New-Caledonians.—The inhabitants of New Caledonia belong to the branch of Oceanian Negroes. This island, hidden in the Equinoctial Ocean, is a French possession, and has been marked out for the reception of those Communist insurgents and incendiaries arrested in Paris in June 1871, after the “seven days’ battle” who were sentenced to transportation by the courts-martial. We are indebted to MM. Victor de Rochas and J. Garnier for some valuable details concerning the population of the colony.
The aborigines of New Caledonia have a sooty-black skin; woolly, crisp hair and abundant beard, both black; a broad, flat nose deeply sunk between the orbits; the white of the eye bloodshot; large, turned-out lips; prominent jaws; a wide mouth; very even and perfectly white teeth; slightly projecting cheekbones; a high, narrow, and convex forehead; and the head flattened between the temples. Their average stature is at least as tall as that of the French, their limbs are well-proportioned, and their development of both chest and muscles is generally considerable.
238.—A FIJIAN DANCE.
The men are not very ugly, many even showing a certain regularity of feature; and some tribes on the east coast are better favoured than the rest in this respect. [Figs. 239] and [240] convey a fair idea of the male population.
The ugliness of the women is proverbial. With their shaven heads and the lobes of their ears horribly perforated or pinked, they present a revolting appearance, even when young in years. The rude toil and bad treatment to which they are subjected bring upon them premature old age. They suckle their children for a long period, for three years on the average, and sometimes for five or six.
Like all savages, the New-Caledonians possess an exquisitely keen sense of sight and hearing. They are active and capable of exerting considerable strength for a short effort, but have no lasting power. Their inability to support fatigue for any length of time doubtless arises from the nature of their nourishment. They swallow really nothing beyond sugary and feculent vegetable food, seldom eating meat, the true source of the sustainment and recuperation of strength. Their island supplies the New-Caledonians with no quadrupeds which they can capture for sustenance, and they possess no weapons suitable for killing birds.
The quantity of eatables these people can gorge at a single meal is wonderful, quite three times as much as an European would be equal to.
M. Garnier visited the village of Hienghène. Its chief came to meet the travellers and presented to them his eldest son, while numbers of naked warriors, with blackened chests, beards, and faces, stood round in a silent and motionless group. They might have been taken for bronze statues were it not for their dark and sparkling eyes which followed the smallest gesture of the visitors.