The melancholy miscarriage of deportation to French Guiana did not suffice to condemn it. The locality was only at fault, it was thought; the system deserved a fuller and fairer trial. France now possessed a better site for experiment, a territory in those same southern seas where English transportation had so greatly prospered. New Caledonia was annexed to France in 1853, but its colonisation had proceeded slowly, and there was only a handful of white population when the first shipload of convicts disembarked in 1864. A town, at this time little better than a standing camp, was planted at Noumea, a spot chosen for its capabilities for defence rather than its physical advantages. It had no natural water supply, and the land around was barren. Exactly opposite lay the little island of Nou, a natural breakwater to the Bay of Noumea, well-watered, fertile, and commanded by the guns of the mainland, and here the first convict depot was established. The earliest work of these convict pioneers was to build a prison-house and to prepare for the reception of new drafts. The labour was not severe, the discipline by no means irksome, and some progress was made. Prison buildings rose upon the island of Nou; a portion of the surrounding land was brought under cultivation, and outwardly all went well. As years passed, the prison population gradually increased. In 1867 the average total was six hundred; in the following year it had increased to 1,554, after which the yearly gain was continuous. Various causes contributed to this, among them the gradual abolition of the bagnes or convict stations at the French arsenals, and the wholesale condemnation of Communists, many of whom were deported to New Caledonia. In 1874 the convict population exceeded five thousand. In 1880 it had risen to eight thousand; and according to recent published official returns, the effective population, taking convicts and emancipists together, numbered nearly ten thousand. From May, 1864, to December 31, 1883, a total of 15,209 convicts had been transported to New Caledonia.
The development of the young colony was slow. Efforts were chiefly concentrated upon the penitentiary island, and the convict labour was but little utilised on the mainland. Those public works so indispensable to the growth and prosperity of the settlement were neglected. The construction of highroads was never attempted on any comprehensive scale, and, notwithstanding the force of workmen available, Noumea, the capital, was not enriched with useful buildings or rendered independent of its physical defects. Henri Rochefort, who saw it in 1872, ridicules its pretensions to be called a town. It might have been built of old biscuit-boxes, he said; imposing streets named from some book of battles—the Rue Magenta and the Rue Sebastopol, the Rue Inkerman and the Avenue de l'Alma—were mere tracks sparsely dotted with huts, single-storied and unpretending. The town lay at the bottom of a basin surrounded by small hills. "It was like a cistern in wet weather, and in the hot season it might be the crater of a volcano." A great mound, the Butte Conneau, blocked up the mouth of the port and inconveniently impeded traffic. Water was still scarce, and, according to Rochefort, a barrel of it would be the most acceptable present to any inhabitant of "Elephantiasopolis," as he christened Noumea from the endemic skin affections. It took ten or a dozen years to improve Noumea. But by 1877 the Butte Conneau had been removed and levelled. About the same time an aqueduct 8000 metres long was completed, which brought water to the capital from Port de France and Yahoué. A number of more or less ambitious residences had also been erected: a governor's house, bishop's palace, administrative offices, hospitals, and barracks for the troops.
A later account of Noumea is given by M. Verschuur, who visited the Antipodes in 1888-9, and spent some time in New Caledonia. On arrival he was at first much struck by the appearance of Noumea. He was agreeably impressed by the brightness and gaiety of its aspect as compared with "the monotonous appearance of the little English towns" of Australia. Cafés and taverns were numerous; crowds of lively folk filled the streets through which he drove; and the well-built Government House, surrounded by pretty grounds, looked homelike. A closer inspection much modified his opinion. He remembered the large cities of the neighbouring island continent with their imposing architecture, their fine public gardens, and the prosperous home-like atmosphere pervading every part. "But now I found myself in a small town somewhat resembling those of the Antilles; the houses, which were all alike, were low and roughly built, often of wood. Some of them were no better than the huts of the backwoodsmen I had seen in the Australian bush. The shops were small, and the wares displayed were inferior in quality and of a mixed description. Toys hung side by side with saucepans and boots; calicoes and hats were framed by jams and spirit-bottles. The streets were badly kept and filthy; the roads outside the town had not been properly levelled and the numerous bogs made travelling after dark very dangerous. The only promenade was a public square planted with cocoanut palms, which gave little shade. The harbour was meagre, the quays small and inconvenient; but few ships can load or unload at the same time. If there is one colony more than another where public building might be carried on at the least expense, it is certainly New Caledonia, with its hosts of convicts sentenced to 'hard labour.' In many of the places I had visited, the numerous fine public works had been executed at great cost; but here was a colony where labour would cost nothing and yet it is never utilised. It is a strange anomaly, and a singular waste of means, which might well be used for the advantage and progress of the colony."
