -and we slid down the curving slopes leading to the broad vale of the -Sacramento. - -[Illustration: Two Snapshots up and down the Rio Sacramento, taken as the -train was crossing the bridge.] - -On the way to the Golden Land I had fallen into conversation with a young -Californian, a fine specimen of the Western race, of whom his country -might well be proud, as he was proud of it. - -“It’s God’s own country, sir. And when you’ve seen more of it you’ll -think so,” he said, as we swept across the fat, fertile farmlands which -lay beneath the foot-hills. “You’ve travelled a bit, you tell me; but -I guess if you go from end to end of this country you’ll say you never -struck one like it.” - -“Well,” I said, “I sha’n’t see much of it this time, I’m afraid; but if I -ever do get the chance of seeing it right through I’ll tell you whether I -think it’s better than England.” - -“Yes,” he replied reflectively, “I’ve an uncle who went to England, and -he came back, right to home here, and said it was the most beautiful -place God had ever made—but then, you see, it was new to him. He hadn’t -been over there before.” - -I thought that this wasn’t a bad place to change the subject, so I asked -him to have a drink, and switched off on to purely local topics. We -crossed the big bridge over the Sacramento river, stopped a few minutes -in Sacramento City, and then rolled on to Porta Costa station. - -I have heard people say that they have gone from New York to San -Francisco by rail. This is one of those sayings which are wanting in -certain qualifications of fact to make them unimpeachable. It is nearly -true, but not quite. - -The train, weighing I am afraid to say how many tons, ran into Porta -Costa, which is a sort of detachable depôt on the estuary of the -Sacramento river. When it stopped I got out of the car to have a look -round. There was a “local” and a freight train lying alongside of us. -There was also a vast superstructure running over the station, and in -these I noticed two huge engine-beams slowly swinging. - -Shortly after this I became aware of the fact that this piece of the -depôt had gone adrift, and was, calmly and without any perceptible -motion, carrying our train and the two others across the river to the -depôt on the Oakland side. - -I had been four and a half days in America and so I didn’t feel -surprised. All the same, it was sufficiently wonderful for admiration -even there. I climbed back into the car and enjoyed the sensation of -travelling by rail and sea at the same time, and then I got out again to -see how the thing was done. - -The piece of the Porta Costa station on which we were floating steered -into another station. The rails on the steam-driven platform were fitted -on to other rails on _terra firma_; the engine-bell clanged; the whistle -tooted in its soft, melodious way; and the Overland Limited steamed from -sea to land in the most commonplace fashion possible. - -The next stop was at Oakland, on the eastern shore of the bay. Opposite -glittered the lights of the Golden City. Here we detrained, and, having -crossed on the biggest ferry in the world, we embarked on the biggest -ferry-boat in the world—California, like the rest of the States, is great -on big things—and an hour or so later I found myself installed at the -Palace Hotel, which is also believed by all good Californians to be the -biggest hotel in the world. - - - - -III - -_THE QUEEN OF THE GOLDEN STATE_ - -(FROM A GUIDE-BOOK—WITH ANNOTATIONS AND AN IMPRESSION OF CHINATOWN) - - “Serene, indifferent to Fate, - Thou sittest at the Western Gate.” - - -San Francisco—no well-bred American, unless he comes from Chicago, -ever says ’Frisco—is a delicious combination of wealth and wickedness, -splendour and squalor, vice, virtue, villainy, beauty, ugliness, solitude -and silence, rush and row—in short, San Francisco is just San Francisco, -and that’s all there is to it, as they say there. It was discovered and -settled by Franciscan friars. It would be no place for them now. - -It is also quite a considerable city as to size. This is what the local -guide-book says: - -“It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by Golden -Gate Strait and the Bay of San Francisco, on the east by the bay, and on -the south by San Mateo County.” - -One would naturally expect a city bounded on the west by the Pacific -Ocean to have a considerable water frontage, some nine thousand miles, -in fact. This, however, is not quite the case; it is only the American -guide-booker’s way of putting it. - -As a matter of fact, San Francisco is a most picturesque city of some -three hundred thousand inhabitants, and it is spread over the bay shore -and the adjacent hills to the extent of about twenty-seven thousand -acres. It is the eighth city in size in the United States, and the third -in commercial rank, but it is not jealous either of New York or Chicago. -It is the capital of God’s country, and with that it is modestly content. -A page advertisement of a magazine in the guide-book begins with the -query: - -“Are you interested in God’s country?” - -It doesn’t quite say Heaven, but the implied analogy is obvious. - -Still, even San Francisco has to keep its end up, and it is just a little -sore on the subject of earthquakes. - -“These,” says my guide-booker, “are of rare occurrence. For the past -half century there are not known to have been more than half a dozen -lives lost from the effects of earthquakes; while in the New England -and Middle States and in the Mississippi Valley hundreds are killed -annually by sunstroke, lightning, hurricanes, and tornadoes, in addition -to the millions of dollars’ worth of property destroyed by tornadoes and -blizzards.” - -Down east they say that the drink and other things you get in the West do -all that these can do, and a bit over. This, of course, is mere jealousy; -and to this San Francisco is as serenely indifferent as she is of Fate. - -She also seems to be indifferent to everything else. Even dollars. This -doesn’t sound true, but it is. The splendid recklessness of the Argonauts -of the fifties still glows in the blood of the true San Franciscan. - -Quite a short time ago a man worth a couple of million dollars—a -comparative pauper in a place where they think nothing of paying three -millions for a house—gambled every cent he had on the success of a -certain more or less honest deal. A friend of his had interests the other -way, and dumped down more millions to block the deal. He blocked it. They -met at their club the evening after the smash, and conversed as follows: - -“Well, how goes it?” - -“D——d bad.” - -“In that—deal?” - -“Steal, I call it.” - -“How much?” - -“Whole caboodle! Want a janitor up yonder?” - -“Janitor—no. I want a nervy man to come in with me. Come?” - -“I’m there.” - -And now those two men are piling up millions together instead of betting -them against each other. That’s San Francisco. - -The Golden City is entered naturally enough by a Golden Gate. It is as -proud of its Golden Gate and bay as Sydney is of “our harbour,” and that -is saying a good deal. All the same, Sydney doesn’t quite like California -calling itself God’s country. - -My guide-booker says, “The entrance through the Golden Gate cannot be -surpassed.” If he said that inside Sydney Heads he would be thrown to -the sharks. And, as a matter of fact, having said that which is not the -truth he would in some measure deserve his fate. Moreover, outside the -Golden Gate there is a bar, of which more anon. There are other bars -in the city which are safer except for millionaires, because you can’t -spend less than twenty-five cents in them. A drunk in San Francisco is -therefore an undertaking not to be entered on lightly. - -Talking of millionaires naturally suggests Nob Hill, the millionaire -quarter of the Golden City. It is veritably a place of palaces. I have -never seen so many splendid houses collected in such a small area. -Their price in bricks and mortar alone runs anywhere from two to four -millions, and yet it is a literal fact that the streets between them -are grass-grown. If I had five dollars I should be inclined to bet them -against five cents that this is a combination which no other city on -earth can show. - -The reason, of course, is that on the mountainous streets which the -cable-cars climb traffic of any other sort is practically impossible. No -good American walks more than a block or so on a quite level street, and -you might as well ask him to walk up the side of a house as to climb Nob -Hill. - -Wherefore the cable-cars rush solitary up and down through a wilderness -of stone-paved, grass-grown streets, flanked by palaces whose owners, I -presume, have horses and carriages. How they get them down to the city -and up again is one of the two or three unsolved problems which I brought -away with me. Another of these is: Why did the practical American genius -think it worth while to pave the precipices which they call streets round -Nob Hill? - -Talking about streets reminds me that they don’t say street much in -San Francisco. There isn’t time. They just mention the name. This is -the way my guide-booker speaks somewhat flippantly of the streets in -Millionairetown: - -“Upon taking the car you immediately pass through the banking and -insurance district, climb up one of the steepest hills of the city -to Nob Hill, passing on the left at the corner of Powell the late -Senator Stanford’s residence, corner of Mason, the late Mark Hopkins’ -residence.... Corner of Taylor, the residence of the late A. M. Towne.... -Corner of Jones, Mr. Whittles’.... Corner of Taylor, the Huntington -residence, while opposite is the residence of the late Charles Croker, -adjoining, and on the corner of Jones is the residence of his son, W. H. -Croker.” - -“Powell” has a cable one and a quarter inches in diameter, twenty-six -thousand feet long, and weighing sixty-six thousand six hundred and -twenty-five pounds. Some San Franciscan cables last three months. This -was expected to last about five weeks. You can understand how terrific -the clutch and the wear and tear must be when you sit down on the front -seat of a car carrying thirty or forty people, and see a hill half as -steep again as the one from Richmond up to the Star and Garter rush down -underneath you at about sixteen miles an hour. It was here that the newly -landed Chinaman saw his first cable-car and made the historic remark: - -“No pushee, no pullee; all same go like hellee,” which brings me, no -very great distance, only a few blocks in fact, from Millionaireville to -Chinatown. - -Chinatown, San Francisco, is a city within a city. Go through it by night -as I did with one who knows its inmost secrets, and you will find that it -is also a cancer in the body corporate of a fair city (which is itself -one of the most politely and delightfully wicked on earth), a foul blot -on a fair land, a smudge of old-world filth across a page written by the -most nervous hands and the keenest brains that modern civilisation has -produced. - -Geographically, as San Francisco is bounded on the west by the Pacific -Ocean, etc., Chinatown is bounded by “California” and “Pacific,” “Kearny” -and “Stockton.” It has a population of ten thousand Mongolians, and -an unknown number of Americans and Europeans, men and women, who have -lost caste so hopelessly that they can no longer live among their own -kind. The men certainly would not be considered fit society even for an -American politician. - -As for the women—well you see most of them painted and powdered and -tricked out in scanty, tawdry finery, sitting in little rooms behind -lattices open on to the street, and opposite these the wayfarer, western -or eastern, European or American, Jap or Chinaman, may stand and peer in. -There are whole streets of these latticed rooms, and the women are of all -nationalities. The leaseholders pay enormous rents for the houses, and -their owners are amongst the most respected citizens of San Francisco. - -To these last it is only due to say that San Francisco is also a city -of magnificent churches, and that it sends every month or so many -missionaries, male and female, travelling in palace-cars and the saloons -of steamers, to enlighten the heathen. Many of the good citizens -aforesaid subscribe tens of thousands of dollars both to the churches and -missions, and so, somehow, I suppose, they get the account squared. - -During my stroll through this quarter of Chinatown, I must admit that I -saw very few Chinamen. Of Japs, Tonkinese, Sandwich Islanders, niggers, -half castes, and the lower-down sort of American, there were plenty, and -business appeared to be fairly brisk. - -The better-class San Franciscan doesn’t go to Chinatown simply because -he doesn’t need to. In fact, as a distinguished and experienced resident -said to me after I had been through Chinatown: - -“My dear Mr. Griffith, Chinatown may be pretty bad, but anyhow it’s run -open and above board, as anybody can go and see that likes to take the -trouble. If you were stopping here a month instead of two or three days, -I could show you things that Chinatown isn’t a circumstance to. You -just roof all San Francisco in, and you’ll have the biggest, dandiest, -high-toned, up-to-date——” - -“Yes,” I interrupted, “I see what you mean. I heard about that in the -train. Sorry I’m not stopping.” - -This of course only referred to decent, Christian vice, the sort which -some of the most respectable of us practice without compunction as long -as we’re not found out. But when you have eastern and western vice mixed, -as you do in Chinatown and San Francisco, you get a compound calculated -to raise the gorge of a graven image. There are certain crimes which have -no names, and of such is the wickedness of Chinatown. - -Some one once said that the exterior of a house was a pretty good -criterion of the character of the people who lived in it. - -This is certainly true of Chinatown. The streets are narrow, ill-paved, -and dirty. They also smell, as the other streets in San Francisco don’t. -Those who have travelled know that the Purple East has a smell entirely -its own, just as a London lodging-house has. - -Moreover, wherever a piece of the East like Chinatown is transplanted -into the West, you get that smell, full-bodied and entire. Wherefore, -when I dived into Chinatown, San Francisco, I remarked: - -“Why, is this King Street, Hongkong, or Malay Street, Singapore?” - -The East never changes, no matter whether it is west or east. The -restaurants, with their gaudily carved beams and their queer windows, -with their upstairs rooms, containing priceless treasures of Oriental -art, their iron money-chests, with half a dozen different locks on them, -so that they could only be opened in the presence of all the partners in -the concern; the paper lanterns outside, the weird hieroglyphical signs, -the little joss tables in the inner compartments of the shops, with their -images and odorous incense sticks—it was all the undiluted Orient, ages -old, in the midst of the newest of the Occidental civilisations, one of -those queer paradoxes which go to show the looseness of our most rigid -principles and the shallowness of our deepest convictions. - -After seeing sundry other things which would be difficult of description -in printable English, I made a tour of a common lodging-house in -Chinatown. I have slept in a common lodging-house in London, and I have -seen humanity go to sleep under many and various conditions; but I never -saw anything like this. - -Only a few hundred yards away was the Palace Hotel, with its -rooms at four dollars a night; here you could sleep for five -cents,—twopence-halfpenny,—but what sleeping! - -Little, dark, stifling cells—I have seen infinitely better ones in -prisons—lit through a little window by a caged gas-jet on the flagged and -iron-railed footway which ran round each floor inside the court within -which these doss-houses are built. In the cell a narrow wooden bedstead, -covered with unwashed rags and nothing else. Below in the court, horrors -unnameable. - -In the particular lodging-house which I visited I was shown a big, dark, -hideous apartment, a perfect Black Hole, in which nine of the richest -merchants of Chinatown—and some of them are very rich—were confined on -ransom by the gang known as the High-Binders for four months until some -died and the others paid. A remnant who stuck out were released by the -police and a detachment of the United States Militia after a regular -siege. It was Alsatia over again, and yet it happened less than a dozen -years ago. - -As I was feeling my way down the stairs a figure rose out of a corner on -one of the landings, and I heard a thin voice say: - -“Boss, gimme ten cents—I’m hungry!” - -It was the first time I had ever heard an American beg, and it was quite -a shock. Somehow, the accent seemed to add an infinite pathos to the -words; perhaps because until now I had only heard it from the lips of -the proudly prosperous. As I passed he turned his face after me, and the -light from a distant gas-lamp fell on it. It was ghastly in its thinness -and paleness, and yet it was refined, and the voice, if not the speech, -was that of an educated man. I gave him a quarter, and my guide said: - -“Guess that’ll give him two days in heaven. It’s opium he’s hungry for. -Bin there myself.” - -When we left the lodging-house we went a few yards along the crowded, -weirdly lit street with its swarms of paper-lanterns, and then we plunged -down a narrow alley up which there drifted a wave of stench, dominated by -the acrid, penetrating smell of opium. - -Presently I discovered that there were lower depths in Chinatown even -than the doss-house and the brothel. Here were not houses, only miserable -sheds and shanties round an unpaved courtyard foul beyond description. - -We went into some of the shanties. There stood in each near the door a -little bench, and on this were two or three pipes and some tiny pots -filled with what looked like black-brown treacle. It was opium, and -each pot contained ten cents’ worth of Heaven and Hell, the Heaven of -oblivion opening out into dreamland of Paradise, and then the Hell of the -awakening horror. - -Behind the bench squatted a half-clad skeleton, pipe in hand and lamp -beside him. He opened his half-shut eyes as we entered, and murmured: - -“Wantee smoke, tlen cent!” Then he recognised my guide, and added, “Ah, -wantee look; all light.” Then his eyelids fell again, he dipped his -needle in his pot, and got ready for another whiff. - -Round the walls of the shanty were two tiers of bunks, just a few planks -propped on bare poles. There were ragged blankets on the boards, and on -these, with pipe and pot and lamp, lay other scantily clad skeletons, -some frizzling the globule of opium in the flame, some rolling it on the -flat top of the pipe-bowl, others inhaling the magic blue smoke, others -motionless and lifeless, their souls, if they had any, in paradise. One -of the skeletons had once been the figure of a white woman. - -Outside we found other hovels, but without lamps. We struck matches in -one, and found other figures, some white and some yellow, huddled about -the filthy floor. - -“Free dosses,” said the guide, in his curt speech, “they’re broke. Spent -their last dime on a smoke and got fired. After that it’s the poor-house -or the bay.” - -As we were picking our way out of the court, he continued: - -“There’s a cocaine fiend here; better see him. George, where are you?” - -The remains of a man tottered out from under a shed. He was white, what -there was left of him. As soon as his miserable eyes caught sight of me -he began a whining, rambling account of how he fell a victim to the drug; -his stock narrative, I suppose. - -Then he rolled up a dirty, ragged shirt sleeve, and showed me a thing of -skin and bone that had once been an arm. It was pitted and seamed and -scratched from elbow to wrist. I had seen two or three choice samples of -leprosy and other diseases that horrible night, but this made me nearer -sick than any of them. - -He had a strangely extemporised syringe of wood and quill and -sealing-wax, and a piece of hypodermic needle in his other hand. He -picked out a comparatively vacant spot, drove in the needle, and pushed. -The skin swelled up in a little lump. It may only have been water, -certainly the syringe was made ready for the occasion, but in a moment or -two he straightened up, his eye grew brighter, and his voice stronger as -he asked me for a dime to buy a supper. I gave it to him, and he crept -back into his hovel. I went out into the street feeling that I had been -in Hell. - -We went to wind up the night at the Chinese Theatre; but the performance -was nearly over. So, instead, we made a much more interesting excursion -through the subterranean dressing-rooms of the company. Women never -appear on Chinese boards. So when we visited the ladies’ dressing-rooms -we found men and boys in female attire, which, after all, doesn’t differ -very much from the male, standing before little mirrors painting and -powdering themselves and making-up their eyes and eyebrows, and fixing -themselves up generally for all the world like an European actress. - -In other dressing-rooms we found mild-eyed Celestials trying on or -taking off masks hideous enough to frighten even an American baby. -The rooms were merely little cellars connected by narrow, low, stone -passages. Their furniture was a little table under the mirror, a big, -brass-bound chest, on which stood the inevitable opium apparatus, and a -low, dirty sleeping-couch. - -The whole scene was literally a piece of the underworld. A few years ago -it was veritably so for unfortunates who were decoyed into its depths -and never got out again. That is done with now, but for all that I felt -better when I was out in the street again. - -If I had dreamt that night, the dream would certainly have been a -nightmare. As it is, whenever I hear any one letting his emotions loose -over the glories and triumphs of civilisation I think of Chinatown, San -Francisco, and remain in a comparatively humble frame of mind. - - - - -_A SEA-INTERLUDE_ - -ACROSS THE PACIFIC ON A STEAM-ROLLER - -(WITH INCIDENTAL REMARKS ON THE PARADISE THEREOF AND THE GREAT TROPICAL -FRAUD) - - -I - -By the end of my third day’s stay in San Francisco a splendid sea-wind -had blown the smell of Chinatown out of my nostrils, and the mephitic -stuffiness of its streets and shops and restaurants out of my lungs. I -would fain have stayed longer, for I was beginning to like the Queen of -the Golden Shore, and some of her loyal subjects were beginning to like -me, wherefore there was every prospect of a goodly time ahead for me. -When your Californian likes you he wants to give you his house, and his -town, and his clubs, and all that therein is, and when he doesn’t he -makes no secret of it. - -But for the man who has connections to make, who has to hitch trains on -to steamers and steamers on to trains, and get across the world in the -shortest possible time, even the temptations of Californian hospitality -must be in vain. So the next morning I and my baggage were jolted over a -couple of miles of appalling streets—the one defect in the beauty of the -Golden City—at a cost of three dollars and partial dislocation of the -vertebral column, to the wharf where a very polite citizen was obliging -enough to carry my steamer trunk on board the _Nippon Maru_, for half a -dollar more. - -The crowd on the wharf was cosmopolitan enough even for the Drive at -Singapore, or the Praya at Hongkong. Of course there were globe-trotters -like myself, speaking many tongues from Russian to American; there -were commercial travellers, mostly German, with mountains of samples -prepared with great cunning to suit the varied tastes of Hawaiians, -Japs, and Chinese; there were short, thick-set, flat-faced Japs in grey -tweed trousers, tail coats, and top hats, fresh from the colleges and -the counting-houses of the Eastern States; there were grave, impassive -Chinese, mandarins and millionaires, in silken robes and black skull-caps -(with the little red button on top), with their wives and children also -in silken vesture and orthodoxly shapeless; and then there were the -coolies and sailors, Jap and Chinese, with a sprinkling of wicked-eyed -Lascars and mild Hindoos. - -To finish the picture, on the Government wharf hard by a detachment -of blue-clad, felt-hatted United States troops were lining up for -embarkation on one of the transports bound for Manila. - -The good sea-wind did not seem quite so good when we got outside the -Golden Gate, for there was a villainous sea running on the bar and -through the narrow passage between the tail of the bar and the rock-bound -coast, which is called the Main Ship Channel. In a bad sea this is one of -the most ticklish pieces of navigation in the world. - -On the port side, as we went out, the breakers were piling themselves up -into mountains of foam on the end of the bar a couple of hundred yards -away. To starboard, another two or three hundred yards off, the big -Pacific rollers were thundering along the base of the cliffs, flinging -their spume and spindrift sky-high. The water in between was just what -one would expect it to be, and so passenger after passenger, male and -female, missionary and mercantile, disappeared from the deck. - -I afterwards learnt that there was much suffering below, and many of -the victims did not reappear till we reached the smooth, sunlit waters -which wash the shores of what the American tourist agencies, since the -Annexation, have christened “the Paradise of the Pacific.” The Jap -passengers collapsed first of all. - -When I had made the closer acquaintance of the _Nippon_ I found that -her sailors and quartermasters and junior officers were Japs, while her -stewards and barmen were Chinese. The captain and first officer were -English, and the chief engineer, of course, a Scotchman. I have often -wondered how many “Chiefs” on the Seven Seas are not Scotch. - -The _Nippon_, like most Japanese mail-boats, was cheap and gaudy. She -gave evidence of her cheapness by bursting a steam-pipe just as she was -fighting her way through the channel. It might have been serious, but it -wasn’t, though it lengthened our passage by several hours, for the wasted -steam, instead of getting into the cylinders, went roaring away in noisy -impotence up to the cloudy sky which overhung the alleged Pacific Ocean. - -[Illustration: Diamond Head, Honolulu. The town lies in the bay about -halfway between the two headlands.] - -On the third night we got into smoother water and stopped while the Chief -and his assistants repaired the damage. The next morning at breakfast the -deserted saloon began to fill up. - -So far I and a fellow-traveller from Chicago had had the corner table to -ourselves. By lunch-time it was full of lady missionaries going to China -and Japan. For three or four of them that was destined to be their last -voyage. The nicest and most pleasantly spoken of them was travelling many -thousands of miles to meet an unspeakable fate at the hands of the Boxers. - -On the fourth morning great blue-grey masses of land began to rise up -to port and ahead of us, and that day we spent steaming through summer -seas under a lovely sky, between shores whose beauty may well have led -Captain Cook’s sailors to believe that they had at last reached the -long-dreamed-of Islands of the Blest. - -For all that, I must confess that I was disappointed with the approach to -Honolulu. Even the most patriotic Hawaiian would, I think, agree with me -that the capital has not been placed either on the most beautiful of the -islands or in the most picturesque position possible. - -Still, you would travel far before you found a fairer sea-flanked city -than Honolulu itself. It is a city of broad, tree-shaded streets, of -buildings which are dignified without being pretentious, of palaces and -Government offices built on a scale of splendour which argues eloquently -for the financial conceptions of former monarchs and a belief in their -destinies which the sceptical Fates and the American Republic have since -declined to justify. - -There are, of course, many churches and schools in Honolulu. Your -Hawaiian takes his or her religion in a cheerfully earnest fashion, and -sings hymns with keener delight than any one else on earth. Still, the -schools and churches of Honolulu were not built wisely. Where everything -else is beautiful, softly lined, and tree-embowered, they are hard, bare, -and angular, even after the fashion of the Ebenezers of the Midlands and -the North of England. The very gaol looks nice in comparison with them. - -But the private houses—for instance, those stretching away along King -Street, west, to Waikiki, perhaps the loveliest bathing-place in the -world—are, after all, the pleasantest memories that one brings away from -Honolulu. Mostly low and broad-verandahed, white-painted, and embowered -in foliage of every shade of green, faced with smooth, emerald lawns -spangled with flower-beds blazing bright with every colour that Nature -loves to paint her tropical flowers, they seemed rather the dwellings of -lotus-eaters in “the land where it is always afternoon” than the houses -of hard-headed, keen-witted business men and politicians, mostly of -American descent, who have not only piled up many millions by various -methods, but have also created this leafy paradise out of the bare and -swampy seashore that it was when Captain Cook landed upon it. - -I happened to arrive in Honolulu at a very interesting time. The Monroe -Doctrine had been stretched across the Pacific from San Francisco to the -Philippines, and Honolulu was a sort of hitching-post which kept it from -sagging into the water. Among the white population there was a good deal -more American than English being spoken. The harbour was full of American -transports. Blue-clad, very business-like-looking American troops were -marching and drilling and patrolling all over the place. Many of the -men wore, in addition to their regimentals, portrait-medallions of the -President or their best girls—a sight to make a British War Office Person -ill for the rest of his official days. For myself, it liked me well. - -Saving the American occupation, but not by any means unconnected with -it, the four salient facts of Honolulu seemed to me to be Missionaries, -Mosquitos, Millionaires, and Morality spelt backwards. - -The missionaries and the mosquitos came to Honolulu at the same time, -about seventy-five years ago. The mosquitos are supposed to have come in -old sugar-casks from Mexico, and it is known that the missionaries came -chiefly first-class from San Francisco. I mention the coincidence for -what it is worth. Both are at present going strong. - -The missionaries practically own and run the place with the assistance of -the sugar millionaires who helped the United States to annex the islands. -The mosquitos are, with one exception, the most venomous and insidious -that I have ever suffered from. - -There is one notable point of difference between the missionaries and the -mosquitos in Honolulu. The missionaries and their congregations sing -voluminously, and also very prettily. The Hawaiian mosquito does not -sing. He makes his descent silently and stealthily, sucks the life-blood -out of you, and goes away, leaving you to scratch and swear and wonder -how on earth he managed to get his work in without you knowing it. - -There are some unregenerates, both white and bronze, still in Honolulu -who say something like this about the missionaries and the country. This -may or may not have any truth in it. It is certainly quite true that the -missionaries have done an immense amount of good in the Sandwich Islands. -It is also true that they and their descendants form the aristocracy -and ruling class of the islands. They have the most magnificent -houses and most beautiful estates. They also run the most lucrative -businesses. Not the worthy pastors themselves, of course. In Hawaii, -the word “missionary” means not only the missionaries themselves, but -their descendants to the third and fourth generations. Perhaps the most -good-natured way to put it would be to say that here the labourer was -worthy of his hire and saw that he got it. - -But there was one deadly contrast in Honolulu which I frankly say -shocked and horrified me, hardened globe-trotter as I am! I don’t think -I ever saw a place which possesses more churches, schools, missions, -and other missionary machinery to the acre than Honolulu. It also runs -considerably to saloons and hotels with bar-annexes; but these justify -their existence by paying enormous licences to the revenue. Wherefore -they charge the thirsting citizen a shilling a time for a drink, -no matter how small or common; which, of course, either keeps down -drunkenness or punishes those who drink with poverty. Millionaires, and, -some whisper, the missionaries, take their liquid comforts at home. - -But one night after dinner, having nothing else to do but smoke and -listen to small talk in the intervals of fighting the mosquitos, I went -off by myself to explore the Asiatic Quarter. I had no hint or direction -from anybody, and, by sheer accident, I found myself in a street which -was the exact replica of the slave-market in Chinatown, San Francisco. - -Slaves of all colours and nationalities, white and brown and yellow and -black, were sitting behind the lattices of their prisons. Chinese and -Japanese “Houses of Delight” were running full steam ahead. It was only -natural that I should catch myself wondering whether I had not been -spirited back into Chinatown, instead of walking the streets of Holy -Honolulu where the missionaries and the churches have reigned practically -supreme for fifty years. - -One curiously revolting feature of the scene was this: The -Americanisation of Hawaii was proceeding apace just then. Four or five -big transports, bound for Manila, were in the harbour. There were -American sentries at the Government Buildings over which Old Glory -floated from sunrise to sunset. Squads of American troops drilled daily -in the open places. American patrols marched through the streets by -night, and American soldiers and sailors jostled with Jap and Chinaman, -Negro and Malay along the narrow pavements of the Hawaiian slave-market. -It was a curious mingling of East and West, not by any means flattering -to the West. - -The next day I asked certain citizens who should have known how this -thing came to be in such a godly country, and the various answers about -came to this: “The Government and the Churches have done their best to -shut those places up, but somehow they haven’t succeeded. And then, you -see, they pay enormous rents.” - -“But who owns the property?” I asked one old and highly respected -resident. - -“Well, if _I_ did I shouldn’t tell you,” he replied. “Come and have a -drink!” - -It was a hot day and I thought I might as well leave it at that. - -Later on this moral plague-spot became a physical plague-spot as well. -The Black Death spread its sombre wings over it, and the purging fires -have swept it in smoke and flying flame from the face of the insulted -earth up to the yet more insulted heavens. Wherefore the Paradise of the -Pacific ought to be a good deal cleaner now than it was when I was there. - -[Illustration: Sanford B. Dole. First Governor of the Territory of -Hawaii.] - -That afternoon I called at Government House and sent my card in to Mr. -Sanford B. Dole, President of the Hawaiian Republic. He is the man who -came to the front when the reactionary tactics of King Kalakaua and -his sister and successor, Liliuokalani, raised the somewhat important -question as to whether