BOOKS.
CANNIBALS AND CONVICTS IN MELANESIA.* Tins is emphatically a smartly written book. The author makes no attempt at any kind of "word-painting," and is- content to describe Melanesian scenery as made up of "coral reefs, surf, white sand at low water, at high tides dense vegeta- tion meeting the water, cocoa-nut palms, mountain background, low grass-huts, and niggers more or less naked, nasty, and dirty." But if his pages lack the glow of The Ear/ and the Doctor, they present a vigorous and lifelike picture, if some- times hard in touch and crude in colour, of the strange medley of men who dwell together, though curiously isolated by race, nationality, language, religion, and interests, within the wide• limits of Black Polynesia,—cannibal "niggers," dgportes, con- victs, officials, traders, labour-craft skippers, and missionaries. For the portraiture of this kaleidoscopic humanity, Mr. Thomas possessed peculiar, in their combination probably unique, quali- fications. He had been the life-long friend of Louise Michel, "wronged and wrong-headed," the literary executor of Felix Eas- ton', and the trusted agent of exiled Communists. He had stumped America on behalf of senators and governors, and pleaded in Britain and elsewhere the cause of labourers and needlewomen, of actors and authors. And he had spent many of the best years of his life in wandering up and down the Pacific, first as a globe-trotter, afterwards as a journalist, being the only member of the craft who had ever visited New Caledonia, the famous Isle of Pines, and the little-known New Hebrides. So- varied an experience has enabled him to turn to the best account the special opportunities his Melanesian cruise afforded him ; the result is one of the most remarkable and instructive books in its way we have met with since the appearance of that singularly fascinating work, Old New Zealand.
It was in 1878 that the Melbourne Argus despatched Mr. Thomas as their correspondent to New Caledonia. From the- beginning of their occupation, in 1853-54, the French had shown their usual disregard of native rights, and appropriated the lands of the Canapes without making the slightest provision, by way of reserves or otherwise, for the evicted possessors. When the fertile valley of Fokalo was confiscated, the chief Atai ven- tured to remonstrate. "You can go to the hills," said the
* Cannibals and Convicts. A Description from Personal Observation of Life in New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. By Julian Thomas ("The Vega— bend"). London ; Cassell and Co.
Governor ; "there is land enough for you there." Then Atai, relates Mr. Thomas, "with rude imagery took up a handful of stones, and dropping them on the ground, cried, 'You have left us nothing but these!'" Of such a policy as this, at once senseless and cruel, yet which did not call forth a word of con- demnation from any party or section in France, the natural outcome was "rebellion." Two hundred white men were massacred in a single week. A war of extermination followed, barbarously carried out to the bitter end by Commandant Riviere, a man of fashion and fortune, popular with his com- rades, who allowed him to pay their debts of honour, and a favourite with the soldiers, to whom in a different manner he was equally liberal. His terrible death in Tonquin will long be remembered ; his doings in New Caledonia are less known. Of one act of cruelty, the author, who was an eye-witness, gives a vivid account. It was the execution of five natives, including a boy of thirteen, condemned to passer par les armee as mated its and miserables for not having warned the authorities of an -outbreak that there was every reason to believe was the work of private vengeance. The campaign was of a very desultory nature, and the only feat of arms it gave occasion to was the bold march of Commandant Servan, with the friendly chief Nondo, across the Chains Centrale, which resulted in the con- finement of the rising within limits that allowed of its speedy suppression.
Of the convicts, a rather meagre account is given. The tleportes who were Communists were confined on the Duclos Peninsula, just south of Nonm6a and the Isle of Pines, lying a little to the south of the island. Their condition was by no means one of hardship, or even of discomfort. They were allowed -to trade, and some of them made considerable fortunes. The recidivistes, or criminal convicts, were more harshly treated, though these, by docility, could become liberes, answering -to our ticket-of-leave men, when they were entitled to a plot of ground, and lived as free colonists, subject to .certain restraints. None of the horrors of Port Arthur or Norfolk Island appear to have repeated themselves in New 'Caledonia ; but Mr. Thomas could learn but little of the treat- ment of the non-liberes. The discipline was severe ; and he saw a youth who had been condemned to death for an attempt to -escape, and was actually guillotined the day after the visit. 'These forpats could be assigned as servants, and a gruesome story is related of one who had been allotted to the author. Alarmed one day by a loud scream, he rushed out of his hut, and found the man shrieking with terror before a soldier, who was shaking the gory head of a Cana,que in his face, shouting, ." Eat it, eat it !" Riviere, on hearing of the incident, exclaimed, " Ah, le bonhomme Pierre ; un vrai farceur celnia." The 'convict, a Breton peasant, had slain his wife's lover, cut out his heart and cooked it, and, with true French ferocity, caused the 'unhappy woman to partake of the horrid meal ; after which he murdered her also. He was found guilty, with " extenuatious " that saved him from the guillotine, and was probably not sorry to find himself deported as far as possible from the scene of his crime. -On a second visit to Noum6a, in 1883, the Argus correspondent -found a great change for the worse. The cleportes had returned -to France ; but