Nouméa

“ Thibaud’s Café I must tell you first, is situated on Coconut Square, Noumea. Noumea has a bad name, but it is not at all a bad place if you are not a convict, neither is New Caledonia, take it altogether, and that evening, sitting and smoking and listening to the band, and watching the crowd and the dusk taking the flame trees, it seemed to me for a moment that Tragedy had withdrawn, that there was no such place as the Isle Nou out there in the harbour, and that the musicians making the echoes ring to the “Sambre et Meuse” were primarily musicians, not convicts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The young Parisian, standing there before me with staring eyes, was a convict, a fugitive from Ill Nou, the penal settlement of Noumea. He was hiding there in the mountains, secure from the lashes of the remorseless surveillants, hiding, guarded by the tender protection of that beautiful goddess, who was none other than Pokara’s granddaughter! It appeared that Pokara’s son, who had been dead then for years, had married a handsome Spanish woman whom he had saved from a wrecked schooner that had gone ashore at Papeete many years ago. ”

“ New Caledonia in the Australian Pacific was annexed to France in 1853. Ten years later it became a new settlement for convict emigrants. A first shipload was disembarked in 1864 at Noumea, and the foundations of the city laid. Prison buildings were the first erected and were planted upon the island of Nou, a small breakwater to the Bay of Noumea. Outwardly all went well under the fostering care of the authorities. The population steadily increased; an average total of 600 in 1867 rose in the following year to 1554. In 1874 the convict population exceeded 5000 ”

“ Population.—At the census of 1901 the population of New Caledonia numbered 51,415, consisting of 12,253 free Europeans (colonists, soldiers, officials) , 29,106 natives, 10,056 convicts. In 1898, however, the introduction of convicts into the island ceased. The centres of population are Nouméa (Numea) , the capital, on a fine harbour of the west coast near the southern extremity of the island, with 7000 inhabitants ”

“ She rose from her berth, trailing exquisite silk and lace (for the woman must always frame her beauty worthily, even for her own eyes alone) , poured out half a glass of absinthe, dropped in her allowance of the drug, added water, till the mixture looked like liquid opal, and sipped the beverage with a kind of dainty greed.
In a few minutes she had ceased to care whether the Bella Cuba lay in the harbour of Noumea or off Sydney Heads. ”

“ Yet what if Virginia should have formed the extraordinary resolve of going to Noumea? What was it to him—Loria—since she could accomplish nothing there? Suppose, even, that among other miserable convicts she saw Maxime—pallid, thin, sullen and hopeless, his good looks and his brilliant audacity crushed and gone—would not the romantic feeling she had conceived for him be instantly turned into horror and disgust? When such a chill had withered a girl's fancy for a man, there could be no future blossoming, and her heart might be caught in [Pg 144] the rebound. ”

“ Leaving out Borneo and the Philippines, one may start at the New Guinea end and mention first the Aru Islands, which lie south of it, and between Dutch New Guinea and Australia. They are Papuan isles. There is one large island and several small isles round it. They lie 150 miles from the New Guinea coast, and probably once formed part of it, as the seas between are shallow. On one of them, the small island of Wamma, is situated Dobbo, a famous native trading station, on a spit of sand just wide enough for some rows of houses, which are large thatched sheds. ”

“ Here lay the true geological formation of the interior of Dutch New Guinea, with Red Mountain as a last outpost. Behind him lay the tremendous fault of the Great Precipice, with its chain of volcanoes resulting from that mighty crack in the earth’s surface. But before him lay all the mineral wealth of New Guinea—coal measures, iron ore, what not—that would make this vast island, the largest in the world—almost a continent—a land of the utmost value to the white race!
Coming back to earth from these explorer’s [196] dreams, Nicky got out his compass and took the mountain bearing. ”

“ My arrival at the island caused no little commotion among the young bloods, each of whose chances of gaining the girl of his heart, and being united to her by the local Samoan missionary teacher, depended in a great measure upon his ability to provide sustenance for her from the sea; for Nanomaga, like the rest of the Ellice Group, is but little more than a richly-verdured sandbank, based upon a foundation of coral, and yielding nothing to its people but coconuts and a coarse species of taro, called puraka. ”

“ The Ceramers are subjects, and likewise allies, of the Dutch Company, and for the most part expert sailors; and by them, and none else, is the coast of New Guinea visited. The inhabitants of New Guinea have for many years suffered from the treachery and murders of this people, who, not by force of arms but by cunning, have subdued the Papoos. Under the cloak of friendship they take their women (in which they are not very choice) for wives, and the children thus born, being very carefully instructed in the Mahomedan faith, are easily able to control these simple inhabitants of the woods. ”

“ At the most some half-dozen tribes under spur of most hazardous peril, urged to superhuman effort by imminent torture and death, ever unite even for war. On the rare occasions when this may be done the exceptional individual would be but the greatest among equals, not a recognised commander-in-chief. [58] I only know of one instance in point. Nonugamue, a Nonuya, was paramount chief of the entire Nonuya-speaking area, a large tract of country that lies between the Boro and the Okaina, and south of the Muenane and Resigero tribes. ”

“ I showered questions on Nambu. Generally speaking, the passage of any of white person through the interior of New Guinea leaves a wake as big as that traced by a white elephant in an English village. It seemed unthinkable, first, that any white woman should have penetrated to those formidable fastnesses ”

“ They cook the food, which they carry to the communal house; they also do all the work required in cultivating the gardens of yams, bananas, and vegetables. War, hunting, and fishing are the only pursuits of the men.
Three nations, Holland, Great Britain, and Germany, have divided New Guinea among them. The Dutch have the eastern half of the island. The British and Germans possess each about one-quarter, British New Guinea being situated opposite to Queensland, Australia. The British own the Solomon Islands to the eastward of New Guinea, also. ”