the Hawaiian Islands were going to fall into line -with civilisation or fall back into a state of semi-barbarism—for that -is about what it came to. - -President Dole is a “missionary”; that is to say, he belongs to the -clerical aristocracy of Honolulu. He is not a clergyman himself, and he -has the credit of belonging to one of the very few missionary families in -the islands which have not become wealthy. - -The last President that I had interviewed was Paul Krüger, late of Kerk -Street, Pretoria. There was a very striking difference between the -two men. The Boer was bulky, slow of speech and motion, with manners -unspeakable; also little keen eyes which looked at you piercingly for a -moment, and then dodged away—cunning incarnate in the flesh and a good -deal both of the cunning and the flesh. - -Still, at the time, I confess that I thought him a man, and, in his way, -a great one—not a common boodler who would squeeze his country for all -it was worth, and then, at the first note of danger, bolt with all the -plunder he could lay his hands on. - -When I went into President Dole’s Council Chamber—which had once been the -Queen’s boudoir, and in Kalakaua’s time before her, the scene of many -a half-barbaric orgie—I was greeted by a tall, rather slight, but well -set-up man dressed in spotless white. - -He had the air of being at once virile and venerable, for his hair and -his long, almost patriarchal beard were both grey. But the figure was -alert. He walked up and down the room the whole time we were talking. -The grey-blue eyes were quick and keen and steady. I may also add, _en -parenthèse_, that he was one of the handsomest men I have ever spoken to. - -He told me the story of the battle between reaction and advancement, -corruption and comparative cleanliness, just as a man who had seen it all -but had taken no share in it might have done. The story is history now, -and needn’t be repeated here. To me the most interesting fact was that -President Dole told it without once mentioning himself until it became -unavoidable. - -When the fighting was over there were seven conspicuous citizens of -Honolulu in prison under sentence of death as conspirators against the -Commonwealth, and it rested with Mr. Dole to say whether they should be -executed or not. - -“It was, of course, a very painful position for me to be placed in,” he -said. “You see I was the head of the Provisional Government and Chief -Magistrate, and some of them were personal acquaintances of my own.” - -“Then, after all, you had something to do with it, Mr. President? That’s -the first time I’ve heard you mention yourself in the whole story.” - -There was a smile under the heavy moustache as he answered: - -“Oh, yes, of course, I had a good deal to do with it. When the revolution -was over they elected me President; and the prisoners—well, we sentenced -them to different terms of imprisonment, and then let them out gradually. -To tell you the truth I hadn’t much fancy for signing death-warrants.” - -I was afterwards told on quite reliable authority that if the revolution -had not succeeded, Sanford B. Dole and a few others would undoubtedly -have been hung. - -Mr. Dole, being of American descent, very naturally considered that the -United States were the proper Power to run the Hawaiian Islands, whether -the Hawaiians liked it or not. It is a way that all great Powers have -with small ones. We have it ourselves to a considerable extent. In -fact, we once had these same islands with all their vast possibilities. -That was in the dark ages of British diplomacy when colonies were “not -wanted.” So a few distinguished idiots in Downing Street gave orders -for the flag to be hauled down from the flagstaff on the Old Fort of -Honolulu. After which it avails little for an Englishman to talk about -Cousin Jonathan stealing the islands for himself. - -Mr. Dole assisted conspicuously and, I believe, quite conscientiously in -the transfer. He saw that it was either annexation or semi-barbarism and -corruption. He thought that what great Powers call annexation and small -ones call stealing was the better of the two, and I think he was right. - -Hawaii is now a Territory; and Sanford B. Dole is its Governor. Still, I -was a little afraid that there might be something of prophecy in the last -remark he made as we shook hands. - -“There is no doubt about the future or the prosperity of the islands,” -he said, in answer to my last question. “With good settled government -capital will come in, as it has been doing, and everything will go ahead. -But,” he added very gravely, “if we get the millionaire monopolist and -the professional politician over here, they’ll ruin us.” - -“Exactly!” I said. “Here you have the paradise, the Eden of the Pacific. -Politics will supply the serpent.” - -He shook his head and smiled, and I went away without telling him that I -had travelled from Chicago with a gentleman who had been to Washington to -see about the introduction of that self-same serpent. - - * * * * * - -When people who have not been there read about the tropics in books, -especially in story-books, the impression they get is one of general -gorgeousness pervading the heavens and the earth, and a human state of -things not far removed from what some of us honestly hope to deserve some -day when days have ceased to count. - -Blue seas lie rippling gently under azure skies; islands of almost -inconceivable beauty, palm-crowned and coral-fringed, gem the surface of -the waveless waters. The heat of the sun is tempered by cool, scented -breezes. - -The day begins and ends with sunrises and sunsets which seem like the -opening and shutting of the gates of Paradise. - -The nights are languorous dreams of soft delights under skies spangled -with myriads of stars such as northern eyes have never seen. On other -nights earth and sea are bathed in silvery moonlight such as never fell -on northern sea or shore. - -Some authors get their moon and stars shining at the same time. These -have probably done their travelling in an armchair. Diana of the Tropics -is a good deal too autocratic for that. - -Those are the tropics of the novelist and the traveller who wants to make -his untravelled readers envious. As a story-writer I have myself sinned -thus; wherefore, partly, this confession. - -The trouble with most people who have described the tropics in fiction -and otherwise is that they leave too much out. All that they put in is -correct. You really can see all these beauties, and more, between Cancer -and Capricorn; but you don’t see them everywhere or all the time. - -Another very serious fault with your tropical word-artist is that he -generally ignores the swamps, the fevers, the agues, the rains which -come down like bursting water-spouts, the hurricanes which blow brick -and stone walls about as if they were paper. Further, as to the rippling -sunlit sea, they too often omit to state that, when it is inclined that -way it can get up into waves which will take a ship clean over a reef and -land it halfway up a hillside, and that it has a swell through which a -ship may wallow for days, rolling scuppers under every minute of the day -and night for weeks on end. - -This, by the way, is one of the most villainous features of the tropical -Pacific. For instance, you wake up out of a nightmare-slumber, bruised -and sore and sweating, after hours of sleepy struggle to brace yourself -somehow between the sides of your berth so that you may not be flung -against the opposite side of your cabin. You watch for a favourable -moment—the best one is just when she is going to stop and your side is -down. Miss this, and you’ll wish you’d waited for the next. - -In spite of all your precautions your luggage has broken loose and has -taken charge of the floor. Nothing is where you put it the night before. - -Your hair-brushes are under the lower berth in the farthest possible -corner. Your tooth-brush is probably on the other side under the sofa; -and your box of tooth-powder has got into one of your boots and has -emptied itself there. Your bath-sponge has probably carried away from the -rack, and got itself saturated with the contents of your only bottle of -scent, which has dashed itself to pieces in its struggles to leap out of -its appointed place. - -You squeeze this sorrowfully out into the tumbler, if there’s one left -unbroken. At peril of life and limb you grope around and find your -deck-shoes, and then you start out for the bathroom. The ship is groaning -and shuddering like a man with tertian ague and toothache. If your -sea-legs are good you get there without a broken limb or many additions -to your bruises. - -The water in the bath is having a miniature storm all to itself. The bath -is usually marble nowadays, and very hard. If you lie down in it you are -absolutely at the mercy of the raging waters, and they dash you from side -to side, and end to end till you struggle feebly to your feet and try to -stand. - -You clutch at anything for support. Sometimes, as happened to a -fellow-voyager of mine, it is the steam-pipe for heating the water, and -off comes the skin in a twinkling. When you have got into something like -an erect position you keep yourself from being hurled out with one hand -and pull the string of the shower with the other. - -“Swish,” comes the douche, and you have a moment of cooling luxury. Then -follows the slow inexorable heave of the next roll. You hold on, partly -to the string; the water rises up on one side of the bath and slops -over, probably filling your shoes. The douche leaves you, crosses the -bathroom at an angle of sixty degrees, and drenches your pyjamas, and, -peradventure, your towels as well. If this has not happened, you stagger -out and dry yourself in the intervals of trying to sit or stand. - -Whatever else has happened to you in your bath, you’ve got cool for a few -minutes. Meanwhile the pitiless sun has been rising higher, the exertion -of drying yourself has put you into a violent perspiration, and you are -about as wet when you give it up in despair as you were when you began. - -You get into your pyjamas and shoes, and, if the demoralisation of the -tropics has gone far enough with you, and the bar is open, you go and -get a cocktail to put a little life into you after a night of gasping, -perspiring insomnia. This function is tropically termed “sweetening the -bilge-water,” and is greatly in vogue among those who have sat up late in -the smoking-room overnight. - -Then you pull yourself up on deck by handrails and anything else you can -get hold of. The morning air is delicious in its virgin freshness, and -you begin to draw new breaths of life. The decks are wet and sloppy, but -still cool. In a few hours the pitch will be boiling in the seams, and -the planks will be hot enough to melt the rubber soles off your shoes. - -The masts and funnels are describing slow arcs across the vault of the -Firmament; deck-chairs are skating about, chasing each other around, or -huddling themselves in scared heaps in the safest and wettest corners of -the deck. - -Down below there is the tinkling clatter of crockery, mingled with -language from the stewards who are trying to set the table for breakfast. -When you have cooled off a bit you nerve yourself to go below again into -the furnished oven you call your room and get dressed. Perhaps you have -to shave—but this is an added agony which may be passed over in silence. - -You stagger back on deck to get cool again. You meet your -fellow-sufferers and say things about the ship with disparaging -references to round-bottomed old tanks, butter-tubs, steam-rollers, and -the like. These things are not exaggerated. I crossed the Pacific from -Honolulu to Sydney on a steam-roller called the _Alameda_, and I am -speaking of that which I know. - -Then, perhaps after another visit to the bar, you go to breakfast. -You eat your meals in the tropics partly because you must repair the -exhaustion of perpetual perspiration, and partly because you have paid -for them in advance. Naturally, you don’t like the company to get too far -ahead of you. - -If it wasn’t for this you would probably eat a great deal less and -be much better, but human nature is human even in the saloon of a -steam-roller on the Pacific with the thermometer standing at 97° Fahr. -Thus you eat and drink and loaf your way through the listless, sweltering -hours, and vaguely wonder what your liver will be like when you get -ashore. - -There is another speciality of the tropics to which the tropical -glory-mongers have never done full justice. This is the mosquito. Of -course, there are mosquitos outside the tropics. A veracious British -Columbian once told me that on the Yukon they shoot them with revolvers -and catch them in seine nets. - -The tropical mosquito, however, does not run to size as a rule. In -Guayaquil I have seen them a little smaller than sparrows, but they were -exceptions. Still, for his size, the tropical mosquito carries a greater -load of sin and responsibility than any other beast of prey inside the -confines of Creation. - -I never really knew what artistic profanity was till I met him. I had no -idea of the magnificent capabilities of the English language, helped out -with a little American, till he had his first meal off me. - -I have said before that the Honolulu mosquito does not sing, so the -first night out I went to bed unsuspecting, and foolishly congratulating -myself that I had got rid of him for a time. I knew better when I woke -up in the still watches of the night, scraping myself from head to foot, -like Job with his potsherd—it was too hot for bed- or any other kind of -clothes—and wondering what had got me. - -I turned up the light, and there was the cloud of witnesses. I gave up -the struggle there and then, got into my pyjamas, and went on deck with a -rug over my arm and many evil thoughts in my heart. - -One of those mosquitos got as far as Samoa with me. He was the only one -that the sea air seemed to agree with, and he was as elusive as a Boer -brigand surrounded by half a dozen British armies. I killed him the -morning we sighted Apia. He was too gorged to fly. It was literally blood -for blood, only all the blood was on one side. - -I didn’t discover any mosquitos in Samoa. At least, none discovered me, -but that is perhaps because I escaped without sleeping there, and the old -steam-roller was lying a long way off the shore. There were, however, -plenty of the other winged pests which are characteristic of most -tropical paradises. - -Some of us walked up to Vailima in response to the invitation of a -fellow-traveller, a rich German merchant, who had bought the ruins of -Robert Louis Stevenson’s house—it was torn to pieces by the shells during -the bombardment—and “restored” it. I hope the gentle ghost of “R. L. S.” -will never revisit it in the glimpses of the moon. - -Samoa is one of those tropical paradises over which the romancers have -spread themselves with the most lavish verbal embroidery. The cold, or -rather tepid, truth as to my own brief experiences of it is this. - -We trudged over four miles and a half of muddy road, under a grey, leaden -sky that would have done justice to an English mid-summer day. From this -descended an almost impalpable but drenching mist, the air was thick with -flies and other intrusive things, which got into your eyes and nose and -mouth and ears. - -The exertion of plodding through the mud quickly reduced us to a state of -almost intolerable limpness. It was like four and a half miles of Turkish -bath adorned with tropical foliage. You had to get some of this foliage -and swing it about with what vigour you chanced to have left, so that you -might keep the flies far enough off to be able to breathe. - -We took a languid interest in the shell-smashed and bullet-pierced trees -by the wayside, and in the rude entrenchments which the Samoans had -thrown up, for it was along this road that the British and American -detachments had to fight their way to dubious victory so as to get things -ready for the German occupation. - -At Vailima we had warm champagne, for not even all the wealth of our -good-hearted host could buy an ounce of ice in Samoa, and we ate cakes -and pineapples where Robert Louis Stevenson had alternately feasted and -half starved, as he tells us in those daintily pathetic “Vailima Letters” -of his. - -But a proper respect for the eternal verities forces me to say that this -place, round which so many reams of imaginative eulogy have been written -and typewritten, entirely disappointed me. Everything was shabby and -ragged and squalid except the newly “restored” house and the furniture, -which might have been sent by telegraph from Tottenham Court Road that -morning. - -The avenue from the main road to the house, which the Samoans voluntarily -made for Stevenson in repayment for the whole-hearted work he had done -for them against the foreign aggressor, was puddle-strewn and inches -deep in mud. The paddock was no better than you would have found round -the shanty of a first-year selector in Australia. There were no paths, -only tracks, mostly mud. The historic stream was little more than a -stone-strewn brook. - -Even from the upper verandah of the house you can only just get a glimpse -of the sea. A hill crowded with tangled tropical growth rises on either -side of the little plateau on which the house stands. On the top of the -one to the left hand as you look towards the sea is the grave of the dead -Word-Magician. Behind the house another broken, tree-clad slope rising to -the misty clouds; and that is all. - -Personally I would not live at Vailima, rent free and everything found, -for a thousand a year. I know other places in the Pacific where with -suitable society life would be a dream of delight if one only had a tent, -a hammock, and about ten shillings sterling a week to spend. - -The steam-roller did not stop long enough for us to attempt the ascent -of the mountain. I left Vailima dejected and disappointed, in a state of -mind which even the warm champagne had failed to cheer. I tramped back -through the mud under the everlasting mist, and through the same cloud of -flies. - -When I got on board I found a sort of political demonstration, mingled -with a cosmopolitan orgie going on. - -The ship was crowded from end to end with splendid specimens of Samoan -manhood. There was a brass band on deck, and the smoking-room was simply -floating in champagne. When I got to the heart of matters I found that -the most popular man in Samoa was leaving. He was the American Consul, -and his name was Blacklock, which, being translated into Samoan, is -Pillackie-Lockie. Certain friends of his—men who would raise you out -of your boots on a pair of twos—were coming with us, and from Samoa to -Auckland it was my privilege to travel with the hardest crowd I have ever -been shipmates with. - -This was just the beginning of the German occupation. During the -bombardment the first shot fired from the German warship had wrecked -the German Consulate on the beach instead of hitting the hills beyond, -where Mataaffa’s men were supposed to be concealed; and this, with other -things, seemed to have produced a bad impression in the minds of the -natives. - -At any rate, after the second whistle had gone, when the band played -“God Save the Queen” and the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the Samoans sang -their versions of the words for all their lungs were worth, but when, in -deference to the presence of the German Consul on board, an attempt was -made at “Die Wacht am Rhein,” there was first a deadly silence and then a -deep-voice “hoo-o-o,” which I interpreted as being the Samoan for “come -out of it,” or words to that effect. - -This, by the way, is a humble, but by no means unmeaning “footnote to -history.” - - - - -Part II - -_PRISON LAND_ - - - - -A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON CONVICTS AND COLONISTS - - -There are not many portions of the sea-realm of Oceania, or, indeed, -of the whole Southern Hemisphere, of which the name is so well and -the history so little known as New Caledonia. Throughout Europe, not -excepting even France, it has for fifty years been the name of a convict -station. To the _forçat_ and the _relégué_ its name meant something even -worse than the traditions of the old galleys could tell of. It meant -banishment over an illimitable stretch of ocean; and, through the hazes -of distance, the French criminal, caged in the penal transport, saw -horrors unspeakable. To him it was the Land of the Chain, of the Lash, -and the Guillotine, a hell upon earth, a paradise of Nature transformed -by despotism into an inferno of crime and cruelty, and, above all, it was -the Land of Banishment. In earlier times it really was something like -what the _evadés_ who had reached Australia, through a thousand miles of -sea-peril and starvation, described it to be. It will be seen from the -chapters which follow that all this has long ago been done away with, but -even now the commandants of the various camps are careful to remind the -visitor from the other ends of the earth, that not the least part of the -punishment of transportation to New Caledonia consists in the fact of -banishment for many years, perhaps for ever from France. - -That is one of the reasons why France will never make a real living -colony out of New Caledonia until its present criminal and semi-criminal -population has utterly died out—a contingency which is not likely to come -to pass while French rule in the Pacific endures. The Frenchman cannot -colonise, although, curiously enough, under another flag he can become -a most excellent colonist. Take him away from France and plant him, as -in New Caledonia, under the tricolour and under the care of his all too -paternal, perhaps it would be more correct to say maternal government, -and, whether bond or free, he begins to get homesick, and a homesick man -is the last person on earth to begin colony-making. - -Of course, if you take him out in a convict transport and plant him on -an island as a prisoner you can make a colonist of a sort out of him, -and that is the sort you find in New Caledonia, a human machine whose -initiative, if he ever had any, has been ground out of him, not so -much by prison discipline, for that, as I shall show, is indulgent to -a degree that would be quite incomprehensible in England; but, rather, -by a rigid system of supervision which permits him to do nothing for -himself, which provides everything for him from the plough with which -he breaks the virgin soil of his concession to the prize which he gets -for a well-raised crop. Such a man walks on crutches all his life, and a -colonist on crutches is an entirely hopeless, if not a quite impossible, -person. - -An experience of something over forty years has convinced all the most -intelligent students of the question, that the convict civilisation of -New Caledonia is a dream the realisation of which is made impossible by -the conditions of the system itself. - -During my last conversation with the Director of the Penal -Administration, he asked me what I thought of the social conditions of -the island, and the possibility of sometime transforming it from a -penal settlement into a free colony? He was intensely in earnest on the -subject. He believed, or at least he did his best to believe, in the -future of that beautiful native land of his, and I would have encouraged -him in his loyal belief if I could have done so; but I had seen too much -of real colonisation in many lands to be able to do that honestly, and so -what I told him was this: - -“Noumea is the heart of New Caledonia, as Paris is the heart of France. -The greater part of it is founded upon what was once a miasmatic swamp, -and, no matter what you do, the poison-germs will find their way to the -surface, and pollute the atmosphere that you breathe. That is a concrete -likeness of your society. It is based on a substratum of crime. For -forty years the poison-germs of the mental disease which is called crime -have been rising from your lowest social stratum and permeating all the -others.” - -[Illustration: A Lake in the interior of New Caledonia.] - -He saw the justice of the parallel, and he tacitly admitted that the -source of moral contagion was every whit as deeply rooted and as -irremovable as the buried swamp that lies deep down beneath the palms -and the flamboyants which shade the squares and the gardens of Noumea. - -In Australia the matter was different. In the bad, old days men and -women were shipped over seas for offences which would not earn fourteen -days’ hard labour now, and the majority of them were morally and -physically sound. Moreover, they were Anglo-Saxons. They knew how to -tackle the wilderness and subdue it, and when they won their freedom -they mixed freely with freemen, and, in due course, the wilderness got -subdued, and the new nations got started. That was because there was a -maximum of individual initiative, and a minimum of government control -which made it possible for the man to work out his own moral and social -redemption, and at the same time to shape a country for his children to -dwell in. When I first went to Australia as a lad in the deck-house of a -limejuicer, the letters M.L.A. didn’t only mean Member of the Legislative -Assembly. Sometimes they meant Mustn’t Leave Australia; but to-day the -penal settlements of fifty years ago are federated nations. Caledonia -is still a convict settlement, and such it must remain until the last -drop of convict blood within its confines solidifies in the veins of its -last dead criminal, or until its moral and social swamp is drained and -purified by more drastic measures than its present rulers appear to have -dreamt of. - -For the last decade or so the French Government has been doing its -best to induce French peasants, artisans, and small tradesmen and -manufacturers to go out to New Caledonia as agricultural and industrial -colonists. It has given them free passages, land for nothing, free mining -concessions, and even capital to start on, but, in spite all of these -advantages and, perhaps, partly because of them, free colonisation has -not been a success in New Caledonia. The causes of this failure are not -very far to seek, and some of them are exactly the same as those which -operate against the success of German colonies. - -The first of them is the Functionary. New Caledonia is perhaps the most -over-governed place in the whole world. The Australian colonies are -beginning to suffer from over-government, the natural result of a too -triumphant democracy, but there, as elsewhere under the British flag, it -is still possible for the pioneer to fight his own battle for home and -fortune against the Spirit of the Wilderness with no more governmental -interference than is necessary to enforce obedience to the law. It -doesn’t matter of what nationality he is, he succeeds or fails by his own -strength or weakness. - -In a later chapter I shall describe the most marvellously successful -piece of cosmopolitan colonisation that has ever been accomplished, an -experiment, the success of which completely bears out all that I am -reluctantly obliged to say here against the French system. - -From the moment that the Frenchman, whether peasant or artisan, leaves -his native land to become a colonist in an oversea French possession he -has a functionary in front of him, one on each hand, and one behind him. -This is to ensure that he shall go along the dead straight line which -governmental wisdom has drawn for him. The man in front prevents him -going too fast, and the one behind sees that his footsteps to fortune -do not fall behind the regulation pace. When he lands in the colony, -his first task is to master more or less imperfectly the vast mass of -regulations by which all his comings and goings are ordered. Within the -sphere of action allotted to him everything is already cut and dried. To -be original is to transgress the code and to trample on the official -corns of a functionary. Wherefore, he very soon finds that originality -is at a heavy discount, and a colonist without originality is of about -as much use in a new country as a baby in long clothes. In fact the baby -is a more valuable citizen, for he may grow into something which the -officially conducted colonist never will. - -Then there is that fatal convict question. In the following pages I -have shown that in New Caledonia there are three classes into which the -criminal population of New Caledonia is rigidly divided. First, there -is the _forçat_, or convict proper, the man who has been sentenced to -a definite term of transportation, ranging from eight years to life. -The second class is composed of _relégués_ who have been banished to -New Caledonia for life, not for any particular crime, but because, by -an accumulation of offences, they have proved themselves to be hopeless -criminals, and therefore unfit for civilised society and incapable of -bearing the burden of responsibility which is inseparable from freedom. -The third class is composed of the _libérés_. We have no counterpart to -the _libéré_ in our criminal system. The nearest English analogue to him -is the convict released on license, but the only real likeness between -them is the fact that they are both responsible for their movements to -the police. - -In New Caledonia the _forçat_ may become a concessionaire and after that -a _libéré_, or he may become first a collective and then an individual -_libéré_. In the former case he is free to hire himself out for work -during the day, but he must return to sleep in barracks. In the latter -he is absolutely free within the limits of the colony. Subject to the -sanction of the Administration he may engage in any business he pleases. - -Many men in this class have done exceedingly well for themselves. Others -again have returned to France, of course under government sanction, to -present their petition for “rehabilitation.” If this is granted they -become freemen, their civil rights are restored to them, and they can -either settle down in France or return to the colony. As a rule they -choose the latter alternative. The keeper of the canteen where I lived at -Prony had done this, and had won his way back not only to citizenship, -but to universal respect. - -The _relégué_ has no such hope. He is banished for life and remains a -well-cared-for slave of the government for the rest of his days. In some -rare cases he may regain his freedom as a special act of grace, but his -civil rights are never restored to him. - -These three classes form the real substrata upon which the whole social -and official fabric of New Caledonian society rests, and it is into such -a soil, supersaturated with crime, that the French Government proposes to -transplant freemen and women, and make colonists of them. In other words -the free emigrant to New Caledonia must take his wife and children across -thirteen thousand miles of ocean and make a home for them in a land where -they will inhale the poison-germs of villainy with every breath they -breathe. Their servants and their labourers, if they can afford them, -will be thieves, swindlers, and assassins. Their sons and daughters will -have to work with them, grow up with their children, sit beside them at -school, and perhaps some day intermarry with them, for all children of -convicts born in New Caledonia are free before the law, and the legal -equals of all other children. It is obvious that under such conditions, -healthy colonisation is about as impossible as healthy physical life in a -colony of lepers. - -Many have tried the experiment and have gone back to France richer in -experience and poorer in pocket, and with such tales in their mouths -as have justly persuaded their fellow-peasants and artisans that their -hard, clean, thrifty life in France is infinitely better than State-aided -contamination in New Caledonia. - -Lastly, there is what I may call the commercial reason for failure, which -is of course closely connected with the others. Officialism has strangled -initiative, and crime has poisoned the sources of social prosperity; -wherefore in New Caledonia the French govern, but they do not develop. -Nine-tenths of the capital invested in the island is in the hands of -British and Australian firms, or is owned by foreigners who have become -naturalised French subjects. The French have had possession for half -a century of one of the richest islands in the world, yet I am only -telling the bare truth when I say that a withdrawal of foreign capital -would promptly bring the colony to bankruptcy, and that the stoppage of -the Australian carrying trade would starve it out in a month. This was -clearly proved by the extremities to which nearly all the outlying camps -were reduced by the interruption of the Coast Service during the plague -epidemic. - -Here, for instance, is one example out of many which might be quoted of -the extraordinary ineptitude of the French colonial official in matters -of business. An Anglo-French firm located in Sydney obtained a concession -for a term of years to import corn, grind it, and sell the flour at a -given price, which was about eight shillings per sack higher than the -average of Australian prices. The government objected to the price, but -yielded on condition that the firm would buy and grind all the corn -raised in the colonies. The firm knew perfectly well that all Caledonia -would not raise fifty bushels of wheat in as many years, so, of course, -they consented, and for the next ten years or so the astute partners will -go on selling flour to the government and the citizens at a much higher -price than they could import it for themselves from Australia. - -The whole trade of Noumea, which is the one trading centre of the island, -is practically in English or Australian hands, although several large -firms trade under French styles. The first essential of a commercial -education in New Caledonia is a sojourn in Australia, and no French -youth has a chance of a good start in a New Caledonian business house -unless he can speak and write English. In fact the only people in the -colony who do not speak English are the officials of the Administration -and the military officers. - -During the whole of my wanderings through the convict camps from end -to end of the island, I only found one official who could converse -intelligently in English, and that was the Director himself; and yet you -can go into almost any store or office in Noumea and get what you want by -asking for it in English. - -New Caledonia may, in short, be fairly described as a French penal colony -and a commercial dependency of Australia. - - - - -I - -_SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS_ - - -After a flying visit to Auckland, our old steam-roller staggered through -a southerly buster into Sydney Heads on Christmas Eve, and it was then -that I began to make acquaintance with the Microbe of the Black Death. - -We had got alongside the wharf at Circular Quay. On the other side of -the jetty a white-painted Messageries mail-boat was being moored. If -Sydney had only known the terrible cargo which she carried, Sydney would -have seen her sunk a thousand fathoms deep rather than let her touch -Australian soil. She was the _Pacifique_, the ship I was to cross to New -Caledonia in, and the Black Death was a passenger on board her. It was -many days more before I learnt the how and the why of this—after I had -walked in the same streets, lived in the same houses, and sat at the same -table with the Spectre. I had also seen his material reality. This was -what it looked like. - -A lot of little circular globules, flattened in the centre, some red and -some white, were