the number of criminal convicts had increased to twenty thousand. There was, or was represented to be, no rroom for them on the island, and the annexation of the New Hebrides was in contemplation. It is possible that the French -Government, which is not usually kept well informed by its representatives in distant regions, was induced to take up the -idea by the pressure of interested parties. A Company—the New Hebrides Company—had been formed for the exploitation of the islands. Mr. John Higgin son, an Englishman who had made a large fortune in the Colonies, principally through trading with New Caledonia, was its founder, and having taken out letters of naturalisation, had become more French than the French themselves. He was associated with the Rothschilds of Paris, and was compared by Riviere to the banker Mires. His agent at Noum6a—a Mr. Morgan—was regarded with more awe than the Governor, and the Company's vessels, a snally commanded by Englishmen, appear to have almost monopolised the labour-traffic in Melanesian waters. For their purposes, of coarse, the expansion of the convict-trans- portation system was a most desirable object. In addition, they bad bought land up and down the islands which, on annexation, they expected to sell to the French Government at a high profit. Hence the Company, their agents and captains, were altogether in favour of a French annexation of the islands, a sentiment participated in by nearly all concerned in the labour-traffic, which France rather protects than regulates, while the reverse is the case with England. We cannot see that, apart from the convict question, the annexation of the New Hebrides could do much harm to the Australian Colonies. Such an accession of territory would add nothing to whatever power France may possess in those waters through her possession of New Caledonia. But the continuance, and still more the ex- tension, of the transportation system must be resisted at all hazards. Mr. Thomas's book makes this, at all events abundantly clear. We have not space to reproduce his arguments, and can only cite one of his experiences by way of illustration. With a contempt truly cynical of the rights of other people, France has taken to sending out criminal women to become the mates of the habitual criminals with whom she wishes to flood a portion of Melanesia, distant only three or four days' sail from Australian shores. Mr. Thomas, on boarding one of the convict transports, found among its passengers sixty women,—criminals who had been deported for this purpose, most of them murderesses. "What sort of race," he exclaims with just indignation, "is Australia likely to see at her doors bred from such parents 14" The labour-traffic is not an easy question to understand. The Queensland planters, like other folk, want to make money, and they cannot make money without labour to cultivate their cane and cotton lands. They dislike the Chinese, because their organisation enables them to maintain a sort of inde- pendence; coolies are expensive, and by no means hard workers ; and without Melanesians, the Queenslanders must be content with a slow development of their resources. On the other hand, the distinction between this kind of labour and slavery is, to say the least, a fine one. "You cannot exactly prove this or that thing wrong," said a Scotch missionary at A.neytium to Mr. Thomas ; "but the morality of the whole system is bad." Mr. Thomas, who espouses with ardour the planters' side, and loses no opportunity of sneering, after a rather vulgar fashion, we must confess, at the missionaries, who have given the Pacific islanders whatever civilisation they possess, nevertheless states the facts with candour ; and the facts, on the whole, are against him. The very name, "niggers," given to the Melanesians is ominous ; dealings in them are known as "sales," and a cargo of frizzly-pated hands is designated as "stock." In their islands, great efforts are made by the missionaries to civilise them ; but "as a broad rule," admits Mr. Thomas, "the Kanaka, during his three years' service on either of the labour-fields, only knows the name of God as a curse." Very curious types of white humanity are developed by the labour-traffic, some of which will be found vividly described—a little too favourably, perhaps—in these pages. Aneytium is the best-known island of the New Hebrides group, owing to its being the head-quarters of the Presbyterian mission ; but it is in the island of Tanna that the Melanesian is seen at his
best, or rather at his worst, if the Tannese are, as they appeared to their visitor, "irreclaimable blackguards." It is a curious instance of his candour that almost immediately after pronouncing this harsh judgment, he should characterise the "Tanna boys" as the best labourers, "hard-working and intelligent ;" and still more so that be should have taken the
trouble to persuade their chiefs to sign a petition, which he prints in an appendix, for annexation of their island by the British Crown. On all the New Hebridean islands the natives hold the nian,-a-wee-wee, as they term the French, from their
frequent use of the expression, " Oui, oni !" in the utmost detestation, doe to the severity with which outrages upon citizens of the Republic are invariably and speedily visited.
The natives of the various islands may be distinguished by their modes of dressing the hair, and those of Pentecost by their slit nostrils. The practice of cannibalism is far from extinct; most of the islands are still mainly pagan, and pre- serve their old customs, some of the more curious of which are described by Mr. Thomas. Perhaps the missionaries would do well to follow the example of the Marist fathers, and rather concern themselves with teaching their own language to the natives than with the study of the numerous meagre dialects which isolate island from island and tribe from tribe.
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