According to M. Verschuur, the amount of work gotten out of the convicts was not very great. In his opinion France is maintaining in New Caledonia an "army of drones who find means of evading the labour to which they have been condemned. Many an honest, hard-working French peasant might envy the fate which the government reserves for that part of the population which is steeped in vice and crime. The law passed in 1854 prescribes that the convicts shall be kept to the most laborious works of the colony." As soon as he landed, M. Verschuur heard an excellent band playing in the public square. The bandsmen were all convicts, who played three times a week and practised the rest of the time. Men whose crimes had been the talk of all Paris were employed as gardeners, or in the easiest kind of work, smoking and chatting with their companions. The convicts work, nominally, eight hours a day; they sleep another eight; and then there still remains another eight in which they are absolutely idle. They do less than a quarter of the daily work of an ordinary labourer. In the stone yard they simply work when they see the warder is observing them. "I noticed a gang one day just outside Noumea; out of the sixteen men, twelve were calmly seated on the heap of stones they were supposed to be breaking, rolling cigarettes, and talking; the remaining four made a stroke now and then, when the warder chanced to glance that way. Several times, when travelling in the interior of the country, I have come upon well-known murderers, living in service with the unsuspecting inhabitants." A certain number were regularly employed within the prison of Nou, where M. Verschuur saw them engaged as shoemakers, carpenters, and at the blacksmith's forge. All were busily at work, yet he was certain that before he entered with the prison director, not a soul was doing anything. Great laxity, however, prevailed in these shops. A convict carpenter was permitted to have access to the stores of turpentine and spirits in the workshop, with which abominable mixture he managed to get horribly drunk. Extraordinary license was allowed in another direction. A convict quarrelled with and murdered a comrade; they had been partners in a store kept inside the prison for the sale of coffee, tobacco and spirits. The deeds of partnership had been legally drawn up, and were actually engrossed upon the official paper of the prison. It may be mentioned that this murderer had been twice guilty of murder before and was yet allowed to keep a knife in his possession, which he was seen to sharpen quite unrestrained on the very morning of the last crime.
The influx of convicts produced many projects for their employment over and above the development of Noumea. Following the practice that had prevailed in Guiana, agricultural settlements, half farm, half prison, were established at various points on the mainland. One of the first of these was at Bourail, about a hundred miles from the capital. Another was founded nearer home at Ourail, on the mouth of the Foa. A third was at Canala, on the opposite and northern shore of the island. A fourth was at its eastern end, in the Bay of Prony. Besides these a number of smaller stations were distributed at various points through the colony. The works undertaken were everywhere much of the same kind. At Bourail the sugar cane was cultivated, and various vegetables; at Canala, rice, maize and coffee; at Ourail the land was poor, and the settlement was moved further up the river to Fonway, where the raising of tobacco, and the cultivation of fruit trees and the quinine bush were attempted; at the Bay of Prony the convicts became woodcutters to supply fuel for the rest of the colony.
The inner life of one of the smaller stations, the labour camp of Saint Louis, has been graphically described by M. Mayer, a political transport, who published the "Souvenirs d'un Deporté," relating his personal experiences, on his return to France. This camp consisted of 124 convicts, a heterogeneous collection, herded together indiscriminately in the wretched cases, or straw-thatched huts, the prevailing prison architecture of New Caledonia. Among these, of whom forty were political and non-criminal convicts, there were twenty-six Arabs, four Chinamen and two negroes. Several notorious desperadoes, Frenchmen born, were associated with the rest. One had been at the head of a band of poisoners of Marseilles; another, who had murdered a girl in Paris, had been arrested and sentenced during the Commune by a Communist commissary, who, by a strange fate, was now his comrade convict in this same camp of Saint Louis. Except for the scantiness of diet and the enforced association with the worst criminals, M. Mayer did not find the work hard. The hours of labour varied; the daily minimum was eight, the maximum from ten to twelve. But the work performed was desultory and generally unproductive. The principal aim was to clear the land by removing the rocks, which were afterward broken up for road-making material. The supervision was lax and ineffective; the few warders were most active in misappropriating rations. The chief warder himself, who had a fine garden and poultry yard, stole the wine and soft bread issued for the sick. Many convicts eked out their meagre fare by cooking roots and wild fruits, pommes de lianes and Caledonian saffron.