floating in a greyish-white liquid under the microscope. -Among them were some tiny dark, wriggling things swimming in the fluid -and running their heads against the edges of the white globules. They -were plague-microbes in blood-serum. If they got inside the white -corpuscles the person to whom that blood belonged would have a very good -chance of dying the Black Death. If not, he would be very ill, but would -probably live, as I did. - -The newspapers had come on board, and I was having a farewell cocktail in -the Doctor’s cabin, a cosy little snuggery, which by this time contained -many pleasant memories for me. - -“There’s bubonic plague at Noumea,” said he; “and they seem to have it -pretty bad, too. Of course you won’t think of going while anything like -that’s messing around?” - -Now I loved the Doctor because, in addition to his social qualities and -medical skill, he possessed the art of making a cocktail which was an -entirely delightful antidote to his medicine. - -I confess that I didn’t like the news, but I made bold to reply: - -“Of course I shall. Do you suppose I’ve come fifteen thousand miles to -get into that place to be scared by——? Anyhow, I suppose it’s only among -the Kanakas?” - -“My dear fellow, bubonic plague’s a mighty good thing to stop away from,” -he said, with unwonted seriousness. - -“And therefore all the more interesting.” - -“Well, if you will go, so-long, and don’t get it. If you do, in a place -like that you’ll have about one chance in five of getting back.” - -Ten days afterwards I steamed into the lovely harbour of Noumea, the -Malta of the Pacific, which England lost by about three hours one morning -nearly fifty years ago. But the adventures of H.M.S. _Dodderer_ will be a -twist in another yarn. - -Even if we had not known that the terrible Black Death had come to -Noumea, the least observant of us would have asked: - -“What is the matter with this place?” - -A couple of dozen steamers and sailing-ships were laid up, and a ship out -of work is about as forlorn a spectacle as a deserted workhouse. - -The ships that were in work were all flying Yellow Jack—that spectre in -bunting which followed me across the world till I bade it, I hope, a last -farewell on the quay at Marseilles. Steam-launches, too, were flying it, -dodging backwards and forwards between the ships and the shore. They -were patrolling to stop all unauthorised communication. One of them ran -alongside. Other boats, containing friends of passengers, kept at a very -respectful distance. - -“Five fresh cases to-day; two deaths, one a white man,” were almost the -first words I heard at the gangway. Then the Doctor’s words came home to -me in a somewhat chill fashion. At Sydney it was only the news. This was -the ugly reality. We began to look at each other, and especially at the -people from the shore. - -Which of us would be first? You could see the unspoken question in every -one’s eyes. People who had been friends on the passage didn’t care to -shake hands now. We looked at the lovely landscape in front of us, the -white-walled, grey-roofed town, nestling under tall, feathery palms, and -the flamboyants blazing with crimson blossom, at the foot of the densely -wooded mountains, and it seemed strangely out of the order of things -that this demon which has devastated the world for ages should have -chosen so fair a spot from which to send that dread message forth to men -and doctors: - -“I am here, in spite of all your science. Kill me if you can. Meanwhile, -pay me my toll of life.” - -It was dark before we had passed the doctor and got ashore. The first -visible sign of the terrible presence was a long wall of corrugated iron -cutting off that portion of the town which lies along the wharves from -the rest. There were openings in this, and each was guarded by a sentry -with fixed bayonet, but more than twenty days before the Spectre had -slipped past the sentries and slain a white man. Even now it was standing -by the bedside of two white girls. - -The Kanakas and Tonkinois didn’t seem to matter so much. But white -people—that was a family matter to all of us. This seems uncharitable, -but it is none the less true. - -[Illustration: The Plague Area at Noumea. Offices of the Messageries -Maritimes, with Sentries in front.] - -When I found the place that I was to sleep in, I began to see, or, -rather, to smell, the reason why the Spectre had crossed the barriers. -Noumea has a magnificent water-supply. Fresh water flows constantly -from the mountains down through the stone channels on each side of the -streets; but its sanitation is about as rudimentary as that of a Kaffir -village. - -When I went to bed I shut the long windows opening on to the balcony to -keep the smell out. I also shut in the heat and some odd millions of -mosquitos, any of which, according to popular belief, might have had -thousands of microbes concealed about its person. As a matter of fact -they hadn’t; but they got their own work in all the same. - -I stood it for nearly an hour, and then I concluded that even the smell -was preferable to suffocation, so I opened the windows and went out on -the balcony to scratch and say things to the accompaniment of the song of -many vocal insects. The next morning I went down into the yard to cool my -wounds in a corrugated iron bathroom, which, with true French colonial -forethought, had been built within two yards of an open cesspool. A -shower-bath in tropical countries is usually a luxury as well as a -necessity. In Noumea it was only a necessity. - -When I set out for my first stroll round Noumea the morning after my -arrival the sun was shining out of a sky of unflecked blue. A delicious -breeze was flowing down the mountain-sides. The scent of fruit and -flowers was everywhere atoning for the stench of that backyard. I took -in long breaths of the sweet, soft air, and began to wonder whether that -black Spectre really was haunting such a paradise as this. - -Then I turned into the Place des Cocotiers, which is to Noumea what the -Champs Elysées are to Paris—a broad square shaded by blazing flamboyants -and flanked by rows of coco-palms. The next moment I saw a long, -four-wheeled, white-curtained vehicle being driven rapidly through it. It -was the ambulance, and inside it lay some stricken wretch. Who—yes, who -was it? A question of some significance to one who might have had to say -“here!” to the dread summons before the next sun rose. - -I went under the verandah of the Hotel de France, which fronts the -square, and ordered a _limonade_, so that I might ask the news. Yes, it -was the ambulance, and its occupant was one of the white girls. In three -days she was to be the first white bride of the Black Death. It was -rumoured that there were six new cases that morning, but the Sanitary -Commission very wisely only reported two “suspected” cases and one death. -If they had told the truth for a few days more there would have been -panic, and panic is the best—or worst—helpmeet of disease, especially in -a place like Noumea. - -From the hotel I wandered along the shady sidewalks of the broad streets, -and presently found myself in a quarter of the town which looked as if it -had been bombarded. The houses were wrecked and roofless. Some of them -were smouldering still, and some were cold, skeleton ruins. It was here -that the Black Death had found its first victims. They were only Kanakas -and Tonkinois, so their families had been cleared out, and their houses -and belongings burnt. - -Farther on up the hill leading to the military reservation I saw all -that was left of what had once been a pretty villa standing in its own -grounds, a garden such as one sees only in the tropics. This had been the -house of the first white victim, a young fellow of splendid physique, who -had fought the Demon through three weeks of torture, dying by inches in -multiplying horrors unspeakable. - -Later on the Demon was more merciful, because he struck harder and killed -quicker. In a few weeks it was to be a matter of hours rather than of -days. - -I learnt afterwards that, although the Sanitary Commission had burnt the -house down, they had allowed the furniture to be sold by public auction. -The same authority permitted the traveller by sea to take any sort of -luggage he liked on board the steamer, but would not allow even a package -of clean linen to be forwarded from one port to another unless it was in -the possession of its owner. Nail it up in a box and it could go, but -as personal effects—no. Later on the Demon took his revenge for this -foolishness. He laid his hands on the Chief of the Commission, and killed -him in thirty-six hours. - -That night I dined at the club, the Cercle de Noumea, an institution -which is devoted to eating and drinking during the day, and to poker and -baccarat during the night. - -There was only one subject of conversation among the Frenchmen round the -long table—_la Peste_. - -During the plague-time in Bombay it cost drinks round to mention the -word in white society, but in Noumea every one, doctors and laymen -alike, talked unrestrainedly of it. The doctors told of the new “cases,” -enlarged on symptoms, and described experiments in detail which made the -laymen mostly sick, and nearly all frightened. Which is one point of -difference between English and French ways of looking at ugly things. - -A day or two after, when the name of the Demon had become familiar to my -ears, and had, therefore, lost some of its terrors—I suppose I really -was quite as frightened as anybody else—I noticed that a man feeling -furtively under his armpits was looked at with suspicion, and a man seen -limping in the street was left to walk alone. - -One morning I got up feeling rather seedy. It may have been the -mosquitos, or the heat, or the last French cigar overnight. It is a true -saying that a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client, and -that a man who is his own doctor has a still bigger fool for a patient; -but by this time I had heard enough of _la Peste_ in Noumea to convince -me that I had to take the latter risk into my own hands. If I had -described my symptoms to a doctor I should have been “under observation” -in the hospital within an hour. After that the date of my coming out -would have been a very uncertain one, so I smoked the mosquitos out of -my bedroom, took some chlorodyne, and went to bed. It is bad to take -opiates, but it is a great deal worse to lie awake in a plague-smitten -town and wonder whether or not you’ve got it. - -The next day I saw a coffin carried out of a house. That night the house -was pulled down, and the ruins burnt, but the day after that, as though -in mockery of every precaution taken, the Demon showed himself in a new -and deadlier form. - -A great cleaning-up had been going on all this time, just as it was in -Sydney later on. The filth-accumulations of years were being cleared out. -A white man, very much down on his luck, took a job with the Kanakas and -convicts who were cleaning out the basement of a store in which dead rats -had been found. The others had their mouths and noses covered with cloths -steeped in corrosive sublimate, but he wasn’t afraid of any blanked -plague, and so he went in without. - -He happened to stir up some dust out of which he disinterred the corpse -of a rat. He inhaled some of the dust. The little black wriggly thing -that I had seen under the microscope got into his lungs, and assisted -in the change of the venous into the arterial blood. In six hours that -man was dead. The pulmonary form of the Black Death is perhaps the most -swiftly killing of all diseases. - -After this the corrugated iron fence round the wharves came down, and -the sentries went back to barracks. The enemy had passed them, unseen -and unchallenged. Every gust of wind which raised a cloud of dust in the -street might carry death, and sometimes did. - -You might, for example, walk through one of these clouds on your way to -dinner. Your appetite would not be quite as good as usual. After dinner -you would feel headachy and sick, and, being disinclined to walk home,—a -very bad symptom, by the way,—you would call a cab and be driven there. -The next day you would have a drive in the ambulance, after which your -fate lay on the knees of the gods. In the particular case here referred -to the matter was decided in four days. - -It was little wonder that the microbe was thriving apace in this -outwardly lovely place, for dirt, disease, and death are a trinity found -ever hand in hand. Just _en passant_, I may say here that my excellent -landlady who, I am sorry to say, died of the plague soon after I left her -hospitable roof, subsequently confided to me that among her guests there -were some who had not had a bath for three weeks. Of course there was no -law to make them wash, but I think that in a tropical country in which -the Black Death has taken up its abode the penalty for not bathing, at -least once a day, should be delivery to the tender mercies of the local -fire brigade, with permission to squirt to taste. - - - - -II - -_SOME SOCIAL SIDELIGHTS_ - - -My first official business in the colony was, of course, to write to the -Governor acquainting him with the fact of my arrival. I did this with -considerable misgivings, for both at Sydney and on the boat, I had heard -the evil rumour that in consequence of the plague the Government of New -Caledonia had decided to close the prisons. This meant that the convicts -who had been hired out to work in the mines and elsewhere would be -recalled to the prisons and the camps, and that all communication would -be severed between them and the outer world until the epidemic was over. - -Now I carried credentials from the Ministry of the Colonies in Paris, -which is to New Caledonia what the Russian Ministry of Justice was to -Siberia, and these, under ordinary circumstances, authorised me to have -every prison door in the island opened to me. But M. Albert Décrais knew -nothing about the coming visitation when he gave them to me, and the -Governor would have been well within his powers if he had answered my -letter by expressing “his infinite regret that exceptional circumstances -made it impossible for him to act under the instructions of the Ministry -during the present disastrous epidemic, etc.” - -In this case my mission would have been brought to nought, and I should -have travelled fifteen thousand miles for the privilege of sojourning an -indefinite time in a plague-stricken town. It was three days before I got -an answer, and during that time I allayed my anxieties by making a closer -acquaintance with Noumea. - -Through the kindness of the Earl of Dunmore, who was then acting as -Administrator of one of the greatest mining enterprises in New Caledonia, -and a member of the Municipal Council with whom I had travelled from -Sydney, I was made a guest of the Cercle. Only the most exclusive -aristocracy of Noumea breakfast and dine at home. The rest—officials, -merchants, and professional men—knock off work at eleven, having begun -about six, breakfast at half-past, and then play or sleep till three. - -At six everything, except the hotels and cafés, shut up; then comes a -drive or a ride, tennis or a sail in the bay, then dinner, followed by -cards and drinks till midnight—and of such is the daily life of the -capital of New Caledonia. I learnt afterwards that this delightfully -situated little town is also one of the wickedest spots on earth, but of -that I shall have more to say hereafter. - -Socially, Noumea struck me as being somewhat cramped. Its society is -composed of educated, highly trained, and, in the main, well-mannered -men, living a little life among themselves, and being crushed into -smallness by the very narrowness of their environment. They were a -thousand miles from anywhere. Their only immediate connection with the -outer world was the cable to Sydney, controlled by the all-powerful -Administration, which published and suppressed whatever it pleased. - -There were the monthly Messagerie mails, and a few odd traders, now -mostly laid up in the harbour flying the Yellow Jack. Every night the -same men met and discussed the same subjects, the chief of which was _la -Peste_. Every day the same men went to the same duties, the same women -discussed the same gossip and the same scandal. Every night the same men -and women met in the Place des Cocotiers, under its swaying palms and -flaming flamboyants, and listened to the same music—which, by the way, -they will never listen to again. - -I had gone to Noumea full up to the roots of my hair with the utterly -erroneous notions which I had picked up from books and conversations. -The books appear to have been written mostly by returned _déportés_ or -_communards_ who had been banished in ’71 and ’72, and allowed to return -to France after the general amnesty. The people with whom I had conversed -had apparently got their knowledge from somewhat similar sources, but all -agreed in representing New Caledonia as a second Tasmania, or Norfolk -Island, where all the uncivilised barbarities of our own transportation -system had been prolonged to the end of the nineteenth century. - -Its population consisted of a vast horde of convicts, the most abandoned -and bloodthirsty wretches on earth, ground down into hopeless slavery -by the irresistible and unpitying strength of an official engine called -the Penitentiary Administration. The officials were a set of soulless -gaolers in whose natures every spark of humanity had been quenched by -the performance of their pitiless task. The surplus of the population -consisted of half-tamed natives and a few thousand _libérés_, or -ticket-of-leave men, any one of whom would knock you on the head or stick -a knife into you for a couple of francs. - -Finally I was regarded in Paris as rather madder than the average -Englishman for wanting to go to such a God-forsaken place, being neither -a convict who had to go nor an official who wanted to earn a comfortable -_retraite_ and save up the wherewithal to purchase rentes on which to -spend the balance of his days in that peace and quiet which is the -domestic heaven to which all good Frenchmen look forward. - -Now this is what I actually saw of convict-life in Noumea before I had -passed the prison gates for the first time. I had eaten my second dinner -at the Cercle, and Lord Dunmore, taking pity on my isolation, said: - -“The convict-band is playing in the square to-night, suppose we go and -get some seats?” - -“The convict what?” I said, harking back mentally to the rigid English -system, and trying to picture to myself an English convict blowing a -cornet. - -“It’s what they call here the Musique de la Transportation. It’s quite an -institution in Noumea. I don’t suppose there’s anything like it anywhere -else.” - -So I went, feeling verily a stranger in a strange land. - -It was an absolutely perfect tropical night. The moon was getting up over -the eastern end of the Chaine Centrale, a ridge of mountains which runs -through Caledonia from north-east to south-west; the cafés along the top -of the square were glittering with light; a deliciously cool breeze was -blowing down from the mountains through the trees. - -Little groups of people, mostly clad in white, were sitting on chairs -about the lawns, and others were strolling slowly round and round the -square and across the paths which radiated from the big kiosk in the -centre. There were pretty costumes and brilliant uniforms, stars and -medals and all the rest of it, and the one finishing tropical touch that -was needful was added by wandering bands of laughing Kanakas with gaudy -waistcloths and fantastic headgear, big, luminous eyes, and teeth that -gleamed whitely as they laughed. - -Saving these last there was nothing that would have been incongruous with -one of those delightful portions of outdoor Paris where “l’on s’amuse.” -The shadow of the Black Death seemed to have been lifted for the time, -and as for crime and convicts—well, presently up one of the avenues -through the flamboyants there appeared a line of grey-clad figures -carrying musical instruments. There were twenty-five of them all told. - -They sauntered up to the band-stand laughing and chatting as though -they hadn’t a care in the wide world. Possibly they had very few; fewer -certainly than the peasant toiling his sixteen hours a day for a bare -living in far-away France. - -They were guarded by a very bored-looking surveillant, who carried in -a sling a revolver which he was not allowed to use unless one of his -charges struck him first! - -The gentlemen of the orchestra took their places, and a short, thick-set -man, with a clever, but most unpleasant face, went into the middle and -looked around with an air of command, which reminded me oddly of the -preliminary gestures of other conductors of very different orchestras. -There was a little tuning-up, then the conductor tapped his music-stand, -waved his baton of authority, and forthwith the sweet strains of the -Intermezzo from “Cavalleria Rusticana” began to float out through the -drowsy hush of the tropical evening. - -There is really only one word which could describe the scene, and that -is bizarre. Take five-and-twenty musically inclined convicts out of an -English prison, put them into the Western Gardens at Earl’s Court on a -warm July evening and you would have something like it, but not quite. -At Earl’s Court the convict-band would be stared at as a curiosity, but -people would probably keep at a respectful distance from the band-stand, -especially if there was only one tired-looking warder to keep guard over -the musical criminals. - -[Illustration: The Convict Band playing in the Kiosk in the Place des -Cocotiers, Noumea.] - -But in Noumea no one, save, perhaps, myself, looked twice at the -enclosure which contained an amount of assorted villainy and potential -violence, rapine, and sudden death as you could find the wide world over -in a similar space. There were men from every station of life—soldiers, -priests, lawyers, politicians, financiers, and men who had once belonged -to the Golden Youth of France—inside the kiosk of the Musique de la -Transportation. - -Collectively they had committed every crime, from forgery to outrages for -which civilised speech has no name. The _chef d’orchestre_, for example, -was the man who, a few years ago, sent a thrill of horror through the -world by cutting the heart out of a man whom he believed to be his rival -in his wife’s affections, getting her to cook it as a sheep’s heart, -dining off it with her, and then telling her what she had been eating. In -addition to being a talented musician he was also a very clever painter -who has won quite a reputation in the island. - -And yet, while this unspeakable scoundrel was controlling with his baton -the flood of sweet sounds which flowed out from the kiosk over the -moonlight-spangled lawns, the most respectable people in Noumea were -sitting about in chairs smoking and chatting; young men and maidens were -wandering about among the trees; and little children were playing round -the grassy slope on which the band-stand stood, taking no more notice of -these human hyenas than if they had been the most respectable musicians -that ever wore long hair and swallow-tailed coats. - -The performance finished, as usual, with “La Marseillaise.” I stood up -and took off my helmet. Then I put it on again and sat down somewhat -suddenly. Not another person rose; not another head was uncovered. For -all the notice that was taken of it, the National Hymn of the Republic -might as well have been “Mrs. ’Enery ’Awkins,”—which did not strike me as -a particularly good thing for France generally. - -When the performance was over the artists gathered up their instruments, -lolled out on to the path in front of the kiosk, and shuffled into a -sort of double line. The weary warder counted them in a languid fashion, -right-about-faced them, and gave the order to march. They shambled away -through the gaily dressed crowds in the square. No one even turned to -look at them, and I, who had seen a party of English convicts on their -way to work through a public road, ranged up with their faces to the wall -because a break-load of excursionists was passing by, wondered greatly. - -The Musique de la Transportation is now, happily for the credit of -Noumea, a thing of the past. The pampered artists got to think themselves -indispensable to the gaiety of the town. So one night, having collected -more surreptitious coppers than usual, they halted on their way to -barracks, bought wine and brandy, and told the warder to go and report -them if he dared. He did dare, and the next day the Director of the -Administration published a brief edict which abolished them as musicians -for ever. - -The next morning, soon after coffee, a white-helmeted, gorgeously -uniformed gendarme presented himself at the door of the Hotel Gaquon with -a request to see “Monsieur Griffitte.” An Englishman or German official -would have saluted. He took his helmet off, bowed, and handed me a letter -from the Governor appointing an interview for the next day. I went to -breakfast at the club as usual, and before the meal was over I found that -everybody knew of the sending of that letter. I had been an interloper -before, and an Englishman at that. Now I was a guest, the guest of -the omnipotent Ministry upon whose will the fate of every official in -Caledonia depended. - -That was a morning of introductions, and I was surprised to find how -many friends I had in Noumea. - -The Governor’s offices at Noumea are in a corner of the lovely grounds -in the midst of which his official residence stands. It was a little, -unpretentious, two-storey building, wooden built, and with a verandah -giving on to the street. - -I gave my card to a collarless clerk, who appeared to be getting very hot -over the task of sorting a few papers. He sent it up to His Excellency, -and asked me “to give myself the trouble to sit down,” which I did. - -Soldiers, civilians, gendarmes, and convict messengers kept dropping in -every now and then to deliver messages or letters, or have a chat with -somebody by way of beguiling the tedium of official hours, and then a -half-caste boy came down with my card and requested me to give myself the -further trouble of going upstairs. I don’t know whether this was another -official, but if he was his uniform consisted of a pair of trousers and a -shirt, a linen jacket which hadn’t seen the laundry for some time, and a -pair of canvas deck-shoes. - -[Illustration: The Town and Harbour of Noumea. Across the bay are the -Barracks and the Military Reservation, which no civilian may enter -without authority. On the peninsula to the right are the stations of the -_libérés collectifs_.] - -I followed him upstairs. He opened the door without any ceremony, and -I found myself in the presence of the Governor—a man of medium French -height, with a square, close-cropped head, moustache, and close-clipped -beard. If the chin had matched the forehead it would have been a strong -face, but it did not. - -I learnt afterwards that his Excellency Monsieur Feuillet is a man -of decided anti-English tastes; but for all that he received me very -cordially. He had already received notice of my coming from the French -Government, and expressed himself as willing to do anything to further my -mission. As a matter of fact, this came to countersigning my credentials -from the Minister of Colonies and writing a letter to the Director of the -Administration. I then shook hands, and saw Monsieur Paul Feuillet no -more save from a distance. - -Then I went to the Direction, and in a few minutes I was sitting in a -half-darkened, comfortable room, with double doors, through which no -sound could penetrate. This room is the centre of the system which really -controls the destinies of bond and free throughout New Caledonia. On the -other side of an ample writing-table sat a square-headed, strong-jawed -man of about five-and-thirty, with close-cropped hair, and moustache and -shaven chin _à l’Anglais_. - -This was M. Edouard Telle, Director of the Penitentiary Administration -for New Caledonia and Dependencies, the strongest, politest, and most -friendly Frenchman I have ever met. - -He is supreme chief of an army of commandants, surveillants, and jailors, -whose duty it is to keep watch and ward over between ten thousand and -twelve thousand convicts, _relégues_ and _libérés_—terms which I have -already explained. - -He is absolutely independent of the Governor, who cannot even employ -convicts on public works without his permission. He is responsible to -no one but the Minister of Colonies and the President of the Republic, -and they are many a long thousand miles away. With the stroke of a pen -he could instantly stop all convict labour throughout the colony, and so -bring its principal industries to a standstill. It was he, too, and not -the Governor, who could have issued that ukase which would have closed -the prisons and turned my long journey into a wild-goose chase. - -[Illustration: In the Harbour, Noumea.] - -But, instead of this, he took quite as much trouble with me as if I had -been an inspector sent out by the French Government, rather than a -wandering Englishman who was only there on sufferance. He took the utmost -pains to find out exactly what I wanted; he mapped out my journeys for -me; gave me special passes authorising me to inspect all the prisons and -camps _en détail_—which is a very different thing to the ordinary, but -still rarely bestowed, visitor’s pass. - -He addressed a circular letter to the commandants, enjoining them to do -everything to help me; and, not content with this, he telegraphed to each -prison and camp so that conveyances might be ready for me. At the same -time, when I suggested fixing dates, he replied: - -“No, Mr. Griffith, go when you please. I wish you to see the -establishments exactly as they are always, and not as they might be if -they were got ready for you. When you have seen them come back and tell -me what you think of them. From what you have told me of your English -prisons”—this was at the end of a somewhat long conversation—“your -opinion will be most valuable to me.” - -Then I thanked him, and mentioned the delicate subject of photographs, -and his good nature and indulgence once move proved equal to the strain. - -“Photograph anything you please,” he said, “inside or outside the -prisons; but I shall ask you to remember that good English rule of yours -about photographing individual prisoners.” - -Of course, I agreed to this, and left the Direction well at ease and -wondering more than ever at the misconceptions I had managed to form of -the Caledonian prison system. I frankly admit that I had expected to be -received with suspicion and reserve, perhaps even with hostility. - -Instead of this the most powerful man in the colony had greeted me with -perfect cordiality and frankness, and had taken more trouble to make my -tour a success than I should certainly have expected a good many English -officials to take. - -During another interview with M. Telle, before I had yet seen the inside -of a Caledonian prison, we both managed to astonish each other not a -little. The Director is a criminologist and the son of a criminologist, -who was Director before him, but he was sufficiently French only to have -studied the continental systems. - -Therefore he was about as much surprised when I told him that the -cat and the birch were still used in English prisons; that English -prisoners ate and slept in absolute solitude and worked in silence, as -I was when he told me that, in this land of supposed horrors not only -had all corporal punishment been abolished, but that the surveillants -were not permitted even to lay a hand upon a prisoner, except in actual -self-defence; that cells and silence were only used as punishments; and -when he added that the better-behaved prisoners might smoke and drink -wine, I confess that I was almost shocked. All this, however, with other -strange things, I was soon to see for myself. - -I dined that night, as usual, at the club, in a more contented frame of -mind than heretofore, for now the omnipotent Administration had spoken, -and I was free of the colony—free to go where I pleased, to see what I -liked, and, within the limits of the law, do as I liked. - -No man might say me nay. All the prison-houses in the land must give up -their secrets to me. In short, I had in my pocket the keys of every cell -door in New Caledonia. - -Under these circumstances I naturally found things much pleasanter than -before. I listened with equanimity to a local editor’s remarks on the -war news—which he had been spending the day in mangling—and even the -military doctors’ descriptions of the new plague cases and the ghastly -operations which they had just been performing with those nail-stained -hands of theirs did not seem quite so loathsome as before. - -There was, by the way, another peculiarity of New Caledonian social life -to which I was already becoming accustomed. There are practically no -free servants in the colony. Male or female, they are either convicts or -ex-convicts, and it was no uncommon thing to have your knife and fork -laid for you at breakfast or dinner by a hand which had stuck a knife -into somebody else, or to take your food from hands that had poisoned. - -I admit that I did not like the idea at first, but in time I got -accustomed to it, just as I did later on to being shaved by a most -amiable and accomplished murderer, and having my bed made up by a lady -who had cut her child’s throat. It is, in fact, the fashion in New -Caledonia to have murderers for servants. As a distinguished resident -said to me: - -“You see, the assassins are reliable. They are the aristocrats of the -place. They don’t condescend to smaller crimes. In fact, they would be -absolutely insulted if they were accused of a theft, at least, the good -murderers would, and as for killing you, they would never dream of it. -Why should they? Besides, they know perfectly well that there wouldn’t be -the remotest chance of escape for them.” - -This I found afterwards to be the cold-drawn truth. Fewer after-crimes -are committed in New Caledonia by those who are sent there for -assassination than by minor criminals. Later on I shall have some curious -information to give on this subject. - - - - -III - -_ILE NOU_ - - -Half-past five on a glorious tropical morning. The sun was still hidden -behind the green, rugged mountains which gained its name for New -Caledonia; but it was still high enough for the shadows to be melting -out of the valleys; for the grey roofs and white walls of the town to be -glimmering among the dark masses of foliage; and for the smooth waters of -the lovely harbour to light up with foregleams of the glory of sunrise. - -A little beyond the northern end of the plague-infected area, with its -corrugated iron walls and its white-clad sentries, I found a collection -of pretty buildings, with neat little gardens round them. They were -the offices of the executive police, and when I had passed through -them I found myself on a short, board, wooden, T-shaped quay—the Quai -de la Transportation—which is used solely for the purposes of the -Administration. - -Leading down to this is one of the only two railways of New Caledonia on -which a locomotive travels. It is quite a toy affair, with a gauge of -about twenty inches, and a length of perhaps five hundred yards; but the -engine puffed around just as busily, and seemed just as proud of itself, -as if it had been hauling the Empire State Express. It runs from the -wharves to the head of the quay, and its function just then was carrying -ballast for a new road. - -It is a curious fact that the French have had possession of New Caledonia -for nearly half a century, and yet the only railway by which passengers -can travel is one on which the cars are drawn by convicts, concerning -which more hereafter. - -I presented my credentials at the _douanerie_, where my cameras were -viewed with considerable suspicion until the all-compelling documents had -been read. After that, I suppose, they would have almost let me take a -Maxim gun on to the island. Then they were noted and handed back to me -with a polite “_Très bien, monsieur._ The _canot_ will start in a quarter -of an hour. If you will give your apparatus to this officer he will see -it safe in the boat.” - -A polite surveillant stepped up, touched his helmet, and took them from -me. Then I lit a pipe and strolled up and down the quay to enjoy my -strange surroundings. - -I had seen hundreds of convicts in England working both within and -without the prison walls; working in grim, joyless silence, surrounded by -equally silent, rifle-armed warders, and never a prisoner moving without -one of these at his heels. Here it was difficult to believe that I was in -Prisonland at all save that the other occupants of the quay were wearing -two very different uniforms, and that I was the only one _en civile_. - -The surveillants were dressed in spotless white—the official washing-bill -of New Caledonia must be something enormous—their white helmets bore a -silver badge, the chief figure in which was a glorified representation -of the now forbidden rod, with the letters “A. P.” (Administration -Pénitentiare). Their rank was shown by _galons_, a sort of stripe worn on -the cuff of the left sleeve. This was of blue cloth with silver braid—the -lines of braid served the same purpose as stripes do with us. For -instance, the French equivalent for “two stripes” is “_à deux galons_.” - -The uniform of the others was chiefly conspicuous for its ugliness and -utility—a pair of trousers and a jumper of light grey canvas cloth, with -a vest underneath, and a very broad-brimmed straw hat, without a ribbon. -No convict in Caledonia is allowed a ribbon on his hat. Some had stout, -undressed brogues, and some were barefoot. They were without exception -extremely ugly and fairly hearty. - -A good many of them were smoking, and this rather got on my nerves, for -I kept on asking myself what would happen to an English prison official -if he saw a convict take out a cigarette and go and ask another one -for a light? But here surveillants strolled about puffing their own -cigarettes—making me wonder again what would happen to an English warder -smoking on duty?