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[161] 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[162] 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 c?tes, which for dirt, discomfort, slowness, and total disregard of the convenience of passengers i can only compare to the amalgamated crawlers presently known as the south-eastern and chatham railways. like them, it is, of course, a monopoly, wherefore if you don’t like to go by the boats you can either swim or walk.
the 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[163] 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[164] 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 c?tes. 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.
[165]
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.”
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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[167] 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.
[168]
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.
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.[169] 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,[170] 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[171] 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[172] 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.
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“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[174] 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.
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“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.”