The lot of the Arabs was most enviable; they monopolised all situations of trust. One was the quartermaster, another the chief cook, and others worked as carpenters, bootmakers, and blacksmiths. The baleful practice of putting one convict in authority over another, long condemned by enlightened prison legislators, was always in full force in New Caledonia. Strange to say, too, the French authorities preferred to choose their felon overseers from an alien race. The Arabs seem to have found most favour with their masters, although, if Mayer is to be believed, these Arab officials were all fierce, untamed ruffians. Yet they were entrusted with great authority over their less fortunate comrades, and were especially esteemed for the vigour with which they administered corporal punishment. Mayer has preserved the picture of one Algerian savage, six feet high, who went about seeking quarrels and striking his fellow convicts on the smallest excuse. This man was considered an artist with the martinet, or French cat-o'-nine-tails, and was said to be able to draw blood at the first stroke.
It is an admitted axiom in penal science that enforced labour is not easily made productive. Unless peculiar incentives to work, such as provided by the English mark system, are employed under a strict yet enlightened discipline, the results have always been meagre and disappointing. As these conditions were absent from New Caledonia, the consequences are what might have been foreseen. Notwithstanding the very considerable efforts made and the vast quantity of convict labour always available, the colony still owns no great public works; while large and sustained efforts to develop its agricultural resources by the same means have also failed. No doubt the nature of the soil has been unfavourable.
New Caledonia, while not without its natural advantages, such as a nearly perfect climate, freedom from reptiles and animal life inimical to man, is not very richly endowed except in unprospected and undeveloped mineral wealth. The island consists of a rugged backbone of mountains clothed with dense forests and grooved with rushing torrents, along whose banks lie the only cultivable ground. A thin and sandy soil covers a substratum of hard rock, which makes but scanty return for the labour bestowed and serves best for pasturage. Hence the convict farms already referred to have never been profitably worked. Those especially of Bourail and Koe, the largest and most ambitious, show a positive loss. At the former only three and a half tons of sugar were turned out in one year by four hundred men, and ten years of toil had brought only fifty hectares of land into cultivation. At Koe, five years' receipts were valued at 50,000 francs, and the expenses for the same period just trebled that sum. In 1883 the minister of marine approved the suppression of the penitentiary farms on the island of Nou and at Canala, and the limitation of the sugar cane cultivation at Bourail, on the ground that the returns were altogether inadequate to the outlay.
It was only too evident, as the outcome of early years, that efforts had been misdirected, and that the labour had been wasted and frittered away instead of being more usefully employed for the benefit of the whole colony. One signal instance of the shortcomings of the colonial administrators is shown by their neglect to develop the means of internal communication. It was not until 1883, that is to say, after nearly twenty years of colonial life, that road-making, that indispensable preliminary to development, was undertaken on any extensive scale. New Caledonia, an island 230 miles long and 50 miles broad, owned only 57 kilometres of road before the year 1882. It was Captain Pallu de la Barriere, a governor whose administration was severely criticised on account of his excessive humanitarianism, but whose views as regards the utilisation of convict labour were far-seeing, who removed this reproach. His idea was to substitute what he called movable camps for the bagnes sedentaires or permanent penitentiaries. He thought that the severest toil should be the lot of all convicts, at least at first; and this, he conceived, could be best compassed by employing them in road-making, thus benefiting the colony while effectively punishing the convict. His whole scheme of organisation reads like a page from the despatches of British colonial governors some thirty years previous. The measures he proposed, his plans for housing the convicts and providing for their safe custody, were almost identical with those in force with the road-gangs of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. He was very hopeful; he had no fear of escapes or of aggravated misconduct scattered over the wide area which he now proposed to people with convict gangs. His intentions were no doubt excellent, but in the twenty years following the initiation of his scheme they have borne no very substantial fruit.