—and not worrying particularly over anything. - -At the same time, there was no lack of discipline of its kind, though it -was not what we should call discipline in England. Still, the convicts -worked hard and regularly; harder, indeed, than I have ever seen English -convicts work. - -Their task was loading the _canots_ and the steam-launch with provisions -for the great prison on the other side of the harbour; and they went -at it steadily and in excellent order until it was finished, scarcely -needing a word of direction from the surveillants. - -As I watched them I thought of the quiet-spoken, square-headed despot -with whom I had been talking a day or two before. These men, like -hundreds of others that I saw, evidently knew him, if only by repute. - -Presently the surveillant who had taken my cameras came and saluted and -told me that the _canot_ was ready. I got in, and found it manned by -twelve convicts, who were protected by an awning stretched from stem to -stern. They were chatting and smoking when we got in, and my conductor, -thinking perhaps to impress the Englishman with a sense of French -discipline, ordered them to be silent. - -They stopped talking for five minutes while they got under weigh, then, -like a lot of school-boys, they began again, whereupon the surveillant -rebuked them again. “_Silence, je vous dis!_” said he in his most -authoritative tone; and they obliged him more or less for the rest of the -passage. - -I must say that they rowed very well, and with a vigour which betokened -good nourishment. They looked at me with smiling curiosity. They -evidently knew pretty well all about me by this time—Heaven and the -mysterious “_loi du bagne_” only know how; and I daresay they wondered -why any one should have taken the trouble to come across the world just -to make their acquaintance. - -I was received on the quay at Ile Nou by an officer—a chief warder, as -we should call him in England—who took me to the Commandant’s house. -_En route_ I found that Ile Nou, about which I had read such terrible -stories, is a very pleasant little settlement, composed of white houses -and shady streets, at the foot of a hill on which the great prison -buildings stand. - -In a few minutes another illusion was shattered. I admit that I -expected to find the Commandant of the greatest prison in Caledonia a -semi-military despot in a braided uniform, boots and spurs, with a sword, -and, possibly, a revolver, to say nothing of fiercely waxed moustache and -imperial. - -Instead of this I found a mild-mannered, grey-haired gentleman of about -sixty, clad in a _négligé_ white suit, with no sign of official rank -about him save a silver-embroidered blue band round the left cuff of -his coat, which reminded me rather oddly of the band that a British -policeman wears when he is on duty. - -He was drinking his early coffee and receiving reports, which were noted -by a convict clerk at another table. He gave me a cup of coffee, and -ordered the carriage to be got ready. Meanwhile, he dropped his reports -and began to ask me about my journey, my impressions of New Caledonia, -and so on. - -Presently a surveillant came in to say that the carriage was ready. We -got in, and a couple of well-bred, well-fed horses pulled us at a good -pace up the winding road, until our convict driver halted in front of a -big black iron door in a long white-washed wall. As the Chief Surveillant -put his key into the lock the Commandant said to me, with a smile: - -“You will be the first Englishman who has ever passed this gate.” - -“_Mais pardon, Commandant_,” said the surveillant, as he threw the door -open. “There have been two others, but they did not come across the world -to see the prison, and they stayed a good deal longer than monsieur would -care to do.” - -“No doubt,” said I; and with that we crossed the Threshold of Lost -Footsteps. - -As the door swung to behind me I found myself in a long rectangular -courtyard, one side of which was almost filled by a row of long, white -buildings fronting endways on to the court, with a door at the end and -small windows along the side. - -At the further end, to the right hand, there was another door in the -high, white wall, of which I was to learn the use later on, for the -quadrangle which we were crossing is to the convicts of Ile Nou what the -Place de la Roquette was lately to the Parisians—the Field of Blood, the -Place of Execution. - -The Commandant apologised for not being able to invite me to assist at -the spectacle, as there was no patient available. I should see shortly a -_forçat_ awaiting trial for murder, but it would be some time before he -could be tried, and then there would be the ratification of the sentence. - -I should, of course, have assisted at such a spectacle if it had been -possible; but I had the advantage of hearing a simple, but none the less -graphic, description of an execution at Ile Nou from the lips of one who -had more than once been an eye-witness of the dread ceremony; and this -I will reproduce hereafter not only because of its dramatic interest, -but because it is so absolutely different from anything ever heard of in -England. - -After we had inspected the _cases_, or dormitories, where the convicts -of the third, or lowest, class sleep on sloping wooden shelves, with one -foot manacled to an iron bar running the whole length of the long room, -we went through other gates and walls into the central prison—the Prison -Cellulaire—the heart and centre of the vast organisation. - -Here I might have fancied myself in a somewhat old-fashioned English -prison. Here there were no convicts smoking cigarettes or chatting at -their work while their guardians smoked theirs and chatted also. The -chill of silence cut down through the warmth of the tropic morning as the -iron gates clashed to, and the heavy bolts shot back. Underfoot, black -stone or cement pavement; around, white walls and two tiers of little -black doors, the upper fronted by stone balconies and iron rails. - -[Illustration: The Inner Court of the Central Prison, Ile Nou. The -Cachots Noirs are to the right. The Condemned Cells are in the Upper -Gallery above the Archway.] - -On the ground floor we went through several cells into which light -as well as air was admitted, and here I found convicts who had been -sentenced to various terms of hard labour with solitary confinement. -This, with reduction of diet, is the first degree of punishment -inflicted on an idle or disorderly prisoner. It was about equal to the -ordinary hard labour of English prisons. - -Then, after a look into the two little exercise-yards, we mounted to -the second storey. Here I noticed that the cells had no windows and no -gratings in the doors. Some of them had little cards affixed to them. - -I went and read a couple of these; they contained the names of the -prisoners, their first sentence, their subsequent offences, and their -present sentences. - -In these two cases it was “ten years’ solitary confinement in the dark.” -Then I knew that I was standing in front of the terrible Cachot Noir, -or Black Cell—that engine of mental murder which the sentimentalism of -French deputies, some of them amnestied _communards_, has substituted for -the infinitely more merciful lash. - -I asked for the doors to be opened. My polite Commandant demurred for -a moment. It was not _réglementaire_. The Cachots Noirs were never -opened except at stated intervals,—once every thirty days, for an hour’s -exercise and medical inspection,—but the wording of my credentials was -explicit, and so the doors were opened. - -Out of the corner of one came something in human shape, crouching -forward, rubbing its eyes and blinking at the unaccustomed light. It had -been three and a half years in that horrible hole, about three yards -long, by one and a half broad. I gave him a feast of sunshine and outer -air by taking his place for a few minutes. - -After the first two or three the minutes lengthened out into hours. I had -absolutely no sense of sight. I was as blind as though I had been born -without eyes. The blackness seemed to come down on me like some solid -thing and drive my straining eyes back into my head. It was literally -darkness that could be felt, for I felt it, and the silence was like the -silence of upper space. - -When the double doors opened again the rays of light seemed to strike my -eyes like daggers. The criminal whose place I had taken had a record of -infamy which no printable words could describe, and yet I confess that I -pitied him as he went back into that living death of darkness and silence. - -We went along the galleries, looking into other cells and at other -prisoners, some of whom I was surprised to find quite cheerful, but they -were new-comers, and perhaps liked the idleness and the sleep. Then we -came to a corridor cut off by a heavy iron gate. There were six ordinary -cells in this, the cells of the condemned, and it is here that the last -tragedy of the convict’s life on Ile Nou begins. - -Let us suppose that, as often happens, there are four or five men lying -in these cells under sentence of death. The English murderer knows the -day and hour of his doom. These men do not. Every night they go to sleep -not knowing whether or not it is their last sleep on earth. All they know -is that they are doomed. Then the fiat goes forth that “_Un nommé D._” is -to make the final expiation of his crimes. - -That night, when the prison doors are locked, the parts of the guillotine -are brought in through the door at the end of the great courtyard, -and set up on a platform supported on a stone foundation, under the -supervision of “Monsieur de l’Ile Nou,” who is always a convict released -from his other duties in consideration of performing the last functions -of the law on his colleagues. - -Soon after three the next morning, accompanied by the Chaplain and the -Chief Surveillant, the Commandant mounts the little hill on which the -central prison stands. The black doors open, and they ascend to the -corridor of the condemned; a key clicks in the lock, and the bolts rattle -back. - -You can, perhaps, imagine what that sound means to A., B., C., and D. -Men in their position do not take much awakening. Perhaps they have been -waiting for this for weeks. - -They hear the footsteps coming along the stone-paved corridor. Which door -will they stop at? Think of the agony of apprehension that is compressed -into those few seconds! - -Then the footsteps stop. Three men wipe the sweat from their brows, and -fall back on their plank-beds. They at least will not die for a day or -two yet. The fourth hears a key rattle into the lock of his cell door. -The door swings open, and the early morning flows in. “_L’un nommé D._” -has already accepted his fate. He is already off his bed and standing -to attention as steadily as he can. The Commandant says kindly, and, -perhaps, with a check in his voice: - -“_C’est pour ce matin!_” - -Then he steps back, and the priest takes his place. The door is not -closed, but the Commandant and his assistants retire a little out of -respect for the last confidences of the condemned. - -Meanwhile “Monsieur de l’Ile Nou” has been summoned, and, in due course, -he takes the chaplain’s place. He binds his patient’s hands behind his -back, ties his legs so that he can only just walk, and cuts away the -collar of his shirt. - -At the same time, other and more picturesque preparations have been made -in the great courtyard. A company of infantry with loaded rifles and -fixed bayonets have been marched in and surround the scaffold in hollow -square. Almost at the same time come the Director of the Administration, -the Procurator-General, the Clerk of the Marine Tribunal, the Court which -holds the power of life and death over the convicts, and a few other -officials. - -The swift tropical dawn is approaching by this time. The gates and doors -of the prison are thrown open, and columns of convicts file into the -yard, guarded by surveillants, revolver on hip. They take their places in -ranks inside the hollow square of soldiers. - -The door at the end of the courtyard opens last of all, and through -it comes a little procession composed of the Commandant, the Chief -Surveillant, the priest, and “Monsieur de l’Ile Nou,” escorting the -principal actor in the scene. The priest mounts the scaffold with the -victim, followed by the executioner and his assistant; the clerk of the -court reads the verdict and sentence, the Commandant hands his warrant to -the Director and then he gives the order: - -“Uncover and kneel!” - -The broad-brimmed hats come off and the grey-clad ranks sink on their -knees around the Altar of Justice. The living sacrifice is asked if -he has anything to say. He usually makes a short speech either of -exhortation or bravado. - -Then, with the assistance of the executioners, he takes his place on a -sloping plank. A roll of drums rumbles echoing round the white walls. The -plank swings into a horizontal position, the body is thrust forward till -the neck is imprisoned in the lunette—the little window through which -those who die by French law take their last look at the world. “Monsieur -de l’Ile Nou” touches a button; then comes the “skirr” of the falling -knife, a sharp thud, and there is one scoundrel the less on Ile Nou. - -After which the comrades of the deceased are marched back to breakfast, -and thence to their daily tasks. - -[Illustration: The Central Prison, Ile Nou. In front is the Execution -Ground. The Quadrangle is enclosed by a high whitewashed stone wall. To -the left is the Chapel in which the condemned may, if they choose, attend -Mass for the last time.] - - - - -IV - -_MEASUREMENT AND MANIA_ - - -I left the central prison breathing the soft, sweet air, and looking up -at the deep blue sky with a sudden sensation of thankfulness which I had -never experienced before. In a sense I was like a man who had been blind -and had had his sight given back to him; and I thought of the wretches I -had left behind me in that high-walled enclosure and those little black -holes built away into the thick walls which, for so many of them, were to -be tombs of mental death. - -We came down the hill to the Pretoire, the Bureau of Anthropometry. This -is the ante-chamber through which every prisoner must pass who enters -the Prisonland of the South. On the way the Commandant and I discussed a -topic which I found a favourite one with all the officials whom I met in -Caledonia—the differences between the French system and our own. - -They were quite as much surprised at the rigours of our system as I at -first was at the leniency of theirs—always saving that horrible Cachot -Noir. - -We went then, as I did many times afterwards, with other officials, into -matters of diet, hours, and kinds of labour, detentions, and punishments, -and I succeeded in showing him that the Caledonian convict was to be -envied in every particular by the English convict, until he came to the -threshold of the dark cell. With us, three days’ dark cell and bread and -water is the maximum punishment. There it is five years, and sentences -may run consecutively. When the discussion was over the commandant added -an entirely French rider to it: - -“But, monsieur, you must remember that this is not only imprisonment—it -is exile. How many of these poor wretches will ever see France again? -Whereas your criminals, when their sentence is done, are set free in -their native land.” - -To which I replied: - -“Quite so, and more’s the pity! Every avenue of honest life is closed -to them, and they are released only to commit more crimes and deserve -another sentence. There your system is better. You exile them really, -but you give them another home where they have hope. We only exile them -socially, and give them no hope.” - -And this brought us to the door of the Pretoire. - -It consisted of three apartments, the middle one was the examination -room. To the right hand was a larger chamber, sometimes used as a -judgment room. To the left was a smaller one, the walls of which were -covered with cabinets containing the records in duplicate of every -criminal that had landed on Ile Nou. Beyond this there was a dark-room. - -When I had had a general look round and a chat with the Officer who -operated the Bertillon system, the Commandant asked me if I would care -to go through the mill. To which, not having been found out so far, I -consented. - -Thereupon I was delivered over into the hands of a functionary who had a -pair of eyes like visual gimlets. They bored clean through me every time -he looked at me. I was no longer the favoured guest of the all-powerful -Administration; I was simply a subject, a thing to be measured, and -weighed, and examined in the most minute detail, and to have my most -trivial characteristics noted and put down under their proper categories. - -He told me to take off my boots and coat. By rights my socks should have -come off also, but that, although I offered to do it, was dispensed with. -He put me up against a wall, fixed my head with one hand and pushed my -stomach in with the other, saw that my knees were properly back against -the wall, and lowered the bar on to my head. Then he moved my head a -little to right and left, and said to the clerk: - -“One metre, 816.” - -When this was noted down he sat me in a chair. The seat was -longitudinally divided by a ridge; the back was a measuring scale. Again -he took means to satisfy himself that I was sitting perfectly straight, -and so my sitting height was taken. - -Then he got a pair of callipers, and measured my head in two directions, -from back to front and across, all the time calling out the fatal figures -which, in case of need, would have identified me among ten million men. - -[Illustration: The Bureau of Anthropometry, Ile Nou.] - -After this he descended to minor matters, ears, nose, lips, thumb- and -finger-joints, eyelids, and so on. Then he stood me on a box on which was -rudely outlined a human foot. I put my right foot on this, bent forward, -and rested my right hand on a table, using my left leg and foot to keep -my balance. When I was steady my foot was measured. - -Then I rested my right arm on a table, standing on one leg the while. It -was measured from the elbow to the point of the middle finger. After this -the prints of my thumb and three fingers were taken, and duly impressed -on the _fiche_, or identification card. - -Then came the most trying part of the ordeal, the general observation. I -stood to attention in the middle of the floor. The gimlet-eyed official -walked round me, and looked through and through me, what time the clerk -at the table asked questions from the schedule he was filling up. - -No detail was so minute as to escape those all-searching eyes. A scar -which I had got twenty years before in a football match, though half -hidden under an eyebrow, was detected, measured, and noted. The scars -of a couple of old knife-stabs in my left hand, and the trace of a -parrot-bite on one of my fingers—nothing escaped. The colour of my hair -and moustache fell into a certain category. My eyes were examined, and -the colours of the iris duly placed in their proper category. - -By this time I began to feel as though I were being taken to pieces and -examined bit by bit. It was a sort of mental and physical vivisection -without the knife and the chloroform. Finally, the gentleman at the desk -asked the question, “Intellectuality?” - -“Mediocre,” replied Mr. Gimlet-eyes, with brutal frankness. Then I -laughed, and the Commandant suggested that I should be photographed. - -“_Pas artistique, mais exact_,” he said, as we went into the other room. - -“And, therefore,” I said, “it will resemble the remarks of your -anthropometric expert. I never had such an exact account of myself -before. Anthropometry strikes me as being a pretty good medicine for -human vanity.” - -[Illustration: An Arab Type of Convict. A combination of Ideality and -Homicidal Mania.] - -Out of the depth and width of his experience the Commandant agreed with -me, and then I was photographed. There was no artistic posing or anything -of that sort. I was planted on a chair with my back straightened up and -my head in a vice such as other photographers were once wont to torture -their victims with. The camera was brought within three feet of me. I was -taken full face, staring straight into the lens, and then I was taken -_en profile_. When, many weeks afterwards, I showed the result to my -wife, she was sorry I ever went; but for all that it’s a good likeness. - -By the time the negatives were developed, and I had satisfied the -Commandant that certain black spots which the pitiless lens had detected -under my skin were the result of a disease I had contracted years before -in South America, and not premonitory symptoms of the plague, it was -breakfast-time, and I went down to the canteen, where I found convicts -buying wine and cigarettes, and generally conducting themselves like -gentlemen at large. - -I did not see the Commandant again that day, save for a few minutes after -lunch, when he told me that he had an appointment at the Direction in -Noumea, and placed me in charge of his lieutenant, the Chief Surveillant. -The _Chef_ was a very jolly fellow, as, indeed, I found most of these -officials to be, and during our drives about the island, we chatted -with the utmost freedom. As a matter of fact, it was he who gave me the -description of the execution which I reproduced in the last chapter. - -He, too, was entirely of the same opinion as myself as to the pitiless -iniquity of the dark cell; but he took some pains to point out that -it was not the fault either of the French Government or of the -Administration, but simply of certain politicians in France who wanted -a “cry,” and got up a crusade among the sentimentalists against “the -brutality of flogging bound and helpless prisoners far away from all -civilised criticism in New Caledonia.” Some of these men, too, as I have -said, were _déportés_, or exiled _communards_ who had been forgiven, and -had brought back batches of stories with them as blood-curdling as they -were mendacious. - -“_Bien, monsieur_,” he said. “You have seen the Cachot Noir. Now we -will go to the Disciplinary Camp first, because it is on the road, and -then—well, you shall see what the _cachot_ does, and when you see that I -think you will say the lash is kinder.” - -The Disciplinary Camps in New Caledonia have no counterpart in the -English penal system. “Incorrigibles,” who won’t work, who are -insubordinate, or have a bad influence on their comrades of the Bagne, -are sent into them partly for punishment and partly for seclusion. - -[Illustration: The Courtyard of a Disciplinary Camp, Ile Nou. Inspection -at 5 a.m. after breakfast, and before hard labour. To the right is a -Kanaka “Policeman.” The average physique of the Criminals may be seen by -comparison with myself, standing in front of the Kanaka.] - -They have poorer food and harder work, no “gratifications” in the way -of wine or tobacco, or other little luxuries. They sleep on plank-beds -with their feet in anklets, and, if they don’t behave themselves, they -are promptly clapped into a cell for so many days’ solitary confinement -on bread and water. For graver offences they are, of course, sent back -to the central prison as hopeless cases, after which their own case is -usually hopeless for life. - -I found several of the men in this camp working in chains. This was -another subject about which the sentimentalists made a good deal of fuss -in France, but when I saw what the alleged chains really were, I laughed, -and said to my friend the _Chef_: - -“So that is what you call chains in New Caledonia, is it? May I have a -look at one?” - -He beckoned to one of the men to come up, and this is what I found: There -was an iron band riveted round his right ankle, and to this was attached -a chain which, as nearly as I could calculate with my hands, weighed -about six pounds. It was as absolutely no inconvenience to its wearer, -when he was either sitting or lying down. When he was walking or working -he tucked the end in under his belt, and, as far as I could see, it -didn’t make any difference to his walk, save a little dragging of the -foot. In fact, when I asked him whether it was any trouble to him, he -said: - -“No, not after a few days. One gets accustomed to it.” - -“Very likely!” I said. “If you got the chains in an English prison, you -would have them on both legs and arms, and you wouldn’t be able to take -more than a half-stride.” - -“Ah, they are brutal, those English!” said the scoundrel, with a shrug -of his shoulders, as he tucked the end of his chain round his belt and -sauntered away. - -The chain is usually a punishment for gross insubordination or attempted -escape. This man, the _Chef_ told me, had tried three times with the -chain on, and once had used the loose end to hammer a warder with, for -which he got twelve months’ Cachot Noir and the chain for life—and a -little more, since he would be buried in it.[2] - -Then, after I had made the round of the cells, I was taken to a very -curious punishment-chamber which is in great vogue in New Caledonia. In -one sense it reminded me of our treadwheel, though it is not by any means -so severe. I have seen a strong man reduced almost to fainting by fifteen -minutes on a treadwheel. Nothing like this could happen in the Salle des -Pas Perdus, as I christened the place when its use had been explained to -me. - -Here, after a brief and scanty meal at 4.30 a.m., the convicts are lined -up in a big room, or, rather, shed, about sixty feet long by forty feet -broad. There is absolutely no furniture in the place, with the exception -of a dozen flat-topped pyramids of stone placed in straight lines about -ten feet from each side. - -If there are twenty-four convicts condemned to this particular kind -of weariness, twenty-four are taken in, in single file. Then the -word “March!” is given, and they begin. Hour after hour the dreary -round-and-round is continued in absolute silence. Every half-hour they -are allowed to sit on the pyramids for a couple of minutes, and then -on again. At eleven the bell rings for _soupe_, which, in the Camp -Disciplinaire, resolves itself into hot water and fat with a piece of -bread. In the other camps the bell doesn’t go again till one, but these -have only their half-hour, and then the promenade begins again, and -continues till sunset. - -I was assured that those who could stand a week of this with the chain -_did_ feel its weight, and I don’t wonder at it, for a more miserable, -weary, limping, draggle-footed crowd of scoundrels I never saw in all -my life than I watched that day perambulating round the Hall of Lost -Footsteps. - -From here we drove across to the western side of the island, and -presently came to a magnificent sloping avenue of palm-trees. - -“The avenue of the hospital,” said the _Chef_. “Now you will see the best -and the worst of Ile Nou.” - -And so it was. We drove down the avenue to a white, heavy stone arch, -which reminded me somewhat quaintly of the entrance gates of some of the -old Spanish haciendas I had seen up-country in Peru. Inside was a vast, -shady garden, brilliant with flowers whose heavy scent was pleasantly -tempered by the sweet, cool breeze from the Pacific; for the eastern -wall of the whole enclosure was washed by the emerald waters of the -Lagoon. - -[Illustration: The Avenue of Palms, leading to the Hospital, Ile Nou.] - -In the midst of this garden stood the hospital, built in quadrangular -form, but with one side of each “quad” open to the garden. The houses -were raised on stone platforms something like the stoep of a Dutch house, -and over these the roofs came down in broad verandahs. Grey-clad figures -were sitting or lying about on the flags underneath, a few reading or -doing some trifling work, and others were wandering about the garden or -sleeping in some shady nook. It was, in short, very different from the -central prison and the disciplinary camp. - -I was introduced to the Medical Director, and he showed me round, -omitting one wing, in which he told me there were a couple of cases of -plague. I happened to know that there were really about a dozen, so I -readily agreed that that part should be left out. - -As prison hospital, it differed very little from others that I had -seen in England. There was the same neatness and exquisite cleanliness -everywhere, though the wards were somewhat darker, and therefore -cooler, which, with the midday sun at 106° in the shade, was not a bad -thing. All the nurses were, of course, Sisters of Mercy.