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.
The Avenue of Palms, leading to the Hospital, Ile Nou.