[3] In fact, -practically all the nursing in New Caledonia is done by Sisters, and not -a few of these heroic women had become brides of the Black Death before I -left. - -Here, as in all other prison hospitals I have visited, diet, stimulants, -and medicine are absolutely at the discretion of the Director. No matter -what the cost, the spark of life must be kept alive as long as possible -in the breast of the murderer, the forger, and the thief, or the criminal -whose light of reason has already been quenched in the darkness of the -Black Cell. - -In fact, so careful are the authorities of their patients’ general health -that they give them nothing in the way of meat but the best beef and -mutton that can be imported from Australia; Caledonian fed meat is not -considered nourishing enough. In normal times the death-rate of Ile Nou, -which is wholly given over to convict camps, is two or three per cent. -lower than that of the town of Noumea. - -[Illustration: Part of the Hospital Buildings, Ile Nou. The -roofed-terrace in front is where the patients take their siesta in -the middle of the day. One of these is attached to each court of the -Hospital. Some of the mattresses may be seen to the right.] - -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. - -[Illustration: The Island of “Le Sphinx,” one of the tying-up places on -the south-west coast of New Caledonia.] - -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. - -[Illustration: A Native Temple, New Caledonia.] - -“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. - -[Illustration: Permit to visit a Prison or Penitentiary Camp _en détail_. -This is the ordinary form; but the Author is the only Englishman for whom -the words in the left-hand corner were crossed out.] - -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. - -[Illustration: The Kiosk in which the Convict Courtships were conducted -at Bourail.] - -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. - -[Illustration: Berezowski, the Polish Anarchist who attempted to murder -Napoleon III. and the Tsar Alexander II. in the Champs Elysées. All -Criminals in New Caledonia are photographed in every possible hirsute -disguise; and finally cropped and clean shaven. - -_By permission of C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd._] - -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. - -[Illustration: One of the Lowest Types of Criminal Faces. An illustration -of the ease with which it is possible to disguise the chin, typical of -moral weakness, and the wild-beast mouth, which nearly all Criminals -have, by means of moustache and beard. - -_By permission of C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd._] - -_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. - -[Illustration: The Peninsula of Ducos. In the background is Ile Nou with -the Central Criminal Depôt.] - -On another part of the peninsula, in a semi-circular valley, hemmed in -by precipitous hills, there is a piteously forlorn colony, that of the -_liberés collectifs_; that is to say, convicts who have been released -from prison, but are compelled to live in one place under supervision. -They are mostly men whose health has broken down under the work of the -_bagne_, or who have been released on account of old age. - -They live in wretched little cabins on the allotments, which it is -their business to keep in some sort of cultivation. They have the poor -privileges of growing beards and moustaches if they like, and of wearing -blue dungaree instead of grey, and of earning a few pence a week by -selling their produce to the Administration. - -This is not much, but they are extremely proud of it, and hold themselves -much higher than the common _forçat_. They do not consider themselves -prisoners, but only “in the service of the Administration.” I have -seldom, if ever, seen a more forlorn and hopeless collection of human -beings in all my wanderings. - -There was, however, a time when Ducos was one of the busiest and -most important of the New Caledonian Settlements, for it was here -that the most notorious and most dangerous of the _communards_ were -imprisoned after their suppression in 1872. Here lived Louise Michel, -the high-priestess of anarchy, devoting herself to the care of the sick -and the sorrowing with a self-sacrifice which rivalled even that of the -Sisters of Mercy, and here, too, Henri Rochefort lived in a tiny stone -house in the midst of what was once a garden, and the delight of his days -of exile. - -Louise Michel’s house has disappeared in the course of improvements. -Rochefort’s house is a roofless ruin in the midst of a jungle which takes -a good deal of getting through. It was from here that he made his escape -with Pain and Humbert and two other _communards_ in an English cutter, -which may or may not have been in the harbour for that particular purpose. - -One night they did not turn up to muster, but it was explained that -Rochefort and Humbert had gone fishing, and the others were away on -a tour “with permission.” As they did not return during the night -search-parties were sent out for them. Meanwhile, they had kept a -rendezvous at midnight with the cutter’s boat and got aboard. - -The next day was a dead calm; and, as the cutter lay helpless at her -anchor, the fugitives concealed themselves about her cargo as best they -could. The hue and cry was out all over the coast, but the searchers -looked everywhere but just the one place where they were. If the next day -had been calm they must have been caught, for the authorities had decided -on a thorough search of every vessel in the harbour. Happily for them a -breeze sprang up towards the next morning, and the cutter slipped quietly -out. Once beyond the outward reef the fugitives were in neutral water, -and, being political prisoners, they could not be brought back. - -By daylight the truth was discovered, but pursuit was impossible. The -cutter had got too long a start for any sailing vessel to overtake her -in the light wind, and the only steamer which the administration then -possessed had gone away to Bourail to fetch back the Governor’s wife. If -it had been in the harbour that morning, at least one picturesque career -might have been very different. MacMahon was President at the time, and -of all men on earth he had the most deadly fear of Rochefort, so he took -a blind revenge for his escape by ordering the Governor to expel every -one who was even suspected of assisting in the escape. - -The story was told to me by one who suffered through this edict quite -innocently, and to his utter ruin. He was then one of the most prosperous -men in Noumea. He owned an hotel and several stores, and had mail and -road-making contracts with the government. Unhappily, one of his stores -was on the Peninsula of Ducos, and the man who managed it was reputed to -be very friendly with Rochefort. - -This was enough. He was ordered to clear out to Australia in two months. -It was in vain that he offered himself for trial on the definite charge -of assisting a prisoner to escape. The Governor and every one else -sympathised deeply with him, but they dare not even be just, and out -he had to go. He is now canteen-keeper on the Isle of Pines, selling -groceries and drink to the officials and _relégués_ at prices fixed by -the government. He told me this story one night at dinner at his own -table. - -The general amnesty of 1880 released Louise Michel and the rest of those -who had survived the terrible revolt of 1871 from Ducos and the Isle of -Pines. - -There are, however, two other celebrities left on Ducos. One of them -is a tall, erect, grizzled Arab, every inch a chieftain, even in his -prison garb. This is Abu-Mezrag-Mokrani, one of the leaders of the -Kabyle insurrection of 1871, a man who once had fifteen thousand desert -horsemen at his beck and call. Now he rules a little encampment in one -of the valleys of the peninsula, containing forty or fifty of his old -companions-in-arms, deported with him after the insurrection was put down. - -When the Kanaka rebellion broke out in New Caledonia in 1878, Abu-Mezrag -volunteered to lead his men against the rebels in the service of France. -The offer was accepted and the old warriors of the desert acquitted -themselves excellently among the tree-clad mountains of “La Nouvelle.” -When the rebellion was over a petition for their pardon was sent to the -home government, but the remnant of them are still cultivating their -little patches of ground on Ducos. - -The other surviving celebrity is known in Caledonia as the Caledonian -Dreyfus, and this is his story: - -In 1888 Louis Chatelain was a _sous-officier_ of the line stationed -in Paris. He was dapper, good-looking, and a delightful talker. He -engaged the affections of a lady whose ideas as to expenditure were far -too expansive to be gratified out of the pay of a _sous-officier_. Poor -Chatelain got into debt, mortgaged or sold everything that he had, and -still the lady was unsatisfied. Finally, after certain recriminations, -and when he had given her everything but his honour, she suggested a -means by which he could make a fortune with very little trouble. She -had, it appears, made the acquaintance of a gentleman who knew some one -connected with a foreign army, who would give twenty thousand francs for -one of the then new-pattern Lebel rifles. - -He entered into correspondence with the foreign gentleman, addressing -him—c/o the —— Embassy, Paris. His letters were stopped, opened, -photographed, and sent on. So were the replies. Then the negotiations -were suddenly broken off, Chatelain was summoned before the military -tribunal and confronted with the _pièces de conviction_. He confessed -openly, posing as a martyr to _la grande passion_—and his sentence was -deportation for life. - -[Illustration: The remains of Henri Rochefort’s House.] - -[Illustration: The Bedroom of Louis Chatelain, “The Caledonian Dreyfus” -in Ducos. The photographs on the wall and the one on the table are those -of the woman who ruined him.] - -When I went into his little sleeping-room at Ducos, I found on a -little table beside his mosquito-curtained bed, a photograph of a very -good-looking young woman. On the wall above the table there were two -others of the same enchantress, the evil genius of his life. The moment -he fell she deserted him. Unlike many another Frenchwoman, who has done -so for lover or husband, she did not follow him across the world to -Caledonia, and yet every night and morning of his life Louis Chatelain -kneels down in front of that table as he might before an altar, and says -his prayers with his eyes on those photographs. - - - - -VIII - -_A PARADISE OF KNAVES_ - - -For the next three or four days after my visit to the Peninsula of Ducos -there was nothing definite to be learnt about means of transit. In fact -there was nothing certain except the plague—always that Spectre which -seemed to stand at the end of every pathway. It was really getting quite -monotonous, and I was beginning to wonder whether I should ever get out -of Noumea at all. - -Then I began making inquiries as to an over-land journey through the -interior. No, that was impossible, save at great risk and expense. The -Spectre had jumped the mountains. Huge armies of rats had appeared in the -bush, just as though some Pied Piper of Hamelin had enticed them away -from the towns into the mountains, and they were spreading the plague in -all directions among the Kanakas. - -It is a curious fact that rats, who of all animals are the most -susceptible to the plague, will migrate from a plague-stricken town just -as they will try to escape from a sinking ship. - -Convicts and Kanakas were dying in unknown numbers. Camps were being -closed, and the rains were coming on. There was nothing to be seen or -done worth seeing or doing, so I had to content myself with wandering -about Noumea and the neighbourhood, taking photographs, making -acquaintances with convicts and _liberés_ and getting stories out of -them, wondering the while, as every one else was doing, what the Spectre -was going to do next. - -As far as I was concerned, he did me the unkindest turn that he could -have done, save one. He infected the only two decent boats on the Coast -Service, and so left me the choice between voyaging to the Isle of Pines -in _La France_ or stopping where I was. - -I had to get to the island somehow, so I chose _La France_, and at five -o’clock one morning, after being duly inspected and squirted, I once more -boarded the detestable little hooker. - -I thought my first passage in her was bad enough, but it was nothing to -this. She was swarming with passengers, bond and free, black, white, and -yellow, from end to end. She was loaded literally down to the deck, and -she smelt, if possible, even stronger than she did before. The worst of -this was that before we got to the Isle of Pines we had to get outside -the reef and into the open water. - -I have seen too much of seafaring to be easily frightened on salt water, -but I candidly admit that I was frightened then. In fact, when we got -outside and she began to feel the swell, I took out my swimming-jacket -and put it on, though, of course this was a pretty forlorn hope, as the -water was swarming with sharks and the shortest swim would have been a -couple of miles. Still, one always likes to take the last chance. - -Happily, she was English-built, and high in the bows, so she took nothing -but spray over. Two or three green seas would have swamped her to a -certainty, but they didn’t come, and so in time we got there. - -On board I renewed the acquaintance of the Commandant of Ile Nou, who was -taking his wife and family to the Isle of Pines, which is to Caledonia as -the Riviera is to Europe. At midday we stopped at Prony, the headquarters -of the forest camps which I was to visit later on my return; and we -lunched in the saloon with six inches of water on the floor. That was -the first time I ever saw a steamer baled out with buckets. Still, they -managed to get the water under somehow. There didn’t appear to be a pump -on board. - -When we passed the reef, and started on the sixty-mile run through the -open sea, some began to say their prayers and some said other things, but -in the end we worried through, and just as the evening star was growing -golden in the west we anchored in the lovely little Bay of Kuto. - -Never before had I heard the anchor chain rumble through the hawse-hole -with greater thankfulness than I did then, and, judging by the limp and -bedraggled look of every one, bond and free, who went ashore, I don’t -think I was alone in hoping that I had seen the last of _La France_—which -I hadn’t. - -My friend the Commandant introduced me to his _confrère_ of the Isle of -Pines. He was not particularly sympathetic. I believe I was the only -Englishman who had ever come to the island with authority to inspect his -domains, and he didn’t take very kindly to the idea. Still, ruler and -all as he was in his own land, the long arm of the Minister of Colonies -reached even to the Isle of Pines, and, although he did not even offer me -the usual courtesy of a glass of wine, he handed the credentials back to -me, and said: - -“_Très bien, monsieur!_ If you will come and see me at nine o’clock -to-morrow morning we will make arrangements. You will, I think, find -accommodation at the canteen.” - -With that I took my leave, and went out into the darkness to find the -canteen and some one to carry my luggage there. I found a surveillant, -who found a _relégué_, and he shouldered my bag and found the canteen, -the only semblance of an hotel on the island. - -There, quite unknowingly, I stumbled upon excellent friends. The -canteen-keeper was the man whose story I told in the last chapter. I was -a stranger from a very strange land. Their resources are very limited; -for communications with the _grand terre_ were few and far between, and -yet the twenty days that I was compelled to stop on the Isle of Pines, -proved after all to be the pleasantest time that I had spent in New -Caledonia. - -But there was one exception, happily only a transient experience, yet bad -enough in its way. If the plague was not on board _La France_ it ought -to have been, for never did a fitter nursery of microbes get afloat, and -when I got into the wretched little bedroom, which was all they could fix -up for me that night, I honestly believed that the little wriggling devil -had got into the white corpuscles of my blood. - -I had all the symptoms with which the conversation of the doctors at the -Cercle in Noumea had made me only too familiar—headache, stomachache, -nausea, dizziness, aching under the armpits and in the groins. - -Of course, I was about as frightened as an ordinary person could very -well be, a great deal more so in fact than I had been a few years before -when I first experienced the sensation of being shot at. It may have been -the fright or the fact, but the glands were swelling. - -Then I caught myself repeating fragments of “Abide with me,” mixed up -with Kipling’s “Song of the Banjo”; and when a lucid interval came I -decided that the case was serious. - -I had three things with me which no traveller in the outlands of the -world should be without—quinine, chlorodyne, and sulpholine lotion. I -took a big dose of quinine, and then one of chlorodyne. I should be -afraid to say how big they were. Then I soaked four handkerchiefs in the -lotion, put them where they were wanted, and laid down to speculate as to -what would happen if the microbe had really caught me? - -I had an appointment with the Commandant at nine o’clock the next -morning. His house was more than a mile away. What would happen if I -couldn’t walk in the morning? - -I should have to explain matters, if I were still sane, to the people at -the canteen. I had just come from Noumea, the very centre of the plague. -The inference would be instant. The military doctor in charge of the -hospital would be sent for, and he would say _la Peste_. I should be -taken to the hospital, where, a day or two after, I saw a man suspected -of the plague die of blood-poisoning, and once there—_quien sabe?_ - -Thinking this and many other incongruously mixed-up things, I went to -sleep. Probably it was only a matter of a few minutes altogether. Nine -hours after I woke and thought I was in heaven. The pains and the deadly -fear were gone. I pulled my watch out from under my pillow. It was ten -minutes to seven. The light was filtering in through the closely shut -_persiennes_. The waves on the silver-sanded beach within a few yards of -my bedroom were saying as plainly and seductively as waves ever said: - -“Come and have a dip, and wash all that plague nonsense out of your head.” - -So I got up, opened the window, put on my deck-shoes, and walked down to -the beach. - -I could walk! Out of hell I had come back to earth. A few hours before I -had really believed that the next dawn would be shadowed by the presence -of the Black Death. Now I looked up at the sapphire sky, and threw my -hands above my head to make sure that the pains in the armpits were gone. -Then I stepped out to the full length of my stride along the smooth, hard -coral sand, to see if the groins were right. - -Having reached a decent distance from the canteen I rolled into the cool, -bright, blue water, and for half an hour I splashed around—not daring to -go much beyond my depth, because those same blue waters are often cut by -the black triangle of a shark’s dorsal fin—thinking how good a thing it -was to live instead of dying, especially in such a paradise as this. - -When I paid my official visit after breakfast, I found M. le Commandant -in a more friendly mood. We exchanged cigarettes and compliments, and -then we had a stroll round the little settlement of Kuto. - -Kuto is most exquisitely situated on a promontory between two delicious, -white-shored, palm-fringed bays, broken with fantastic, tree-crowned -rocks. Long ago it was the home of the “politicals” and those soldiers -of the _Commune_ who had not been thought dangerous enough to be put -in batches against a wall and shot. In those days Kuto, so they told -me, might have been taken for a tiny suburb of Paris. It had a theatre, -and a couple of newspapers, one serious and one humorous. There were -social functions and many gaieties in the intervals of road-making and -barrack-building. - -But nowadays all this is changed. The _deportés_ have gone back to -France, and the _relégués_ have come in their place, which is the same -thing as saying that over this lovely scrap of earth there has descended -the moral night of incurable crime and hopeless despair. Kuto is now -a silent place of prisons, barracks, and workshops, inhabited by a few -soldiers and officials and many blue-clad figures with clean-shaven -faces, mostly repulsive to look upon and all stamped with the seal of -stolid despair. - -In order that you may understand what manner of people these were it is -necessary to explain the meaning of the French legal term _relégation_, -since there is nothing at all corresponding to it in the English system. - -In France, as in all countries, there are criminals of many kinds and -ranks, and of these the French _relégués_ are the lowest and meanest. -I have said before that in the criminal society of New Caledonia the -assassins, forgers, embezzlers, and what we should call swell-mobsmen -form the aristocracy. The _relégués_ are the lowest class. They are the -gutter-snipes of crime; the hard cases; the human refuse beyond all hope -of social salvation; mental and moral derelicts, of no use to themselves -or anybody else. - -We have thousands of them in this country, but we don’t deal as wisely -or as humanely with them as the French do. Our judges and magistrates -send them to prison again and again, well knowing that they will only -come out to commit more crimes and be sent again to prison, becoming in -the intervals of liberty the wives and husbands and parents of other -criminals. - -This is one of the social problems which they deal with better in -France. There is no nonsense there about a criminal “having paid his -debt to society” when he has served his sentence, and being, therefore, -free to go and commit more crimes. When a man or woman has committed a -certain number of crimes of the minor sort, or has been convicted of -hopeless immorality or alcoholism—in other words, when there is reason -to believe that he or she is absolutely unfit to possess the rights of -citizenship—such person may be, in the last resort, sentenced as in -England, say, to twelve or eighteen months’ hard labour as punishment for -that particular crime. - -Now in an English police-court the habitual criminal might possibly thank -the magistrate and go away to “do it on his head,” but in France he may -hear the fatal words: - -“At the expiration of your sentence you will be placed in _relégation_.” - -[Illustration: The “Market” in the Convent, Isle of Pines. The Female -_Réliqués_ are drawn up before one of the Prison Buildings. In the -foreground are the Kanakas waiting to sell their fruit and vegetables. - -_Drawn by Harold Piffard from a photograph._] - -Of this the meaning is: “You have proved yourself unfit to live in the -society of your fellow-citizens. Punishment is no warning to you. You -will neither reform yourself nor be reformed; therefore Society has done -with you: you are banished! You will be fed and clothed and attended when -you are sick. You will have work found for you, and you will be paid for -it. But if you won’t work there will be the prison and the cell for you. -Now go, and make the best of it.” - -The banishment is practically for life. There are circumstances under -which a _relégué_ can win his release, but there are two things that he -can never do: he can never gain a concession and marry and settle down on -his own property; and he can never gain restoration of the full rights of -citizenship—both of which, as I have shown, the _forçat_ can do. - -As we drove out through the big gate in the wall which had been built -across the neck of the peninsula to keep revolting Kanakas out, I -remarked what a pity it was that such a lovely land should be nothing -better than the habitation of scoundrels, to which the Commandant replied -that the island served the purposes of the Administration very well, and -if the _relégués_ were not there it would have to be given over to the -Kanakas, for free colonists would not come. - -I thought—but, of course, I didn’t say—what British colonists would -have made of such a paradise—fertile, well-watered, and blest with an -absolutely perfect climate. - -The first thing I noticed in the Isle of Pines was the excellence and -extent of the roads. They are broad, level, and beautifully kept, and, -tiny as the island is, there are many more miles of them than there are -in all New Caledonia. They were mostly made by the deported _communards_, -who also built the solid stone prisons, barracks, hospitals, chapels, and -official residences which seemed to me to be ample for about twice the -present white population of the island, which is under two thousand, bond -and free. - -I found very little difference between the treatment of the _relégués_ -and the best class of convicts, save that they were rather better fed, -and lived in open camps. They slept in hammocks in common dormitories, -and were permitted to have any little luxuries that they could buy -with their earnings. There were no plank-beds or chains to be seen -in the camps. In fact, they might just have been ordinary industrial -settlements, save for the blue cotton livery, the bandless straw hats, -and the hang-dog, hopeless faces which looked out under the brims. - -But before our first drive was half over we passed a big quadrangle of -high, white walls, and over the little black door in front was the word -“Prison” in big black letters. - -“That’s for the hard cases, I suppose?” I said to the Commandant as we -passed. - -“Yes,” he said; “we will visit it another day, and you shall see. This is -worse than Ile Nou, you know. There they have the aristocrats. Here we -have the canaille, the sweepings of the streets. Any one of these animals -here would cut your throat for a few francs if he dare.” - -Then I told him what the Commandant of Bourail had said about locking -doors. - -He laughed, and said: - -“_Parfaitement_, but you had better lock your door here, and if you have -a revolver put it under your pillow.” - -The advice was well-meant but somewhat superfluous. The faces I had seen -were quite enough. I soon found that my friend was somewhat of a cynic -and a humorist in his way, for when I asked him what was the greatest -punishment he could inflict on a recalcitrant _relégué_, he said: - -“Make him work. Look at that gang of men yonder,” he went on, pointing -to the hillside, which a long row of blue-clad figures was breaking up -with picks and spades. “Every stroke of the pick is a punishment to -those men. They are wretches whose only idea of life is to get through -it without working. They have been thieves and swindlers, beggars and -_souteneurs_—everything that is useless and vile. There is nothing they -have not done to save themselves from working. Now, you see, we make them -work.” - -“And if they won’t?” - -“_Eh bien!_ They have stomachs—and soup and fish and meat and coffee and -a drink of wine now and then, with a cigarette or a pipe, are better than -bread and water, and the open air in a country like this is better than -the black cell or the _quartier disciplinaire_, which you will see later -on.” - -“In other words,” I said, “you have gone back to the good old law: If a -man will not work, neither shall he eat. Well, I must admit that you deal -more sensibly with your hopeless vagabonds than we do with ours.” - -“_Bien possible_,” he said, with some justification, “you will see that -at least we make some use of them, more than they would in Paris or -London, I think. For instance, this is our farm.” - -As he said this we pulled up opposite to a rustic arch, over which were -the words _Ferme Uro_. - -We went down through a flowery avenue to a pretty verandahed house almost -buried in greenery and flowers—the home of the Farm Superintendent. He -came out and greeted his territorial lord, and then we went over the farm. - -It was as perfect a specimen of what the French call _petit culture_ as -could be imagined. It was, in fact, rather a collection of exquisitely -kept vegetable gardens than a farm. Every patch was irrigated by water -from the low hills which run across the centre of the island. Every kind -of vegetable, tropical and temperate, was under cultivation, and outside -the gardens there were broad fields of maize and grass pasture. - -In one of the fields I saw a long line of women hoeing the ridges for -corn, and at one end of the line stood a white-clad surveillant, revolver -on hip. For the fiftieth time my English prejudices were shocked when -I learnt that these were a detachment of the female _relégués_; and I -wondered what would be thought at home if the lady-guests at Aylesbury -were turned out to work in the fields under the charge of a male warder. -Here it was quite a matter of course. - -“Wait till you have made the acquaintance of the ladies,” laughed the -Commandant, in reply to a rather injudicious question, “and you will see -that they want some watching.” - - - - -IX - -_USE FOR THE USELESS_ - - -From the farm of Uro, after a drink of delicious milk, which, for some -reason or other, took me back instantly to far-away England, we went on a -few miles along the road to the ateliers, or workshops, where all kinds -of industries, from boot-making to waggon-building, were being carried on -in a somewhat leisurely style, and under what seemed to me very slight -supervision. - -“This is a hard school for them to learn and us to teach in,” said the -Commandant. “The _forçats_ generally know a trade and are accustomed to -work, if they have not been gentlemen; but these have been brought up -to hate the name of work. Yet you see we have made something of them. -Everything that is used on the island is made here. In fact, we make -something which will be used a long way from here.” - -I saw this later on during our visit to the prison, which was too -similar to the others to need any description. About a score of the -occupants of a big shed within the walls were busy plaiting a long, reedy -grass which others, squatted about the yard, were stripping and preparing -for them. They had to get through so much a day or their rations were -docked. The unhappy wastrels didn’t seem to like the regime at all, but -they worked, if only for their stomachs’ sake. - -When we left the prison we went to a long shed, where the plaits were -being worked up into matting—miles of it there appeared to be—and when I -asked what it was all for, I learnt that it was destined to be trodden by -the millions of careless feet which would saunter through the halls and -corridors of the Paris Exhibition. - -This was the contribution of this far-away spot to the great show. Of -course, those who were making it knew what it was for. Perhaps their -thoughts—if they had any by this time, beyond their daily meat and -drink, or any dreams of delight, beyond the little luxuries that their -hard-earned pence could buy them at the canteen—were travelling even -as they stitched back to the elysium of crime and idleness which they -would never see again. From what I saw and heard I doubt not that many -a bitter thought was woven in with the miles of matting which afterwards -covered the exhibition floors. - -The next day we went to make the acquaintance of the lady _reléguées_, -who are accommodated in the Convent, as it is called, under the charge -of a Mother Superior and six Sisters of St. Joseph, among whom I was a -little surprised to find one who, learning that I was English, came and -greeted me in a deliciously delicate Irish brogue. She was an Irish lady -who had taken the vows in a French Convent, and had voluntarily exiled -herself to this far-away foreign land to spend the rest of her days in a -prison. Still, she and her French sisters appeared to be most cheerfully -contented with their lot. - -They had, however, one little trace of feminine vanity left. They sorely -wanted their photographs taken, and my Irish compatriot wanted it most -of all. It was against the rules not only of the Administration, but of -their order, wherefore the photographs which I did take of the convent -and its occupants did not turn out successes. - -There were one hundred and seventy-six female _reléguées_ in the Convent -just then, mostly healthy, hearty-looking women of all ages, from twenty -to sixty. Their faces were, if anything, more repulsive than the men’s. -They had committed almost every possible crime, but most of them were -there for infanticide. I was the first man—not an official—that they had -seen, perhaps, for a good many years, for there are few visitors to the -Isles of Pines, and fewer still to the jealously guarded Convent. - -A little before dinner that evening I was sitting under the trees in -front of the canteen jotting down some notes when I heard a voice, with -a suspicion of tears in it, asking whether “monsieur would speak for a -minute with an unfortunate woman.” - -I turned round, and saw the gaunt figure and unlovely face of Marie, the -_reléguée_ housemaid of the canteen. Here was another human document, I -thought, so I told her to go on. - -She was in great trouble, she told me, and as I was a friend of the -Government and of the Administration I could help her if I would. She had -been released from the Convent to take service at the canteen, but though -she was comfortable, and had a good master and mistress, her heart -was pining for the society of her husband, who was working in enforced -celibacy in far-away Bourail. They had been parted for a trifle, and she -was sure that if “Milor” interceded for her with the Director she would -be restored to his longing arms. - -When she had finished, I said: - -“And what was your husband sent out here for?” - -“_Il a éventré un homme_,” she murmured. - -“And what are you here for?” I continued. - -“_J’ai tué mon enfant_,” she murmured again as softly as before. - -I did not think the reunion desirable, and so the petition was not -presented. Nevertheless, it would have probably been a very difficult -matter to have convinced that woman that she hadn’t a perfect right -to rejoin her husband, raise a family, and become with him a landed -proprietor. I learnt afterwards that she had been relegated to the Isle -of Pines for theft aggravated by assault with a hatchet. - -Somehow the food that she handed round the table at the canteen that -night didn’t taste quite as nice as usual, in spite of the conversation -of Madame Blaise and her two charming daughters, the elder of whom, -though she had never been farther into the world than Noumea, might, as -far as grace of speech and action went, have just come out from Paris. - -In the course of the next few days I wandered, sometimes in the -Commandant’s carriage and sometimes afoot, all over the island, and -ascended its only mountain, the Pic ’Nga, on the top of which there are -the foundations of an old fort and look-out tower, dating back, so they -say, to the old days of the pirates of the southern seas. From here you -can see every bay and inlet round the coast, and a very lovely picture -the verdant island made, fringed by its circlet of reefs and coral -islets, with their emerald lagoons and white breakers, and the deep blue -of the open ocean beyond. - -Another day I went through the native reserve, and visited the settlement -of the Marist Brothers, a most delightful little nook where the good -brothers lead a contented existence, teaching their bronze scholars the -beauties of the Catholic Faith, and the beneficence of the good French -Government, which graciously permits them to live in a part of their -own country, and sell their produce to the officials and such of their -prisoners as have money _à prix fixe_. - -After this I visited the coffee plantation—the only actually profitable -industry in which prisoners are employed in New Caledonia—the hospitals -and the disciplinary camps, which I found practically the same as those -which I had already seen on the mainland. - -The hospital was, however, an even more delightful abode of disease and -crime than the one on Ile Nou. It stands well up the hillside behind the -Convent, and the view from its terraces is one of the most beautiful I -have ever seen. With the exception of the man who died of blood-poisoning -under suspicion of the plague, the principal disease seemed general -decay and old age. In fact, out of a criminal population of over twelve -hundred, there were only thirty patients, for which reason the Isle of -Pines, with its perfect climate, reminded me of Mark Twain’s Californian -health resort, which was so healthy that the inhabitants had to go -somewhere else to die. - -Later on I saw a much more mournful place than the hospital. This was the -Camp des Impotents. - -I don’t think I ever saw a more miserable, forlorn-looking collection of -human beings than I found here. They were not suffering from any specific -disease, or else, of course, they would have been in the hospital. They -are just mental and physical derelicts, harmless imbeciles, cripples -incapable of work, and men dying quietly of old age. - -Of course, the camp was exquisitely situated, and their lot struck me as -being, after all, not a very bad ending to a useless, hopeless life—to -dream away the last years under that lovely sun, breathing that delicious -air, and waiting quietly for the end without anxiety or care. - -The poor wretches looked at me somewhat as they might have looked at -a visitor from some other world. They had ceased to be criminals or -prisoners. They had no more crime left in them, and they would not -have escaped if they could, so in their case discipline was relaxed -and I spent a few francs in buying some of the rude carvings and a few -walking-sticks which they had made out of lianes, the only work with -which they whiled away the long sunny hours. It was worth twenty times -the money to see their feeble, almost pitiful, delight as they looked at -the little silver coins in their brown, shrivelled hands, and I really -think that some at least of the blessings which followed me out of the -camp were sincere. But when I said this to the Commandant he only smiled, -and said: - -“Perhaps! But no doubt they would like a visitor from England every day.” - -A few days after I had finished my round of visits to the prison camps -I had the privilege of assisting at a session of the Disciplinary -Commission, a court whose function it is to hear complaints, grant -redresses and privileges, try offences against the penal regulations, -and inflict punishment. The Commandant is President, _ex officio_, and -he is assisted by an officer of the Administration, who is a sort of -civil magistrate and the Conductor of Works. These functionaries sit at a -curved desk on a platform, and here, for the first time, I took my seat -on a judicial bench. - -There was a space of about twelve feet between the end of the platform -and the railing which divided off the rest of the hall. Here the -Principal Surveillant sat at one desk, and opposite to him on the other -side of the room the _Greffier_ or Clerk of the Court. - -The court being a French one, precedence was, of course, given to the -ladies. They were brought in one by one through a side door between the -railings and the platform. The triviality of their complaints testified -eloquently to the narrowness of the little lives they led. - -One woman accused another of stealing her needle and thread so as to get -her into trouble. Another wanted three halfpence of her savings, which -she said the Mother Superior was unjustly keeping from her. A third -wanted to know why she hadn’t had a letter from a friend of hers in -service in Noumea, and was gravely informed that the plague had seriously -interrupted communications and the letter would probably arrive as soon -as possible. Another had rheumatism, and wanted to be taken off the -field-work; besides, she was getting too old, she was nearly seventy—and -her request was promptly granted. - -Then a few were accused of little acts of idleness or insubordination or -wastefulness. These were either fined a penny or so, according to the -magnitude of the offence, or dismissed with a caution. - -It must not, however, be imagined from this that the ladies of the -_relégation_ at the Isle of Pines are exactly models of female -deportment, for, as the Commandant told me afterwards, they once -revolted, and before help could be got they had caught two surveillants, -stripped them stark naked, and made them run the gauntlet of the Convent -between two rows of beautiful palms, after which they douched them well -in a muddy duck-pond. They were proceeding to treat the good sisters in -the same way when rescue arrived from Kuto and the other camps. - -The male prisoners were a terribly hard-looking lot. They were brought up -in twos and threes—plaintiff, defendant, and witnesses—and they accused -each other of every sort of crime, from stealing a bit of bread to -attempted murder. - -The English axiom about dog eating dog does not hold good among -_relégués_. They will steal from each other just as cheerfully as they -will from anybody else, and will descend to any little meanness to spite -each other. Most of the offences were of the pettiest and meanest kind, -such as stealing each other’s clothes, or food, or tools and selling them -for a penny or so to some one else who had lost his. - -Others were up for being out of bounds after hours, and I noticed that -these nearly all said they’d been fishing, which was not inappropriate. - -During the proceedings I was very much struck by the appearance of -an Arab in the grey uniform of the _quartier disciplinaire_. He was -a tall, well-built, handsome fellow of about thirty, with a frank, -open expression and an ever-smiling mouth which continually showed a -magnificent set of teeth. There was a wonderful difference between him -and his fellow-scoundrels, but I learned afterwards that he was the -biggest scoundrel of the whole lot. - -Two or three hundred years ago he would probably have commanded a fleet -of Corsairs, and made his name a terror from one end of the Mediterranean -to the other. Now, thanks to changed environment, he was only a deserter -and a common thief who could not even keep his hands off the property of -his fellow-thieves. - -The procedure of the Court was quite different to anything we have in -England. The prisoners were all, as I say, brought up and examined -individually with accusers and witnesses. Then they were taken away -what time the Court deliberated and fixed the sentence. Then the whole -lot were brought in and ranged up along the two sides of the room. The -_greffier_ called out the names, and each man stepped forward, heard his -sentence, and was marched out. The Arab took his fifteen days’ prison -with an even jauntier smile than usual. - -While this was going on I had been making a study in criminal -physiognomy, and I came to the conclusion that if forty criminals were -taken at random from English prisons, dressed exactly as these forty -French criminals were, and mixed up with them, it would be absolutely -impossible to tell which were French and which were English. There is no -nationality in crime. Criminals belong to a distinct branch of the human -family, and the family likeness among them is unmistakable. - -As we were driving back that morning the Commandant invited me to a -picnic which he was giving in honour of the Commandant of Ile Nou and -myself. Naturally I accepted, and, being on the subject of pleasure -excursions, I said: - -“Of course you must have some delightful yachting and fishing about these -lovely bays. I have been wondering why I haven’t seen any sailing craft -about.” - -“That is forbidden,” he said. “No one may own even a rowing boat without -the licence of the Administration in Noumea, and even then he would have -to give guarantees for its safety. You see these fellows would think -nothing of stealing a boat and trying to escape in it, and the owner -of the boat would be responsible for any escapes. Twenty-five of the -politicals once managed to make a big canoe and got away in it, but they -were all drowned or eaten by the sharks. Now all boats, even the Kanakas’ -canoes, have to be kept locked and chained and guarded from sunset to -sunrise.” - -This, then, was why these smooth, sunlit waters were sailless and -deserted—another effect of the curse of Crime on Paradise. - -The picnic was a great success, and the Commandant proved a most -excellent host. There were four wagonette loads of us, with a fair -sprinkling of pretty girls, among whom, of course, were my host’s -daughters. Everybody seemed to have forgotten for the time that I was an -Englishman, and so I passed a very jolly day. - -We camped in a big white stone building which had once been a -_gendarmerie_ barracks, standing in a delightful valley near to the -entrance of a magnificent limestone cavern. We lunched sumptuously under -the verandah, and I think I prattled French more volubly than I had ever -done before. Then we went and shot pigeons, quite half as big again as -the English variety, and splendid eating. The woods of the Isle of Pines -swarmed with them and other feathered game whose names I don’t remember. - -Of course, we wound up with a dance, and this was the queerest dance -I had ever seen. Our drivers and attendants were, of course, all -_relégués_, and so were the musicians. One ingenious scoundrel led the -orchestra with a fiddle that he had made himself, even to the strings and -the bow. It had an excellent tone, and he played it very well. I wanted -to buy it, but he loved it and wouldn’t sell. - -I must say that I pitied these musicians not a little as I watched them -standing in a corner looking with hungry eyes upon the Forbidden and the -Unattainable as it floated about the room in dainty light draperies with -the arms of other men about its waist—for the _relégué_ is not like the -_forçat_. He has no hope of marriage, even with the meanest of his kind. -His sentence includes, and very wisely too, perpetual celibacy. - -All the same, I tried to picture to myself a picnic, say, at Dartmoor, -with a company of English men and maidens dancing in one of the prison -halls to music made by a convict band! - -When the feast was over every bottle, full and empty, every knife, -fork, spoon, plate, cup, and dish was counted over. The remnants were -given away, but everything else was packed under the official eye. If -the slightest trifle had been overlooked it would have been immediately -stolen. This is one of the peculiarities of picnicing in Prisonland. - -A few days afterwards my pleasant exile came to an end. The ungainly form -of _La France_ waddled into the bay, bringing news of the outside world. -The principal items were to the effect that the plague was increasing -merrily in Noumea, and that the victorious Boers were driving the British -into the sea. - -We had quite a sad little supper that night at the canteen, for I -was rapidly becoming quite one of the family. Still this was the -turning-point in my thirty-thousand-mile journey. At daybreak the snub -nose of _La France_ would point toward home, and so when I had said -good-bye for the third or fourth time I pulled out across the bay which -lay like a sheet of shimmering silver under the glorious tropic moon, -and boarded the wretched little hooker for the last time with feelings -something akin to thankfulness. - -When many days afterwards, I got back to Noumea the Director asked me -what I thought of the Isle of Pines. - -“If you want my candid opinion,” I said, “I think it is an earthly -paradise which you have used as a dust-heap to shoot your rubbish on. If -the French Government would give me a hundred years’ lease of it, with -power to do as I liked as long as I didn’t break the law, I would find -capital enough in England and Australia to make it the Monte Carlo of the -South Pacific. I’d have everything there that there is at Monte Carlo, -and a couple of fast boats to bring the people over from Sydney in two -days. I’d have all the wealth and fashion of Australia and a good many -people from Europe there every year. In fact, your paradise should pay -you a million francs a year and me twenty millions.” - -“Ah!” he said, after a few moments of silence. “That is just like you -English. That is enterprise. Here we only have government.” - - - - -X - -_A LAND OF WOOD AND IRON_ - - -New Caledonia is essentially a land of contrasts, both in scenery -and climate, and when I had left the sunny hills and plains and the -silver-sanded, palm-fringed bays of the Isle of Pines some fifty miles -behind me, I found myself in a region of enormous forests, clothing the -slopes of rugged mountains running sheer down to the sea from the clouds -which rarely broke above them. - -There were no white beaches here, only boulder-strewn shores, which were -literally, as well as in the metaphorical sense, iron-bound. Not only the -rocks and the boulders, but the very sands of the shore themselves were -of iron, sometimes pure, but, as a rule, containing from eighty-five to -ninety per cent. of the metal. - -This was Prony, the chief of a cluster of convict camps scattered about -what is literally a land of wood and iron. The wood is used, the iron -is not. Millions of tons of it are lying round the shores of one of the -finest and safest natural harbours in the world. A thousand miles away -are the coal-fields of New South Wales. Since it pays to ship copper and -iron from Spain and even South America to Swansea, one would think it -would pay to ship this to Newcastle. However, there it lies, waiting, I -suppose for some one to make fortunes out of it, and the energies of the -eight hundred or one thousand _relégués_ are devoted to hewing timber in -the forests, bringing it down to the shore, and floating it in big barges -to Prony, where there is a finely equipped saw and planing mill. - -The dressed timber is, of course, the property of the Administration, and -is used for building wharves and jetties. A good deal of it is sold to -the public for building purposes. Some day, too, there is going to be a -real railway in Caledonia, and then the forest camps of the Baie du Sud -will furnish the sleepers, signal-posts, and platforms. - -Meanwhile Prony has a railway all to itself, of which I shall here give -some account. - -I was fortunate in making two very pleasant acquaintances in this -out-of-the-way corner of the world. One was the Commandant, who was -quite the most intelligent and broad-minded man of his class that I -met in Caledonia, and the other was the Doctor of the port. He was, of -course, a military Doctor, and held the rank of lieutenant in the army. -His official title was “Le Médecin Major!” He had seen a good deal of -the world, and had visited the United States on a French warship, and -from him I heard the first words of English that I had heard for nearly -three weeks. The dear little Doctor was proud of his English, and he had -a right to be. Although it was not very extensive, it was distinctly -select. One day the Commandant referred somewhat slightingly to it as -“_son peu d’Anglais_”; but perhaps that was because he couldn’t speak a -single word himself. At any rate, he never tried to. - -At Prony, too, I renewed my acquaintance with the microbe. In fact, the -Doctor was there because of him. One day a coast steamer had brought -some tons of flour for the station, which depended entirely for its -food on Noumea and Australia. The sacks were stacked under cover in the -Commissariat Department. The little daughter of the Chief Surveillant -got playing about among these sacks. Some infected rats had been doing -the same a short time before, and so she got the plague. - -The Doctor was telegraphed for to Noumea, and he came and saved her, and, -thanks to his skill and precautions, that was the only case in Prony, -although we actually had the infection in the midst of us, and for the -fifteen days that I was tied up there we ate bread made from that flour! - -I often had to pass the sacks, but I did so at a respectful distance. One -morning, however, I had a bit of a fright. There had been a deluge of -rain all night, and, when I woke, I found a dead and very wet mouse on my -bedroom floor. - -What if it had come from those sacks? - -I drenched it with corrosive sublimate, and pitched it carefully out of -doors with a stick. Then I poured petroleum over it and burnt it and the -stick, and there the incident closed. - -It always struck me as somewhat of a miracle that rats did not find those -sacks out and spread the plague broadcast among us. It would have been -a terrible thing in that isolated camp, cut off from all communication -with the world except the telegraph. Perhaps there were no rats. At any -rate, I never saw any, and felt duly thankful. - -There are no roads about Prony, only footpaths, and not many of these, so -we paid our visits to the camps in steam launches. When it was fine it -was very pleasant work cruising about the picturesque bays, discoursing -the while on crime, criminals, and colonisation with the intelligent -Commandant, or swopping Anglo-French jokes and stories with the Doctor, -who had a very pretty wit of his own. - -The Commandant was a firm believer in relegation and transportation -generally, but like every one else, he looked down upon the _liberé_ and -the _relégué_. According to him a _forçat_ was worth two _liberés_, and -a _liberé_ was worth a _relégué_ and a half, if not more. Nevertheless, -during my stay at Prony I saw a squad of _relégués_ working about as hard -as I have ever seen men work. This was on the railway aforesaid. - -[Illustration: The Convict Railway at Prony. - -_Drawn by Harold Piffard from a photograph._] - -We started one morning, as usual, about five o’clock, and steamed across -two or three bays to the Camp du Nord. In all the other camps the timber -is got down from the hills to the sea by means of wood-paved slides, -which are quite as much a feature of this part of Caledonia as the -ice-slides are in Norway, but the Camp du Nord rises to the dignity of a -railway on which that morning I did the most curious bit of railroading I -have ever done. - -When we had inspected the camp at the terminus and, for the Commandant’s -sake, I had duly admired the landing-stage, the trim buildings, and the -gardens in which the flowers and vegetables were struggling for existence -in the burning iron soil, the State car was brought out for us. - -It was a platform on wheels, with four sloping seats facing backwards. I -could see the line twining away up through the forest, but there was no -engine. - -Presently it, or, rather, they, materialised at the summons of the Chief -Surveillant. Fifteen blue-clad figures, each with a halter and hook-rope -over his shoulder, came out of one of the dormitories. There was a long -chain shackled to the front of the car. At an order the human beasts of -draught passed the halters over their heads and hooked on to the chain, -seven on each side and one ahead. - -Then the Commandant invited the company to mount. There were seven of -us. The Commandant had brought his two little girls, and there were four -besides: the Chief Surveillant, who weighed fifteen stone if he weighed -a pound, the Chief Forester, who weighed a good twelve stone, and the -Doctor and myself, who were comparatively light weights. - -I had often seen convicts harnessed to carts in England, and, of course, -I had ridden many miles in rickshaws in the East, but this was the first -time I had ever travelled in a car drawn by human beings who did it -because they had to, and who would have had their food docked if they had -refused to do it, and I confess that I didn’t exactly like it. Still, I -took my place, and the strange journey began. - -At first it didn’t seem very bad, for the line was almost level, but when -we got into the hills the collar-work began, and our human cattle had to -bend their necks and their backs to it. - -The line wound up through cuttings and over bridges at what seemed to me -an ever-increasing gradient. It was a damp, muggy, tropical morning. It -was not exactly raining, but the moisture soaked you to the bones for -all that, and the leaves and branches of the vast virgin forest on either -hand shone and dripped as the moisture condensed on them. - -We perspired sitting still and making no more exertion than was necessary -for breathing, so you can imagine how those poor wretches tugging at -the chains sweated—and, great heavens, how they stank!—though the most -fastidious, under the circumstances, could hardly blame them for this. - -For very shame’s sake I got off and walked whenever there was an excuse. -It made breathing pleasanter. So did the Doctor, who was a botanist -and found us Venus’ Fly-Traps and other weird vegetable monsters. The -Forester also got off now and then, not from motives of mercy, but to -point out varieties of timber to the Commandant. The Chief Surveillant -sat tight, probably on account of his weight, until I wanted to put him -into one of the halters. - -But what, though I hardly like to say so, disgusted me most was the -absolute callousness, as it seemed to me, of the two little girls. -Perhaps the worst of it was that it was absolutely innocent. They had -been born and bred in Prisonland, and I don’t suppose they really saw -any difference between that sweating, straining, panting team of human -cattle and a team of mules or donkeys. - -At last, to my own infinite relief, the journey was over. What it must -have been like to our team I can only guess from the fact that in a -distance of a little over four miles they had dragged us up one thousand -five hundred feet! It took an hour and three-quarters to do it. They were -dismissed when we got to the top and allowed to have a drink—of water. - -The Doctor took us back. He understood the brake, and in consideration -for the young ladies he kept the speed moderate. We got back in twelve -minutes and a half. He said he had done it in six; but I wasn’t with him -then, and didn’t want to be. - -Although forestry is, of course, the same all the world over, and, -therefore, not the sort of thing to describe here in detail, there were -two other camps that I visited which had interesting peculiarities of -their own. One of these was the Camp of Bonne Anse, a pretty little -spot whence a very steep and stony path led over a little range to a -promontory called Cap Ndoua, which is the telegraph station for the Isle -of Pines. I don’t know whether there are any other telegraphic stations -which have neither cables nor wires and make no use of electricity, but -this and the one on the Isle of Pines were the only ones I have ever seen. - -When I was taken into the operating-room at Cap Ndoua I saw an apparatus -which looked to me like a gigantic magic-lantern with a telescope fixed -to its side. In the front of the big iron box there was a huge lens about -eighteen inches across, behind this was another smaller one, and behind -this again a powerful oil lamp, with a movable screen in front of it, -worked with a sort of trigger; on a table in the corner of the room were -the usual telegraphic transmitters and receivers in connection with the -general telegraphic system to Noumea and the cable to Sydney. - -Every evening at seven, when it is of course quite dark, the operators -go on duty until nine. If Ndoua has a message to send to the island the -lamp is lit, and the man at the telescope in the observatory above the -hospital on the island sees a gleam of white light across the forty-six -miles of sea. He lights his lamp, and the preliminary signal twinkles -through the darkness. Then the shutter begins to work. Short and long -flashes gleam out in quick succession, the dots and dashes of the Morse -system in fact; and so the words which have come over the wire from -Noumea, or, perhaps, from the uttermost ends of the earth, are translated -into light, and sent through the darkness with even more than electrical -speed. - -Saving only fogs, which are not very frequent in those latitudes, the -optic telegraph is just as reliable as the cable and the wire, and they -are good for any distance up to the range of the telescope. The apparatus -cost about £50 apiece, while a cable would cost several thousands; and it -struck me that for quick communication between the mainland and islands -or distant light-houses, the optic telegraph is worthy of a wider use -than it seems to have. - -The other visit was to Port Boisé, near to Cape Queen Charlotte, which -is the extreme north-western point of Caledonia. Port Boisé is, like so -many other of the Caledonian convict camps, a most beautiful spot. It is -fertile, too, thanks to the existence of ancient bog lands, which make it -possible to temper the heat of the ferruginous soil, and so skill and -patience have made it a delightful oasis in the midst of the vast forest -and jungle which surround it on all sides save the one opening to the sea. - -These forests and jungles, by the way, are of somewhat peculiar growth; -the timber is mostly what is called _chêne-gomme_, and is an apparent -combination of oak- and gum-tree. It is almost as hard as the iron which -is the chief ingredient in the soil from which it derives its sap, and it -is practically indestructible. As for the jungle, it is composed of brush -and creepers which have the consistency of wire ropes—a sort of vegetable -steel cable, in fact. - -But for me, as an Englishman, the chief interest in Port Boisé was -connected with Cape Queen Charlotte, and a little island lying about five -miles out to sea, which is called Le Mouillage de Cook—the Anchorage -of Captain Cook. It was here that the great navigator made perhaps the -greatest mistake of his life. As every one knows, he discovered and named -New Caledonia. He sailed along its shores, and contented himself with -describing it as an island of lofty mountains surrounded by reefs which -made it inaccessible. - -He anchored at a little island, and named the bold promontory in front -of him Cape Queen Charlotte. He landed here, and, as he says, found -the natives very civil and obliging. It is a million pities that he -did not cultivate their friendship further, and learn something about -their country. He would not then have described it as “inaccessible” and -“unapproachable.” - -Beyond the bay in which his boats landed he would have found a stretch -of open country under the hills across which his men could have marched -till they discovered what is now the Baie du Sud—another Sydney Cove in -miniature. If he had only done this, Caledonia, with its enormous mineral -wealth and its magnificent harbours, would have been British instead -of French, a worthy appanage to that other Empire of the future, the -new-born Commonwealth of Australia. - -I discussed this with the Commandant as we walked back to Bonne Anse, -and he told me the story of how on a much later occasion we also lost -Caledonia. - -Once upon a time, a little more than fifty years ago, there were two -frigates lying in Sydney Harbour—one British and one French. We will -call the British ship H.M.S. _Dodderer_. She was commanded by an old -woman in naval uniform who ought to have been superannuated years before. -The Frenchman, as events proved, was a man of a very different sort. - -New Caledonia in those days was a sort of No-Man’s Land, but there were -both Catholic and Protestant European missionaries working among the -natives. The two warships received almost simultaneous orders to go -and annex the island. They started the same day. The British frigate -out-sailed the Frenchman, but her captain had got those fatal words of -Captain Cook’s deep-rooted in his mind, and when he got near the dreaded -reefs he began to take soundings. The Frenchman went ahead, neck or -nothing. He gambled his ship to win a colony, and, taking only the most -ordinary precautions, he kept on his course. - -By great good luck he struck the broad passage through the reef which -leads to the harbour of Noumea, and when H.M.S. _Dodderer_ eventually -groped her way in she found the French frigate at anchor, and the -Tricolour flying from a flagstaff on one of the hills, after which the -French captain politely invited him and his officers to lunch and to an -excursion on French soil; and here ends a short but exasperating chapter -in our colonial history. - -I had been ten days in Prony when we visited Port Boisé, and each day we -had been looking anxiously for the coming of the steamer which was to -bring us food and me release. Morning after morning we looked out across -the bay to the two islands which guarded the channel through which she -had to come, but for six more days never a whiff of smoke drifted across -the clear-cut horizon. Meanwhile, food was running very low, and we were -getting decidedly _ennuyés_. So one day, by way of a diversion, the -Doctor proposed that we should break the law and go dynamite-fishing and -shark-slaying. - -The fresh meat had given out. Vegetables—far more important to a -Frenchman than to an Englishman—were nearly a memory. The fruit supply of -the camp was represented by a lime-tree in the Doctor’s garden, and that -grew in imported soil. No fruit would grow in the iron soil of Prony. -The preserved Australian meat was getting very low. In short, in a few -more days we should have got within measurable distance of starvation, -and then mutiny; and it was with an idea of deferring such unpleasant -contingencies that the doctor suggested we should go fishing. - -Any change from the monotony of wandering about the little area walled in -by jungle and forest, impassable by any save those who knew the Kanaka -paths, was welcome, and I began to talk gladly about rods and line and -bait, to which the doctor replied: - -“Oh no, we must work quicker than that. We shall fish with dynamite! You -will see them come to the bait, and then—_pouf!_—there breaks out the -waterquake, not earthquake, as you say, and they are all dead—hundreds! -You shall see sharks, too. Dynamite is good medicine for them.” - -This sounded interesting, and I got up the next morning about half-past -four, more cheerfully than usual, because, of course, we were going -to start at five o’clock. It was a dull, cloudy, steamy morning when -I went down to the jetty, and found the big whale-boat manned by six -stalwart Kanakas armed with their throwing-spears, and the Doctor with -a little saloon rifle, and the Director of Works—the biggest and most -English-looking Frenchman that I met in the colony—with his pockets full -of dynamite. - -We first paid a visit to a camp about eight miles away, taking a -contribution of meat and bread, and the news that the long-expected -supplies had not yet come. Then we shaped our course for Sharks’ Bay, -which proved to be a most characteristically tropical piece of water. The -dense vegetation not only came down to the water’s edge, but threw out -long, snaky-looking roots a couple of yards from the shore. It was among -these that the first sport began, because it was in these oily-looking -shallows that the flat fish were wont to take refuge from the wolves of -the sea. - -This was the Kanakas’ part of the sport. We ran the boat in quietly and -four of them went ashore with their spears. The Director of Works did the -same, and when he had landed I felt that the Doctor and I were a little -farther off from the razor-edged brink of eternity than when he was -sitting beside us with enough dynamite in his pockets to blow the boat to -matchwood and ourselves beyond the confines of time. - -We amused ourselves by taking potshots at the black triangles which -keenly cut the unrippled surface of the brown water. As far as my own -experience goes, I don’t think there’s another piece of water in the -world that possesses as many sharks to the acre as that well-named bay. -Wherever you looked you could see a black fin cutting the water, and -every minute or so you would see a swirling eddy which meant that one -of the sea-wolves had made a dash at something, and had either got an -instalment of his breakfast or missed it. - -When I was talking this over afterwards with the Doctor, who was a bit -of a naturalist, I learnt a little more about the doctrine of evolution -and the survival of the fittest than I knew before. Sharks swarm in the -New Caledonian waters, and the only chance for their victims is flight; -wherefore about the shores of New Caledonia you find the fastest swimming -fish in the world. - -After we had had a few ineffective shots at dorsal fins, one of our crew -said “Ough!” and pointed to the shore. We pulled in, it being evident -that there was sport afoot. The Kanakas ashore had been climbing with -marvellous agility over the snaky water-roots of the trees until they had -come to a tiny little cove. - -They were leaning over the roots peering down into the water, motionless -as bronze images. Then one swiftly and silently shinned up a tree with -his spear in his mouth. He got a foot- and hand-hold. Then with his right -hand he took the spear out of his teeth, balanced it for a moment, and -then down it went like a flash of lightning. - -The next instant there was a terrific commotion in the water below. Three -other spears went down, and our men laid to their oars and rushed the -boat in. Two of the others jumped into the water, and the crowd began -struggling with a huge flat-fish, something like an exaggerated flounder, -which was nailed to the bottom by a couple of spears. When we got him -into the boat, I thought he would have knocked the side out of it. -Subsequently he made good eating for many hungry convicts. - -Meanwhile, the Director had been wandering about with a cigarette in his -mouth and a dynamite cartridge in his hand, looking for his prey, which, -unobligingly, kept too far out. His turn was to come later on, when we -had pulled across past the sulphur stream to the mouth of the river which -flows into Sharks’ Bay. - -It is a rather curious fact that the waters of this bay are strongly -impregnated with sulphur, and yet, as I have said, they are literally -swarming with fish. They evidently seemed to like it, for both the sharks -and their victims were thicker in the neighbourhood of the submarine -springs than they were anywhere else. Wherefore it was here that we made -the best bags. - -Our Kanakas seemed to have a faculty of seeing through the brown water -which none of us possessed. Again and again they located swarms of fish -that we had no notion of. One of them lay in the bows with his big black -eyes seeing things where we could see nothing, and directing our course -by moving his right or left hand. - -Meanwhile the dynamiter stood on the seat with one foot on the gunwale, -puffing at his cigarette, keeping it in a glow so that he might light -the fuse of his cartridge at it. Presently there came from the bows a -low intense whisper, “Stop!” The Kanakas use a good deal more English -than French when they’re out sporting. He got up and pointed to the water -about ten yards ahead, and hissed: - -“There, _là_! plenty! _beaucoup!_” - -The dynamiter took his cigarette from his lips, blew the ash away, and -touched the end of the fuse with it. Then he pitched his cartridge into -the water about ten yards from the boat. Ten seconds later a volcano -seemed to burst up from the bottom of the bay, and the boat jumped as if -a whale’s flipper had struck her. The water ahead boiled up into a little -hillock of foam and dropped again. - -Then all about us I saw the water sprinkled with the white bellies of -fish, some quite dead, and others swimming in a feeble, purposeless sort -of way with their tails. The next moment there were six big splashes, and -I saw six pairs of brown legs disappearing into the water, after which -heads and arms bobbed up, and it began to rain fish into the boat. - -They ran from eight to eighteen inches in length, and from two to six -pounds in weight, and so I took some pains to dodge them as they came -flying up out of the water. They were something like bass, but they had -the heads and tails of mackerel, and they swam like lightning—of course, -before they struck the dynamite. - -I have often watched, in clearer waters, the sharks hunting shoals of -them. The Caledonian shark can get a tremendous speed on him. I have seen -a twelve-footer carried clean out of the water by the impetus of his -rush. But the way these things dodged them just at the moment that they -turned over to make their grab was simply marvellous. You would see a -shark plunge into the midst of a swarm of them. The long, blue-grey body -would turn over, the mouth—the ugliest mouth in all creation—would open, -and the tripled-armed jaws would clash together on a mouthful of empty -water. Every fish had vanished, and brother shark would give a disgusted -wriggle, and go on the prowl again. - -Escapes of this kind were, of course, due to inherited wisdom, but -dynamite was a recent experience, and the fish fell victims to it through -sheer curiosity. When the cartridge dropped into the middle of the shoal -they naturally scattered in all directions. Then they came back to see -what had fallen into the water, and after that came the catastrophe. -Those who died were victims to curiosity. Those who escaped would -probably be about the most scared fish that ever wagged a fin. - -The effect of the dynamite on those who did not escape was most -extraordinary. In every case the vertebral column was broken just behind -the head, and the heart was as cleanly divided as if it had been cut with -a razor. - -When we had our boat about half full we started in pursuit of bigger -game. The shock of the explosion had startled the sharks, who, like -all bullies, are mostly cowards, and the Kanakas had kept them away by -beating the water every now and then with their hands in their usual -fashion. So our dripping, laughing crew, sure now of a splendid feed, -pulled merrily down the bay to a point on which we landed two of them and -the dynamiter. They crept stealthily along the tangled shore till one -of the Kanakas stopped and pointed to three little black spots on the -surface of a tiny jungle-fringed bay. - -The dynamiter took out a cigarette and lit it, watching the three points -the while as they moved along the oily surface through little eddies -made by the great bodies underneath. Presently they formed a triangle -not many feet apart. Two or three vigorous whiffs of his cigarette, a -touch to the fuse, and a motion of the hand, a scurry in the water—and -then a muffled bang and an uprising of muddy water. - -We waited a moment or two, and then we could see something white—three -streaks of it—gleaming through the water, and three livid shapes rose -slowly to the surface, wagging the great tails which would never send -them through the water again. Their horrible mouths were a little open, -but they would never close fish or man again. - -I took the Doctor’s word for it that their necks, so to speak, were -broken, and their hearts split as those of the smaller fry were; but I -didn’t make any personal investigations, for soon after the troubling of -the waters had subsided there came swift, swirling rushes from all sides; -black fins cut the water, white bellies gleamed under it, and then came -a clashing of cannibal jaws, a tugging and a tearing, a silent, horrible -contest, and presently all that was left of those three sharks was a -blood-reddened scum on the surface of the little leaf-fringed bay. - -Our morning’s fishing closed with the slaying of a shark who fell a -victim to his insatiable appetite just as the smaller fry had done to -their curiosity. When the tragedy was over we pulled out into the middle -of the outer bay and waited until quiet and confidence was restored among -our friends below. Meanwhile, one of the Kanakas had cut one of our -biggest fish open. The Director put a dynamite cartridge into it, and -then it was tied up, after which the end of a line was passed through its -gills. When one of the black triangles came within a few yards of us the -Director touched the end of about six inches of fuse with his cigarette -and dropped it quietly overboard. - -Brother Shark didn’t seem to notice the little fizzy splutter which made -this fish different from all others that he had eaten, or, if he did, he -took no notice of it. He turned over on his side, the jaws opened, and -the fish vanished. - -In a few moments and for just an immeasurable fraction of a second he was -the most astounded shark in the Pacific Ocean. After which came chaos -for him, and a breakfast for his brethren. The pieces weren’t very big, -with the exception of the head, which, after a bit of a scrimmage, was -carried off by a monster who might have been his mother-in-law. The rest -of the fragments disappeared in a swirl of bloody froth, and we went home -to breakfast to learn the glad news that the long-awaited _Emily_ had -really left Noumea at last. - - - - -XI - -_MOSTLY MOSQUITOS AND MICROBES_ - - -The _Emily_ arrived that evening, and we fed royally on good fresh -Australian beef, fried fish, and potatoes, and _compôte_ of fruit, -followed by fresh cream cheese, with bread and tinned butter—as usual, -from Australia. In fact, if it wasn’t for Australia I believe that New -Caledonia would either live on tinned everything or starve, which is of -course a good thing for Sydney and Newcastle. - -The Doctor produced a couple of bottles of excellent Burgundy from his -private cellar, and altogether we did ourselves exceeding well. The next -morning the _Emily_ sailed, of course, at five o’clock; but I turned -out of bed in the moonlight well contented, for my last journey but one -was over. The Commandant invited me on to his verandah for a farewell -consommation. After which I went with the Doctor and the Dynamiter for -another one or two at the canteen. Then we parted in as friendly a -fashion as English and French ever did. - -I was glad to get away, yet I left some regrets behind me. Though I had -come under unpromising circumstances, every one had made me welcome, and -although my stay had lengthened into something like a little exile, my -visit to the Land of Wood and Iron had been both pleasant and profitable. - -The Doctor I parted from with real regret. He was one of the best types -of the travelled French officer and gentleman that I have ever met. At -first his ideas about the Boers were hopelessly wrong, and that was -all there was the matter with him; but I was the first man he had ever -met who had actually lived among them, and when I left his views were -considerably altered. - -Just before I left, the Director of Posts and Telegraphs—every official -seems to be a director of something in Caledonia—brought me the first -letters that I had received in Prisonland. They had been carried -by a Kanaka over the mountains from Noumea, through fifty miles of -jungle-paths. These bush-postmen have never yet been known to lose a -letter. When I asked how much extra they were paid for work like this I -was told that they were made to do it as a punishment—which struck me as -being entirely French. - -The _Emily_—may her name be blessed!—was only a steam launch multiplied -by two, but she was clean and sweet, and her nose was pointed towards -home. She towed two lighters loaded with dressed timber, and she took -something like fifteen hours to do forty-five miles. But that mattered -little. It was a delicious day, and the scenery along the coast was -lovely. Moreover, you could lie down on her decks without having to -change afterwards and throw your clothes overboard, and so the long hours -passed pleasantly under the awning. - -When at length she had puffed and panted her way into Noumea, I looked -about the harbour and saw that Yellow Jack was flying more numerously -than ever. The first news I learnt when I landed was that the plague was -a great deal worse than the papers were allowed to say. It had begun to -jump about all over the town, just as it did later on in Sydney. The -Chief of the Sanitary Commission had just been struck down by it. - -The first thing I noticed as I drove from the wharf to my old quarters -was the number of people in mourning. My landlady, who—I dare say under -compulsion—had had her premises cleaned and disinfected, greeted me with -even more than French effusion. I owed her a long bill, and she thought I -was dead of the plague in some out-of-the-way spot. She nearly cried for -joy when she saw me. Poor old lady, she was to be one of the next of the -microbe’s victims! - -At dinner that night I learnt, to my intense disgust, that the Messagerie -Company and the Government had established a twelve-days’ quarantine on -a mosquito-haunted islet in the bay for any one who wanted to travel by -the monthly mail to Sydney. The principal reason for this was that the -Governor was going home and wanted to be quite certain that no microbes -got on board concealed about the persons of his fellow-passengers. - -From my point of view it amounted to this: Twelve days on _Ile -Freycinet_, four days’ passage, and from eight to ten days’ quarantine -in Sydney—total at least twenty-six days for a trip of a little over a -thousand miles. - -It had to be avoided somehow, and at the same time Noumea was getting -every day a better place to get out of. Even Lord Dunmore, who had stuck -to his offices down near the wharves while his neighbours were running -away, and while the rats, driven out of destroyed buildings, were coming -under his floors to die, at last admitted that things were serious, and -advised me to “get” as soon as I could. - -Fortunately one of the larger coast-boats had been disinfected and -was put on the line again, and in her I took passage to Pam, at the -north-eastern extremity of the island. - -Pam is the port and headquarters of an immensely rich mining district, -the property of the International Copper Company, of which his lordship -is Administrator. It has been said that when Nature made New Caledonia -she set herself to dump down as many ores and minerals in as small a -space as possible. - -She has certainly succeeded, for there is scarcely a mineral known to -science that is not represented in greater or less quantities in this -wonderful island. - -[Illustration: The Mines of the International Copper Co., Pilou, New -Caledonia. There is a greater variety of Metallic Ores within the area -shown here than in any other region in the world.] - -A very clever and experienced mining expert once went over from Australia -to make a survey for the International, and after an exhaustive -examination he was shipped to London to make a personal report to -the Board. He knew as much about mining as any one in the Southern -Hemisphere, but his language and deportment were those of the bush and -the mining camp. A noble lord asked him if he could give any estimate -of the amount of copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, silver, gold, etc., that -might be found in the Central Chain, and this was his answer: - -“My lord, if you were to take all the —— minerals there are out of those -—— mountains the —— island would —— well fall to pieces.” - -The report was taken as satisfactory. - -I brought some specimens away with me which certainly seem to bear out -his estimate. They were the wonder and envy of several mining experts -in Australia. One of the specimens weighs about three pounds, and I am -told that it contains about a dozen distinct kinds of minerals. It didn’t -come out of the mine. It was just chopped off the surface for me with a -pickaxe. - -The mines are not at Pam. They are at Pilou, about seven miles up the -river. Here, connecting the principal mining station with the wharf, -is the only other railway in Caledonia, which is run by steam. It is a -narrow gauge and about five miles long. - -That five miles is a journey through purgatory. The attendant demons are -little black and devilishly businesslike mosquitos. Now, I thought I knew -something about mosquitos. They had lived off me in many parts of the -world from Delagoa Bay to Panama, and Honolulu to Guayaquil, but when I -got to Pilou I found I hadn’t begun to learn about them. - -The air above the swamp over which the railway ran was black with them, -and their song made the whole atmosphere vocal. They were all over us in -a moment. They even settled on the boiler of the engine, and bit it until -it whistled in its agony. We were black with them from head to foot. -Clothing was no protection; and, of course, ours was pretty thin. They -just stood on their heads and rammed their probosces down into our flesh, -usually along the line of a vein, and sucked in our life-blood until they -were too gorged to get their blood-pumps out again. - -By constant sweeping with green branches we managed to keep our faces -fairly clear, and do our breathing without swallowing more than a dozen -at a time. Even the Kanakas, who are not as a rule a favourite article of -food with mosquitos, had to go on swishing themselves with boughs to keep -the little black demons out of their eyes and nose and mouth and ears. - -As for me, I visited the camps and the mines, and then I fled. I was a -sight which my worst enemy, if I have one, might well have looked upon -with eyes of pity. I had got a touch of fever, too, in the swamp, and an -illness in Pilou was too terrible for contemplation. I would not live in -the place, rent free and with nothing to do but fight mosquitos, for a -hundred pounds a week. - -The unhappy convicts who work the mines were the most miserable lot I had -seen in all Caledonia. Neither by day nor night have they any protection -from the swarming pests, which, as one or two of them told me, made their -lives one long misery. They sleep in open barracks without mosquito -curtains over their hammocks, and by day their tormentors pursue them -even down the shafts of the mine. - -It was the same with the officials and their wives and children. They all -looked anæmic, as though most of the blood had been sucked out of them. -They were worried and nervous. Their hands had got into a way of moving -mechanically towards their cheeks and necks and foreheads, the result of -long and mostly vain efforts to squash mosquitos. - -When we were going to have a meal a couple of fire-pots, covered with -green boughs, had to be put into the room until it was full of smoke and -comparatively empty of mosquitos. Then we went into the smoke, and the -fire-pots were put in the doorway. I wasn’t at Pilou long enough to get -used to being half-cooked myself while I was eating my dinner, but even -the smoke in your eyes and lungs was a more bearable affliction than the -winged tormentors who seemed to be a sort of punitive discount on the -vast mineral wealth of Pilou. - -No one but very wicked people ought to live there, and when they die -their accounts ought to be considered squared. - -[Illustration: The Saloon of the Ballande liner _St. Louis_.] - -With eyes puffed up and almost closed; with nose and ears and lips about -twice their normal size; with knuckles and wrists swollen and stiff—to -say nothing of a skinful of itching bumps—I got back to Pam, and on board -the cargo boat on which I had booked a passage in Noumea. - -We called her afterwards the Ballande liner _St. Louis_. She was an -exaggeration of _La France_, and belonged to the same distinguished firm. -She was bigger and, if possible, dirtier. She also smelt more, because -there was a larger area for the smells to spread themselves over. - -No provision had been made for the eight passengers who were doomed to -travel by her. The captain had no money or credit to buy stores, and when -I offered to lend him some, he declined, in case his owners should hold -him responsible. The result was that the food we ate on that miserable -voyage made me look back longingly to the days when I had eaten salt -horse and pickled pork in the forecastle of a black-birder. - -The decks were not washed down till the fifth morning, when we reached -Sydney Heads. Then there was a general clean-up before the Medical -Superintendent came on board, in case a worse fate than quarantine might -await us. Up went Yellow Jack again, and that afternoon saw us anchored -off the quarantine station at North Head. - -I have been in prisons of many sorts, but that quarantine taught me for -the first time what imprisonment really means. The penalty for leaving -the _St. Louis_ without authority was £300 fine _and_ six months’ hard -labour—so there we were for eight days and nights of about one hundred -and fifty hours each. - -On one side there was the quarantine station—about as beautiful a land -and seascape as those about to die ever took a last look from at earth -and sea and sky. - -On the other hand, the varied beauties of “Our Harbour,” with Manly Beach -to the northward, North Shore with its red-roofed villas sprinkled among -the trees; and, away in the dim distance, the spires and chimneys of -Sydney. A couple of hours would have taken us to it, but as we looked -at it with longing eyes, thinking of what a cocktail at the bar of the -Australia Hotel would taste like, it might just as well have been twenty -thousand miles away. - -It was during those eight days of mingled dirt and discomfort, cursing, -and cribbage that I saw as curious a contrast between life and death as -you might search the wide world over for. - -On the starboard side, which is the right-hand side looking forward, lay -the route of the excursion steamers running between Sydney and Manly -Beach. - -They came past at all hours of the day, and they came near enough for -us to hear strains of stringed and wind instruments, which brought back -memories of the dear old Thames with painful distinctness. - -On the port side, with almost equal frequency, there came a -green-painted, white-awninged launch, flying the Yellow Flag and carrying -corpses, “cases,” and “contacts” from the depôt at Wooloomooloo. As she -rounded into the jetty she whistled. Day and night for eight days and -nights we heard that whistle—and the meaning of it was usually death. But -you get hardened to all things in time, and before our durance vile ended -we had got to call her the Cold Meat Boat. - -One day the Medical Superintendent of the station acceded to an urgent -request made by myself and a fellow-passenger. Neither of us had washed -properly for six days, and so, after a little discussion and many -promises, he let us go ashore that we might enjoy ourselves under a hose. -We douched each other for more than half an hour, and then we went to -stretch ourselves on the beach—a silver-sanded rock-walled curve, trodden -by many feet which will never tread earth again. - -As we were coming back to the quay to go on board we heard that -never-to-be-forgotten whistle again, and the green Death Boat swung round -the corner. One of the sanitary police on the wharf put his hand up and -waved us back. - -In the stern there were about a dozen people sitting. Forward there was -a long shapeless bundle lying on a stretcher. It was a case. The others -were “contacts,” friends, lodgers, and relations who had lived in the -same house with the case. They had come to be isolated for ten days, so -that the microbe of the Black Death might show whether or not it was in -their blood. - -They were taken out of the boat first. Their own feelings didn’t matter, -for the Black Spectre takes no account of human affections, and permits -no other to do so. They were marched away to the quarters set apart for -contacts. No farewells were permitted, just a look that might be the -last, and that was all. - -Then the stretcher with the long bundle on it was lifted and carried on -to the wharf. Meanwhile the ambulance backed down to the shore-end, the -stretcher was put into it, and it drove away up through the trees to the -hospital. The next journey of that particular “case” was to the cemetery -four days afterwards. - -When we got back to our floating prison I told the chief engineer what we -had seen on shore, and he said in very epigrammatic French: - -“Quite so! What would you? You are a human being till you take the -plague; after that you are an outcast, a thing separate. You live and get -better; you die and are buried that’s all.” - -And, as it happened, the very next day brought an all-too vivid -illustration of the truth of this saying. About ten in the morning we -heard the “woo-hoo” of the Death Boat’s whistle. - -There was only one passenger this time, and he travelled in a coffin. A -common two-wheeled cart backed down to where the ambulance had been the -day before. The coffin was carried to it and put in just like any other -sort of packing-case might have been. The driver whipped up his horse, -and we watched the cart with its load of coffin, corpse, and quicklime, -trotting up the winding road which leads to the burying-ground of North -Head. - -I have seen many funerals in a good many places from Westminster Abbey to -Wooloomooloo, but this one was the simplest and the saddest of them all. - -Away on the other side of the bay, wife and children, brothers and -sisters and friends were mourning—and there was the indescribable Thing, -which two or three days ago had been a man, being carted away to be -dropped into a twelve-foot hole in the ground—buried like a dead dog, -because it had died of the Black Death instead of something else. From -which you will see that the Black Death has terrors for the living even -after it has claimed its dead. - - - - -Part III - -_HOMEWARD BOUND_ - - - - -I - -“_TWENTY YEARS AFTER_” - - -Everything, even quarantine, comes to an end in time; and so on the -morning of the eighth day at anchor, and the thirteenth out from Pam, the -sanitary policeman who formed our sole connection with the outside world -brought with our morning letters and newspapers the joyful news that -our imprisonment was to end at noon that day. Never did convicts hail -the hour of their release more gladly than the passengers on board the -Ballande liner _St. Louis_. - -We had managed to make our durance vile tolerable by means of yarning by -day, and cribbage by night. In the after saloon, an apartment measuring -about sixteen feet by eight, there were four of us—three men and the -wife of a mining superintendent in Pam. The miner was one of the good -old colonial hard-shell type, a man of vast and varied experience, and -the possessor of one of the most luxuriant vocabularies I have ever -had reason to admire in the course of many wanderings. One night, I -remember, we all woke up wondering whether the ship had broken from -her moorings and gone ashore or whether the Kanaka crew had mutinied. -It turned out that our shipmate had discovered a rat in his bunk, and -was giving his opinion as to the chances of our all dying of plague -before the quarantine was over. He knew that there had been fourteen -deaths from plague only a month before on the miserable old hooker, and -he was considerably scared. When he told us that the rat was alive I -began to laugh, whereupon he turned the stream of his eloquence upon -me. He literally coruscated with profanity, and the more his adjectives -multiplied the louder I laughed, and only the influence of my stable -companion, a pearl-sheller and diver from Thursday Island, who had been -exploring the ocean floor round New Caledonia, prevented a breach of our -harmonious relations. - -When I got my breath and the miner lost his, I explained that the fact of -the rat being alive proved it to be absolutely harmless. It was indeed -a guarantee that there was no plague on the ship. If it had been dead -and the sanitary authorities had got to know of it, it might have got -us another twenty days’ quarantine. Finally, it came out that the rat -had bitten the miner’s toe, and, as he believed, inoculated him with the -plague. I suggested that whiskey was the best antidote for anything of -that sort and so the proceedings terminated amicably. - -My friend the diver was also a man who could tell you tales of land -and sea and under-sea in language which was unhappily sometimes too -picturesque to be printable. We had travelled together all the way from -Noumea, and made friends before the _St. Antoine_ had left the wharf. -We had both been rope-haulers and climbers before the mast, and the -freemasonry of the sea made us chums at once. I never travelled with a -better shipmate, and if this book ever reaches him across the world I -hope that it will remind him of many hours that he made pleasant during -that evil time. - -I have brought two somewhat curious memories out of our brief friendship. - -I had not been talking to him for an hour before twenty years of hard-won -education and culture of a sort disappeared, and I found myself thinking -the thoughts and speaking the speech of the forecastle and the sailors’ -boarding-house: thoughts direct and absolutely honest; and speech terse, -blunt, and equally honest, for among the toilers of the sea it is not -permitted to use language to conceal one’s thoughts. The man who is found -out doing that hears himself dissected and discussed with blistering -irony garnished with epithets which stick like barbed arrows, and of -such was our conversation on the _St. Antoine_ and the _St. Louis_; not -exactly drawing-room-talk, but of marvellous adaptability to the true -description of men and things. - -On the morning of our release as we were taking our after-breakfast walk -and looking for the last time on that hatefully beautiful little cove at -North Head, I said to him: - -“Well, I’ll have to stop being a shell-back to-night, and get into -civilisation again.” - -“I suppose you will,” he said; and then he proceeded to describe -civilisation generally in a way that would have healthily shocked many -most excellent persons. I thoroughly agreed with him, and, curiously -enough, although our experiences had been none of the most pleasant, and -I had had anything but a succession of picnics during my stay in New -Caledonia, I was already beginning to feel sorry that I had to go back -to civilisation and dine in dress-clothes and a hard-boiled shirt—which -brings me to my second memory. - -[Illustration: The Quarantine Station, North Head, Sydney.] - -For nearly a month we had been living on food that a Kaffir in the -Kimberley compounds would turn his nose up at, and for fourteen days on -board the _St. Louis_ we had eaten dirt of many French descriptions. -Everything was dirty. Not even the insides of the loaves were clean. The -galley, where the disguised abominations were cooked, was so foul that a -whiff of its atmosphere on passing was enough to spoil the appetite of -a starving man. The cook was to match. The steward who waited on us was -willing and obliging, but remiss in the matter of washing both himself -and his crockery. The chief steward on French ships is called _maître -d’hôtel_, and by this title we addressed him. On shore we should have -said “here, you,” or something of that sort, but on the _St. Louis_ he -was a person of importance, for he had the key of the store-room and was -open to judicious bribery. - -We had worried through our last dirty _déjeûner_ on board, and -preparations were being made for getting the anchors up. The captain -and the mate had each put on a clean collar, and the chief engineer -was wringing his hands and dancing about the forecastle because the -donkey-engine had gone wrong and only fizzed feebly when it should have -been getting the cable in. - -“Well, thank God,” I said to my diver friend, “we shall have a decent -dinner to-night! You are going to dine with me at the Australia. We’ll -have a real cocktail at the bar, only one, for it won’t do to spoil a -precious appetite, then we’ll eat our way through the menu and drink -champagne. Looks like heaven, doesn’t it?” - -This is of course only an expurgated version of what I really said. His -reply consisted of a finely embroidered comparison between the Australia -Hotel and the _St. Louis_, calculated to start every rivet in her hull. - -Well, we got away from our anchorage and were towed up to Sydney. We took -two of the finest appetites on the Australian continent up with us. We -had that cocktail. We sat down in the dining-room of the Australia at a -table covered with the first clean table-cloth we had seen for a month -and glittering with polished glass and shining silver. The dinner was -as good a one as you will get anywhere between Sydney Harbour and King -George’s Sound—and we couldn’t eat it! We fooled about with the courses, -trying to believe that we were hungry and having a real treat, but it -was no good. We had lost our taste for clean, well-cooked food, and our -palates and digestions were hopelessly vitiated. Course after course went -away hardly touched. We said many things to each other across the table -in decently lowered tones, and ended by satisfying our hunger and thirst -with bread and butter and champagne! - -After dinner I renewed my acquaintance with the Doctor and the purser of -the steam-roller _Alameda_, and they imparted the unwelcome information -that the regular liners were not booking any passengers from Sydney lest -Melbourne and Adelaide, Albany and Perth might refuse them admittance, -or, at any rate, decline to take passage in a ship from a plague port. -Moreover, it was possible that Sydney passengers might be quarantined at -every port. Personally, I had had all the quarantine I wanted, and so -I was not sorry to accept the other alternative which was to go across -to Melbourne and Adelaide by train, and thence by a boat to Freemantle. -This would give me time to have a glimpse at Western Australia before -picking up the Messagerie liner at Albany. Unhappily, as I have said, we -ran up against the plague again at Freemantle, and the inevitable delay, -combined with the very leisurely gait of the West Australian trains, made -it just impossible for me to visit the gold-fields without missing my -steamer. - -One of the first people to welcome me back to Sydney was my very good -friend and fellow-voyager from Honolulu, the Accidental American, and -with him and his wife I travelled to Melbourne. - -After we had passed the customs and changed trains and gauges at Albury -the journey began to take on a new, or, rather, an old interest for me. -Twenty years before I had tramped up through the bush from Melbourne to -the Murray after taking French leave of the lime-juicer in which I had -made my first miserable voyage from Liverpool to Australia. I had halved -the fifteen shillings, with which I started, with a penniless “old chum” -in exchange for his company and experience, and then turned the other -seven and sixpence into about seventy pounds, and, on the strength of my -wealth, travelled back to Melbourne first-class. - -Now I was doing it again, and as the express swung past the little -station, which I had reached after an all-night tramp across the ranges, -I found it to be a good deal less changed than I was. Indeed, save for a -few new houses scattered about the clearing, it was just as it was when I -pitched my swag down on a bench before the hotel, put my blackened billy -beside it, and ordered my last breakfast in the bush. - -At Melbourne we put up at Menzies, and one afternoon I took my friend -down to Spencer Street to pay a visit to the hotel that I had last -stayed in—the Sailors’ Home. Here again nothing was altered. The very -cubicle I slept in twenty years before looked as though I had only just -turned out of the little blue-and-white counterpaned bed, and outside my -yester-self, to coin the only word that seems to fit, was loafing about -in beerless and penniless idleness “waiting for a ship.” - -“There I am as I was,” I said; “how do you like me?” - -“Not a little bit, Griff,” he replied in the terse speech of his -fortuitously native land. “I guess if you were to come like that among -the friends you have now you’d look mighty like a dirty deuce in a new -deck of cards.” - -The next morning I went over to Williamstown to have a look at the scene -of my old escapade, the only one, by the way, which ever brought me into -unpleasant relations with the police, for in those days breaking your -indentures was a matter of imprisonment. Happily they did not catch me. I -found the old Railway Hotel, known, aforetime to officers and apprentices -as the Hen and Chickens, since it was kept by a dear old Scotchwoman -assisted by four charming daughters with one or all of whom every -apprentice in port was supposed to be in love. It was through the kindly -offices of one of them that I had saved my kit and dodged the police. - -I sat in the little parlour on the same sofa I had sat on that memorable -night; opposite was the same old piano on which one or other of our -charmers used to accompany our shouting sea-songs, and there beside it -was the little cupboard in the wall in which my superfluous wardrobe had -been stowed away. Not a thing was altered, I believe the very table-cloth -was the same, and the patch of vacant ground opposite, across which I had -bolted at the penultimate moment to catch the last train to Melbourne, -was still unbuilt on; and there was I, still a wanderer, though of a -different sort, wanting only the old faces and the old voices to be able -to persuade myself that the twenty changing years had begun with the last -night’s dream and ended with the morning’s awaking. - - - - -II - -_DEMOS AND DEAR MONEY_ - - -No doubt it was due to the very wide difference between the two points -of view from which I had seen Australia and the Australians, but I must -confess that my first impressions were more pleasant than my second. -Naturally the happy-go-lucky-sailor lad who thought that the earth was -his and the fulness thereof as long as he had a shilling in his pocket -and a square meal ahead of him, would not look upon things in general -with the same eyes that I did after twenty years of changing fortunes -and the gradual fading of the “golden dreams of trustful twenty,”—or -eighteen, to be more exact. - -In those days I was, almost of necessity, a practical democrat living -in a democracy which neither had the time nor the inclination to bother -about politics; but now many experiences in many lands had taught me that -democracy of the political sort is more pleasant to read about than to -rub shoulders with! - -America has an aristocracy of blood, brains, and money which looks with -open contempt upon politics, and has no more connection with politicians -than is involved in the payment of bribes by its agents. Australia has no -such aristocracy, and everybody apparently goes into politics. In America -democracy is a political fiction, and the person whom political advocates -and managers call the working man is kept in his place by methods more -or less moral but still effective. The real rulers of the United States -believe, with Bismarck, that popular government of a country resembles -control of a household by the nursery. - -In Australia the democracy really does rule. It is the worst-mannered -country that I have ever travelled through, I mean, of course, as regards -the people you are brought into contact with in the ordinary course -of travel. Every man is as good as another unless he happens to be an -official, and then he is a good deal better—in his own opinion, and much -worse in that of the wanderer from other lands. - -Of course one meets, as I did, just as charming people in Australia -as you do anywhere else, but these are the exceptions. The American, -as I found him, no matter what his rank in life, was a born gentleman, -kindly and courteous, yet prompt and practical, and just as nice a fellow -whether he was inviting you to a banquet or giving you a shave. - -Now, with all due deference to Miss Australia’s many physical and mental -charms and her rapidly increasing stature, I venture to suggest that -she would not be the worse for a few lessons in social deportment. At -present she appears to be rather in danger of becoming the tomboy of the -international nursery. The chief trouble with her seems to be that she is -so desperately anxious not to appear servile that she forgets to be civil. - -One cause of this singular lack of manners in the conduct of every-day -affairs may be found in the fact that the vast majority of parents—and -particularly those belonging to the so-called working-class—consider that -the end and aim of their children’s education should be the obtaining of -“a good government billet.” The natural result is the creation of a huge -army of officials who have never had any training in the social ways -of the world, who know little or nothing of business in the wider sense -of the term, and whose education compels them either to do everything -according to official routine or to leave it undone. - -The fact is that Australia is beginning to suffer from too much -government. It is the most over-governed commonwealth in the world. -As every old Colonial knows, it is the interest of a large majority -of the voters to have a governmental machine with as many wheels in -it as possible. There is a curious likeness here between the middle- -and lower-class Australian, if I may be pardoned for using such a -heretical word as class in such a connection, and the Frenchman of the -same social grade. To both the highest ideal of personal ambition is -well-paid employment under government with a pension to follow; whence -it comes that both these utterly dissimilar nations are cursed with an -ever-increasing generation of office-seekers whose only object in life is -to live as well as possible out of the taxes. - -The Australian Commonwealth is composed of young and lusty nations -which have bred a magnificent race of men and women; but they have also -developed a form of government which is far too broadly based upon -that specious absurdity, the equality of man. In fact, in Australia, -they have gone farther, for another tenet of their political creed is -the equality of women with each other and with men. One of the natural -results of this is that, although the best sort of Australian wife is -almost invariably the political ally of her husband, her housemaid and -her cook and washer-woman, who of course greatly outnumber her and are -much more receptive of the wild-cat theories of the demagogue, have votes -also, and use them—frequently with weird effect. Education, experience, -social standing, and personal character go for nothing. A vote is a vote, -no matter who gives it. In fact this fundamentally hopeless system is -worked out to such a deplorably logical extremity that those women who, -through misfortune or intent, have crossed the borders of what we call -here respectable society have the lodger-vote in Australia. This fact -is, I believe, unique in the records of democracy from the days of Cleon -until now. - -It is, of course, only in the ordinary development of human affairs that -such a system of election should not produce the best of all possible -rulers. - -Some time after my return to England I wanted to write an article for an -English daily newspaper on the subject of Australian Politics. The editor -declined to have anything to do with it. He thought I was, as they say, -talking through the back of my hat, until I asked him whether he thought -the Australian politician was anything like the men whom he associated -with Downing Street? He seemed to think that they were about on the same -level, I then asked him whether he could conceive Lord Salisbury, Lord -Rosebery, and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain playing poker with travellers and -strangers in a London club, and then having to be telegraphed to by the -said strangers for the money they had lost to them? He said he couldn’t. -I said it was a fact, and so it is. That is the difference between -Imperial and Colonial politics and politicians—from which it will be -seen that there is no comparison to be drawn between the more or less -efficient statesmen whom we manage somehow to get into power in this -country, and the person whom the male and female votes of the Australian -Commonwealth puts into office over there. - -Some one once said that any government is good enough for the people -who can stand it. That is true of all countries, and it is so in a -peculiar sense of the empire which all good Englishmen hope will some -day develop out of the newly-made Australian Commonwealth. But before -that happens Australia will have to evolve an aristocracy of some -sort. The old territorial magnates of twenty-five and thirty years ago -have been gradually squeezed out. Some of them, the fortunate ones who -located themselves on well-watered territories, and others who found -minerals under their sheep pastures are still the highest class of -Australian society. The rest have seen their estates eaten into by the -cockatoo selector and the person who went out with an assisted passage -to a free grant of land in the hope of being bought off or selling his -“improvements.” This process almost destroyed the best aristocracy -that Australia could have possessed, and the democratic vote finally -wrecked it, for your true democrat never sees further than the day after -to-morrow. - -In fact, his political horizon is usually bounded by the next sunset, -and the natural result has been that the balance of political power in -Australia has been transferred from those who have put brains, capital, -and enterprise into the country, to those who had nothing but votes to -invest—and votes to-day are very cheap in Australia. - -The logical outcome of such a condition of affairs is that what the -uneducated and irresponsible majority want they get. It is not a question -of general utility or national prosperity. If the government of a colony -does not do what the more ignorant mass of voters want, that government -has either to give in or get out. As a rule ministers give in that they -may stop in, because places are snug and salaries liberally proportioned -to the labours which earn them. - -The observant wanderer picks up proofs of this all the time that he is -travelling, and the most significant of these is found in the very thinly -veiled hostility of the various colonies towards each other. If you are -in Sydney you must not say too much in praise of Melbourne; just as, -when you are in New York it isn’t wise to say too much about Chicago; -or, if you happen to be the guest of a club in San Francisco, you had -better not descant too eloquently on the culture of Boston. Still, in -the United States there is a healthy and unrestrained rivalry between -these and many other cities. There is free trade from Maine to Mexico, -and from New Orleans to Talama. In fact, as an American Senator once -said in defence of the first tariff, America within its own borders is -the biggest free-trading country in the world. For instance, throughout -the length and breadth of the United States you can communicate with -other people by letter or telegram on the same rate. Now, when I got to -Albany, Western Australia, I found that I owed a small account of one and -sixpence to a firm in Sydney. The money order cost me two and ninepence. -Again, all over the civilised world, saving Australia, a Bank of England -note is worth either its face value or little more. It happened that when -I landed in Sydney I had £80 in £10 Bank of England notes. I went to two -or three banks to get them changed, and I found that I could only get -gold for them at a discount of two and sixpence on the £5, or £2 in all. -I then went to the Comptoire d’Escompt, in Pitt Street, and got my £80 -changed into English gold for five shillings. - -When I came to inquire into the matter further I found that the -Australian banks had entered into a sort of conspiracy to defraud the -unsuspecting traveller who ventures to bring the best paper currency in -the world into the Australian colonies. For instance, you pay a deposit -into the Sydney branch of an Australian bank, you take its notes for the -amount that you may need in travelling, say, from Sydney to Melbourne, -and when you present those notes at a branch _of the same bank_ you -are charged two and a half per cent. for cashing them. In other words, -the bank goes back on its own paper to the extent of five shillings -on the £10-note. This seems bad enough, but my friend the Accidental -American told me of something even worse. He was representing one of -the biggest manufacturing firms in the United States. Their credit was -as good as gold anywhere. He paid a deposit in Auckland into the Bank -of New Zealand, believing that his cheque would be good for its face -value throughout the colonies, but when he tried to draw cheques on the -branches of the Bank of New Zealand in Australia he was charged two and a -half per cent. discount! - -I once had a similar experience in the Transvaal, but that was only -what one might have expected under the then governmental conditions, I -was in a hostile country and I didn’t look for anything better, but to -run up against the same swindle in a British colony was somewhat of a -shock. After that, when I wanted any money on my letter of credit, I took -gold because I didn’t see the force of giving English paper at par for -colonial paper at two and a half per cent. discount. - -I also noticed that if you complain about this sort of thing in Sydney -they put the blame on Melbourne, and if you are travelling further, -Melbourne puts the blame on Adelaide, and so on, and from Adelaide they -will refer you back to Auckland, while Perth will tell you that it is the -only really honest city in all Australasia. - -There is, however, one subject upon which all the Australian colonies -appear to be absolutely agreed. This is the relative importance of work -and play. They mostly play at work and work at play, especially the -officials. Australia seems to me to have almost as many legal holidays -as you find feast-days in Spain, and an Australian would as soon go to -work on a holiday as a member of the Lord’s Day Observance Society would -go to a music-hall on a Sunday, unless, of course, he happened to be on -the Continent. Still there is a considerable difference between the -amount of work which you can get done in the several capitals of the -Commonwealth. - -I came home with a man who might be described as the Universal Provider -of Australia, and he told me that he could do more business in Melbourne -in a day than he could in a week in Sydney, or in a fortnight in Adelaide -or Perth. My American friend told me that he could do more business in -the States in an hour than he could do in a day anywhere in Australia. - -One reason for this, no doubt, is the climate. “That tired feeling” -is very prevalent, and it affects the native-born much more than the -home-born. In fact, British-born parents at fifty and sixty have more -energy than their sons and daughters have at thirty and forty. All the -conditions in Australia are against indoor work, and in favour of outdoor -play. Hence the new Commonwealth’s physical vigour is considerably in -excess of its mental energy. - -Another very serious feature in present-day Australian life is the craze -for gambling. Of course most of us would like to make money without -working for it if we could, but with the Australian this desire amounts -to a perfect passion. Almost every other tobacconist’s shop is the -branch office of a bookmaker, and you can go in and plank your money and -take your ticket without the slightest fear of legal consequences. As -for mining stocks, you scarcely hear anything else talked about unless -there happens to be a horse race, a cycle meeting, or a cricket match -on. This is, of course, only one of the failings of youth, and in some -respects Miss Australia is very young. Still, now that she is growing -up into a nation, she would do well to put something of a curb on her -youthful ardour for playing. Sport of some sort is an essential both of -individual and national manhood, but colonies don’t grow into nations on -race-courses and cricket-fields any more than men can become permanently -wealthy by laying and taking odds, or speculating in futures. - - - - -III - -_A COSMOPOLITAN COLONY_ - - -It must not be gathered from what I have said in the last two chapters -that it is all play and no work in Australia. There is a great deal too -much play, and far too keen an interest in winning money instead of -making real wealth; but still Australia boasts of splendid industries -which she is working to real and lasting profit. - -While I was in Adelaide I renewed my acquaintance with a lady and -gentleman with whom I had come into contact by a lucky chance during -a coaching trip through the Blue Mountains and New South Wales, while -I was waiting for the steamer from Sydney to Noumea. During that trip -which, by the way, is one of the most delightful that you can take in any -of the Five Continents, I made the interesting discovery that they not -only knew me much better than I knew them, but that they had even named -their house after their favourite character in one of my stories. It was -through their kindness that I had an opportunity of realising by personal -experience the wonderful development of what bids fair to be Australia’s -greatest and, in the best sense, most profitable industry. The commercial -fabric of Australia rests upon wool, wine, wheat, and gold, and not the -least of these is wine. - -One day I received an invitation to go and spend three days at -Seppeltsfield, which is the centre of one of the largest and most -flourishing wine districts in Australia. Here I became the guest of Mr. -Benno Seppelt, whose father was the pioneer of wine-growing in South -Australia. It was here, too, that I found the most brilliant triumph -in cosmopolitan colonisation that I had seen in the course of many -wanderings. - -We went partly by train and partly by a coach, which landed us after -dark on a desperately wet night at a little township about eight miles -from the vineyard. Here, owing to a telegraphic mistake, we found no -conveyance to take us on to Seppeltsfield, so we put up at just such -a bush hotel as I had been wont to sleep at twenty years before when -I happened to have the money for bed and breakfast. The principal -attraction of the hostelry was a bagatelle-table on which Shem, Ham, -and Japheth might have practised. The bagatelle-room was evidently -the favourite lounge of the youth of the township, and the Accidental -American and I passed a most enjoyable hour playing under the instruction -of these gentle youths who would have been considerably astonished if -they had seen some of my friend’s performances on a billiard-table. -Everybody’s business in Australia is also everybody else’s, wherein -Australia does not differ very much from other parts of the world, and -the interest that our audience took in us was almost as flattering as -their absolutely unrestrained remarks on our play were occasionally the -reverse. We began as novices, and gratefully accepted the very freely -given hints as to our shortcomings and the way to improve our game. No -game, played on that ancient gambling machine, ever improved so quickly, -and the talk among our instructors, when they realised that we had been -fooling them, gave me the impression that they really regarded us as a -couple of sharps who had come down from Adelaide with the intention of -cleaning the country-side out. - -The next morning the wagonette came over from Seppeltsfield and I -began to have my object-lesson in colonisation. The country here was -very different to what I had seen in the bush at other times and other -places. In fact the bush was bush no longer; all was rolling farmland, -cleanly cleared and well fenced, arable land alternating with orchards, -vegetable-gardens, and tree-belts disposed so as to give due protection -to the young crops and fruit-trees. Everything was trim, neat, and -prosperous-looking. The white houses, surrounded by their broad -verandahs, were very different to the selectors’ cabins which I had seen -up country on my last visit to Australia, and their surroundings were -rather those of an English country house hundreds of years old, than of a -country which forty years ago was uninhabited scrub. - -Then came the vineyards. There are between two and three thousand acres -of them round Seppeltsfield, and every acre seemed to me to be as well -kept as an English nursery garden. - -This is the history of them, and incidentally of the other wine-growing -districts in South Australia. - -As long ago as 1829, which, for Australia, is quite ancient history, a -Mr. Robert Gouger began the colonisation of South Australia. His idea was -to parcel out the land into small lots and offer government assistance -to people who were ready to tackle the task of subduing the wilderness. -He failed to get the amount of capital to carry his ideas into practice; -the government, as governments did in those days, gave him the cold -shoulder, and, for the time being, his projects fell to the ground. Five -years later the South Australian Association was formed. Mr. Gouger was -the principal organiser of it. Then followed more correspondence with -the government, and more of the usual trouble with the circumlocutary -departments, and finally the South Australian Bill was brought before the -British Parliament. One of the chief supporters of the Bill in the House -of Lords was the Victor of Waterloo, and the first ship which landed a -company of emigrants on the shores of South Australia was named the _Duke -of York_. As these lines are being written, the Duke of Cornwall and -York is travelling through the new-born Commonwealth of Australia, as -the representative of the Emperor-King to give the Royal and Imperial -sanction to the youngest, and by no means the least vigorous of the -daughter-nations of the Empire. Curiously enough, too, it happened that -in 1838 Mr. George Fife Angus, Chairman of the South Australian Company, -brought out a company of two hundred German emigrants in a ship named the -_Prince George_. - -After them came more Germans, then Frenchmen and Italians, Austrians, -Hungarians, Swedes and Norwegians, English, Scotch, and Irish; the scrub -began to disappear, and the wilderness to blossom, not exactly as the -rose, but as tobacco plantations. The tobacco was a rank failure in more -senses than one. It grew luxuriantly, but its flavour was such that it -was very much more fitted for poisoning the insects which settled on the -vines which succeeded it than for filling those functions which Calverley -has so exquisitely described. - -[Illustration: The Storage House at Seppeltsfield, forty years ago.] - -[Illustration: The Present Storage House through which nearly a million -gallons pass every year.] - -In ’51, when the tidings of the great gold discoveries in Victoria were -drawing fortune-seekers to Australian shores from the uttermost ends -of the earth, the father of my host at Seppeltsfield came into the -Collingrove district and planted a vineyard which was about an acre -in extent. Not even the luckiest of all the argonauts of the fifties -ever pegged out a claim that yielded as much solid and ever-increasing -profit as that little patch of land in the South Australian scrub. In -those days Adelaide was a pleasant little town of about fifteen thousand -inhabitants; the capital of a province containing sixty-six thousand -souls. Now it is a stately city with between forty and fifty thousand -inhabitants, the capital of a colony with a population of four hundred -thousand. - -Mr. Seppelt’s acre of vineyard has grown into more than two thousand, and -its produce has increased to eight hundred thousand gallons of matured -wine, to say nothing of vinegar and brandy. Every year two thousand tons -of grapes come in from the vinelands which lie for eight miles round -Seppeltsfield, to pass through the crushers and the winery into the great -vats of the cellars, and thence into the casks in which their juice is -shipped to lands which have never seen the Southern Cross. - -After I had been through the whole process of Australian wine-making from -the grape-crushers—Australian wine is not trodden out of the grape by -the same process that still obtains in France, Spain, and Portugal—to the -laboratory in which samples of every kind of wine are tested in order -to make sure that the process of sterilisation is perfect; and after I -had tasted ports and sherries, Madeiras, Hocks, Moselles, and certain -specialities native to the vineyard, I said to my host the evening before -we had to start away in the grey dawn to catch the train at Freeling: - -“I have learnt a good deal in the last week, but I want you to tell me -now how you managed to put your wines on to the European market and get a -sale for them against the competition of the French, German, and Spanish -wines which had had the vogue for centuries, their vineyards are all -within five hundred miles of London, for instance, and here you’re ten -thousand miles away. How did you manage it?” - -This chapter is not an advertisement of Australian wines in general or -of the products of Seppeltsfield in particular, and therefore I shall -not say everything that he told me, but the nett result came to this: -When the wine-growing industry of Australia began to get a bit too big -for Australia’s consumption, and when it was found that varieties of -European vines produced wines of delicately differentiated flavours, it -became a question where markets were to be found for the products of an -industry which was growing much more rapidly than the native consumption. - -When they found the solution of this problem the Australian wine-growers -did one of the best strokes of business that ever was done within the -confines of real business. By real business, I mean honest business. -Those who know a great deal more about the subject than I will see much -more meaning in those two words than perhaps I do. If Australian wine -was going to make its way in the markets of the world it had to be wine; -in other words, those who made it had to rely for their success and -for the interest on the capital and the brains that they had put into -the work upon a reversion to principles as old as the days of Solomon. -They had to make wine from grapes and nothing else. Their rivals in the -European markets had already learnt everything there was to be known -about fortifying and flavouring and chemical essences. They knew how, -for instance, German potato spirit could be turned into seven-year-old -brandy in a few weeks, and how sherry which had never been within a -hundred miles of a vineyard could be made such a perfect counterfeit of -the original fluid that a custom’s expert couldn’t tell the difference -between a cask worth sixty pounds and one worth six. They made many -failures, but in the end they not only got into the European markets, but -actually out-sold the home wine-growers who had had hundreds of years -start of them. - -The Australian grape goes into the crusher as grape it comes out as -grape-juice, and as grape-juice it crosses the seas and makes its -appearance in bottles and flagons on our tables. It has been fermented -and sterilised and that is all, and it is not too much to say that, -saving these two necessary processes, when you drink a glass of -Australian wine, red or white, still or sparkling, you are actually -drinking the juice of the grape and nothing else; wherefore it may be -fairly said that the development of the Australian wine industry from -very small beginnings, as, for instance, from that one acre first planted -with vines at Seppeltsfield into the two thousand odd acres of to-day -yielding two thousand tons of grapes and eight hundred thousand gallons -of wine a year, is just about as good a proof as one can get that -honesty is sometimes the best policy even in business. - -[Illustration: Grape-crushing by machinery at Seppeltsfield. The Grapes -from which Australian Wine is made are never touched by hand (or foot) -after the process of Wine-making has begun.] - -Happily there was no speculation about the wine industry in Australia. If -this were also true of her gold-mines and her wool-crops she would be a -good deal richer and more honestly wealthy than she is. - -I have seen French colonists in French colonies, Germans in German -colonies, and colonists of many nationalities under the alien flags of -the South American Republics, where, as a rule, they do a great deal -better than in their own colonies, if they have any, but never have I -seen such a perfect realisation of the ideal of cosmopolitan colonisation -as I saw during my stay at Seppeltsfield. - -Day after day we drove out along broad roads through the pleasant -vineyards and farmlands which lay under the ranges that shielded them -from the hot north winds, and every hour or so we pulled up in a village -which might have been picked up by superhuman hands out of Germany, or -France, or Holland, Ireland, Scotland, or England, and just put down -there in the midst of what forty years ago was the South Australian -Wilderness. - -My host was a German and the son of a German, and he has nine sons, all -good Australians, true sons of the soil, worthy citizens of the empire -who have found all that men seek to find within the wide confines of the -Pax Britannica. - -I have a certain reason for using that phrase. I had just come from a -French colony which, in the national sense, could only be described as -a house divided against itself. There was the conflict between bond and -free, between French and English, Australians, Germans, Jews, naturalised -foreigners, and those who were still wondering which side of the -international fence it would pay them best to sit on, but in the pleasant -country about Seppeltsfield I found all the elements of international -unity and none of discord. - -Within that eight-mile radius there was an epitome of Europe. In one -township you might have closed your eyes for a moment of forgetfulness, -opened them again and seen yourself in a German town not very far from -the banks of the Rhine. Having a little German at my disposal, I accepted -the illusion and found myself drinking good lager beer out of the same -old glasses that I had drunk it ten years before in the Fatherland, -and listening to just the same quaintly turned conversation that I had -listened to and joined in during a walking tour down the Valley of -the Weser and over the Hartz Mountains. The houses were built in the -same way, the same beer was drunk to the same toasts and with the same -old-world choruses, and I and the Accidental American played a game for -the championship of England and America on just such a kegel-bahn as you -could find behind any country hotel in Germany. I won because I didn’t -laugh quite as much as my opponent did. - -At the end of another drive I found myself in France listening to the -soft speech of the Côte d’Or and drinking the wine of the country which -might have been sent that day by telegraph. A few miles farther on we -were in Ireland. I am not prepared to say that the mountain dew was -actually distilled on Irish hillsides, but it was very like the original -brew, and the brogue was as rich and pure as any that you would hear -between Dublin and Dingle Bay. - -Men and women of many nationalities were there, founding their own -fortunes and helping to found those of an Empire of To-morrow, -but everywhere you heard the English speech, and recognised the -self-restraint and the quiet orderly manners of the Anglo-Saxon, for -though these colonists had come from many lands and had known many -different governments they had all come under the influence of that -magical power which the Anglo-Saxon alone seems to possess, the power of -making all men his fellow-citizens and friends if he can once get them -on his own land and under his own flag. In Europe these people would -have been enemies, actual or potential; in their own colonies they would -have been discontented and home-sick, longing only for the day of their -return with a trifling competence; here they were just neighbours working -out their destinies side by side on a soil that was common to all, and -under a rule which is perhaps the most perfect that the wit of man has -yet devised for the welding together of conflicting human interests. If I -could only have brought my good friend the Director of the Administration -of New Caledonia to Seppeltsfield, and taken him for a six days’ driving -tour through that cosmopolitan collection of townships, I think he would -have understood more completely than he did what I meant when I said to -him on the verandah of his house in Noumea the day before I sailed: - -“The Latin nations have colonies, but they have not yet learnt how to -colonise.” - -[Illustration: A Vineyard at Seppeltsfield, South Australia.] - -I left South Australia with a regret that was fully equalled by the -pleasure with which I had taken leave of Noumea, and that is saying -a good deal. From Port Adelaide we trundled round the coast in an -exaggerated edition of the old steam-roller that had brought us across -the Pacific. The only interesting event on the six days’ passage was a -scare which the Accidental American innocently raised by developing a -sore throat and a little swelling of the glands of the neck. Of course -the rumour that he had brought the plague from Sydney went like wildfire -through the ship, and I, as his nurse, was looked upon with undisguised -suspicion. When I brought him up for a stroll on deck just before we -reached Albany our fellow-passengers very kindly gave us half the deck -to ourselves. I had tried to explain that the period of incubation was -twelve days at the outside, and that hence, as we were nearly a month out -from Sydney, we could no more have brought the plague from Port Jackson -than we could have done from San Francisco; but it was no good, and -when the sanitary officers came on board at Freemantle with the news -that the dreaded visitor had got there before us, I think nine-tenths -of the passengers would have been well content to see us walked off to -quarantine. - -In the end the doctor passed us without a stain upon our sanitary -character, and our baggage was put into a lighter, tightly sealed up -and battened down, and then fumigated. One of our lady-passengers had a -pet canary in a cage and there was much discussion as to what should be -done with it. Its constitution would not stand fumigation, and yet the -law said that nothing was to go into the colony without either medical -examination or disinfection. I presume the Doctor must have compromised -either with his conscience or with the lady, for the last I saw of the -suspected bird was on the quay, where it was chirping a merry defiance -of sanitary regulations, on the top of a truck load of baggage which had -neither been inspected nor disinfected. - -Sanitary officials seem to have the same kind of ideas all over the -world. In Noumea they burnt down the house of the first white man who -died of the plague, but they allowed his furniture to be sold by auction -and spread over the town. At Freemantle they fumigated your steamer -trunk and your Gladstone-bag, but they allowed steerage passengers to -walk off with swags and bundles which might have held any number of -millions of microbes for all they knew. - -Western Australia is a very wonderful young country, and when it settles -down to real business and discovers that it is better to get gold than -to gamble in gold shares, it will do great things. It will also be the -better for the abolition of its ridiculous system of protection. Some -parts of it will one day be great fruit-growing districts and by way of -developing these the government impose a big duty on fruit from other -colonies, for instance, Tasmanian apples were selling in Perth and -Freemantle at a shilling a pound, although they can be brought across the -world and sold in London for fivepence. Meanwhile, the Westralian sells -his fruit at artificial prices, having no competition to worry about. -While the import duty enables him to put his prices up fifty per cent. -he is quite content to produce half what he could have done. In fact it -was this problem of protection which kept Western Australia aloof from -federation for such a long time. Some day, when intercolonial free trade -follows after federation, the Westralian will find his new conditions not -quite so pleasant, but a good deal more healthily stimulating. - -Westralia is popularly described in other colonies as the land of sin, -sand, sore eyes, sorrow, and Sir John Forrest. Sir John Forrest was one -of the men who discovered it. He is now its premier. He also discovered -the gold-fields; and he has the loudest voice I ever heard even on a -politician. What his connection with his other alliterative titles of -his adopted land have been I could not discover. They are most probably -creations of the luxuriant fancy of other politicians who would be very -glad to have made as much out of the country as he has done. - -Westralians are called by other colonials “sand-gropers,” and to this -they reply with fine irony by describing all other Australians as, -“T’other-Siders,” or “dwellers on the other side of Nowhere.” Young -nations are after all very like young children, they all possess the -finest countries on earth and it is only right that they should do so, -if they didn’t think so they would go somewhere else, and so new nations -would never get made. - -On the whole I am afraid I must say that the new Australia did not quite -come up to the expectations that I had based on my memories of the old; -but I don’t suppose that fact will trouble Australia any more than the -lack of appreciation of a once distinguished poet and dramatist troubled -the Atlantic Ocean. One thing is certain, no country which breeds such -men and women as you find from Brisbane to Freemantle can help being -great some day; and when Miss Australia settles down a little more -seriously to work she will begin to grow very great indeed. - -At Albany I found the long, white, graceful shape of the Messagerie -liner _Australien_ lying on the smooth waters of St. George’s Sound, -and in her I made as pleasant a homeward trip as the most fastidious of -globe-trotters could wish for. I have often been amused by the pathetic -appeals of untravelled Englishmen on behalf of British steamer lines. -Such an appeal usually ends with reflections on the patriotism of British -travellers who patronise foreign ships. The fact is that the boot is on -the other leg. Why are not the British companies patriotic enough to -make their boats as pleasant to travel in as French, and German, and -American boats are? Travellers whose journeys are counted by tens of -thousands of miles want to do their travelling as pleasantly as possible, -and the pleasantest ship to journey in, is the one that has the fewest -regulations. On the Messagerie boats you will find none that are not -absolutely essential to the proper discipline of the ship and the comfort -of your fellow-passengers. While you are on board you are treated as -a welcome guest, and not as an intruder whose presence is tolerated -because your passage money is necessary to make dividends. You are also -looked upon as a reasonable being, capable of taking care of yourself and -ordering your comings and goings within decent limits, not as a child -who mustn’t sit up playing cards after a certain hour, and who is not to -be trusted with the management of an electric light in the small hours -of the tropical night when you can’t sleep and want to read. In short, -the principal reason why experienced travellers prefer foreign lines to -British is simply the fact that they like to be treated as grown men -and women, and not as children or irresponsible lunatics. It is not a -question of patriotism at all, it is one of commercial consideration on -the one side and comfort and convenience on the other. - -The first thing we heard when we reached Marseilles was the welcome news -that the tide of war had turned, and Mafeking was relieved. - -Our company in the saloon was about half French and half English and -Australian, and a more friendly crowd it would have been difficult to -find afloat. We had had the usual concert the night before, and wound -up with the Marseillaise and God Save the Queen, and when we set up the -champagne for the last time in the smoking-room and drank to B.P. and his -merry men, the only man who declined to join in was, I regret to say, an -Irishman. He was as jolly a _compagnon de voyage_ and as good-hearted a -man as you would wish to meet in a ten-thousand-mile trip; but on that -particular subject he was a trifle eccentric. - -When I left the _Australien_ I looked upon Yellow Jack, as I hope, for -the last time, for it ever a man was heart-sick of the sight of a piece -of bunting I was of that miserable little yellow oblong. - -The next morning we took our places in the P.L.M. _Rapide_ and went -whirling away over the pleasant lands of Southern France, through Lyons, -Dijon, and Maçon, to Paris and thence to Calais in trains that were well -worthy to run over the same metals as the “South Western Limited,” and -the “Overland.” - -Then came the usual bucketing across the Channel, and after that a crawl -of seventy-six miles in two hours and thirty-five minutes in a dirty, -rickety, first-class compartment on one of the alleged expresses of the -Amalgamated Crawlers. The splendid corridor train of the Nord had covered -the hundred and eighty-five miles between Paris and Calais inside four -hours; but that was in France. Still the “boat-express” did at last -manage to struggle into Charing Cross, and I found myself standing in the -familiar Strand once more. The thirty-thousand-mile trip was finished, -and Prisonland with all its new experiences and varied memories was -itself now only a memory. - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] Since my return, I find that there has been a recrudescence of this -fiscal foolishness in New York with an addition of personal persecution. -By the time these pages are in my readers’ hands the autocrats of the -inquisition will probably have heard something drop. To bully the -American Woman is too large an order even for the Great Republic. - -[2] With true French economy the price of the chain is charged against -the convict’s “Succession”—_i.e._ any deferred savings that he may leave -behind him. - -[3] _Les Sœurs de St. Joseph de Cluny._ - - -THE END. - - -_Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._ - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's In an Unknown Prison Land, by George Griffith - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN AN UNKNOWN PRISON LAND *** - -***** This file should be named 60960-0.txt or 60960-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/9/6/60960/ - -Produced by deaurider and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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