“ Dwight thrilled to realize that he was looking upon the original aborigines of New Guinea. Like the Negritos of the Philippines, and our own cave men forbears, they were short, strong little men, with well-developed muscles and stout legs, and they were in a high state of hunting-tribe civilization, as shown by the decency of the gourd, the absence of barbaric ornament, and the efficient hunter’s equipment that each man carried. ”

“ It is a pretty sight and one to make one ponder on the possible harmony of nations—“Harmonie” is commonly a name for the clubs in the Netherlands Indies—to see small Dutch children dancing with little half-castes and, as I have more than once seen, with little Celestials and Japanese.
We left Amboina on New Year’s Day in a deluge of rain, and all that day we were in sight of the forest-covered heights of Ceram to the North. On January 2nd we passed Banda at dawn, and at sunset we got a view of the most South-west point of New Guinea, Cape Van de Bosch. ”

“ We stopped for a night on the way at Nimé, a village at the mouth of the Keaukwa River. This is a very large village—I counted four hundred and thirty huts—but there were hardly a dozen people in the place, the whole population having gone off on one of their periodical migrations to a vegetable diet up the river. It was evident from the immense piles of fishbones and empty shells about the houses that the inhabitants must live largely by fishing, when they are there. The houses are better made than those at Wakatimi, and they are arranged in terraces and crescents along the water’s edge. ”

“ The discovery of pygmies in Netherlands New Guinea by the Expedition has drawn public attention to a problem of perennial interest to ethnologists. Nearly twenty-five years ago Sir William Flower stated, “that it (the Negrito race) has contributed considerably to form the population of New Guinea is unquestionable. In308 many parts of that great island, small round-headed tribes live more or less distinct from the larger and longer-headed people who make up the bulk of the population.” ”

“ We now approach the last scenes of Florian's foreign service.
By the 13th of August the cordon of European troops and Native lines drawn round the district in which the fugitive King of the Zulus lurked had been drawn closer, and it was now distinctly known at headquarters in Ulundi that he had sought refuge in the Forest of Ngome, a wild, most savage and untrodden district between two rivers (with long and grotesque names) , tributaries of the Black Umvolosi, and overshadowed by a mountain chain called the Ngome. ”

“ Their height is above the average of Europeans. Fish and yams are their chief food.
The Negrillo are nearly black in colour, short in stature, with projecting jaws and thick woolly hair, the nose not so flat as the Negro, nor the lips so thick; they inhabit the interior of New Guinea and a few islands in its locality, of which they appear to have been the aborigines, the central parts only being occupied by them; the coasts are inhabited by the Papuan and Malay races, who have driven the Negrillo aborigines from their former abode to the central mountains. ”

“ The nutmeg-tree grows wild on Damma, and the canari also thrives here. Thirty years after the Dutch deserted this island, the whole population were found to have completely relapsed into barbarism, but some of the natives of Moa, Letti, Roma, and Kissa, continue to be Christians, and five or six native schoolmasters are now located among those islands. Southeast of Damma lies Baba. Its people have the odd custom of rubbing lime into their hair, even from infancy. ”

“ Rites of initiation in some tribes of German New Guinea. The novices thought to be swallowed and disgorged by a monster, whose voice is heard in the hum of the bull-roarers. This association certainly comes out plainly in the rites of initiation through which in some parts of New Guinea all lads must pass before they attain to the status of adults. The rites are observed by a group of tribes who occupy contiguous territories about Finsch Harbour and Huon Gulf in German New Guinea. The tribes in question are the Yabim, the Bukaua, the Kai, and the Tami. ”

“ The rest of this paragraph will be taken up with a survey of New Guinea and in the first place of the Dutch part of the island.
Bink and Krieger both state the Papuans of Humboldt Bay have no slaves, neither are slaves mentioned in Koning’s account236.
In the district of Tabi some men were observed, who had their hair cut short; according to a Dorey interpreter, they were slaves237. This short note is not, however, sufficient to go upon.
The inhabitants of Seroei are much given to the kidnapping of slaves, whom they sell. Whether they keep any slaves themselves, does not appear238. ”

“ The recital of some of the mistakes that we made may serve as a warning to others, who wish to visit a similar district. In countries like Africa and many parts of Asia, where the people cultivate the soil and where there are numbers of game animals, you may always look forward to varying your fare with some fresh food, either animal or vegetable; but when you go to New Guinea you must be prepared to live wholly on dried and tinned foods, and that is only possible when they are varied and of the best manufacture. ”

“ Poor, simple Frau Wolff could never have dreamt that in the annals of New Guinea she is to be an historic character, one of the first white women in the land, and whose life was lost for and by it; or how through her fate men said sternly to one another, “It must never be again; we are to be masters here,and the lives of our women sacred.” For one white woman hundreds of black men die in reality ”

“ The children learn to figure readily, but the older natives have no names for numbers greater than three or four.
In New Guinea and the adjacent islands is found a race of black peoples usually called Negritos, or Negroids. They are black and, like the African negroes, have black, kinky hair. They are far superior to the native Australians.231 Many of the tribes are good farmers, and cultivate crops of sago, maize, and tobacco. On the coasts there are good boat-builders and sailors. The greater part of the Melanesian tribes is hostile and blood-thirsty; head-hunting is a common practice. ”

“ It was one of the best houses left standing in Khartoum, and boasted an upper floor, which was taken possession of by Nahoum Abbajee as head of what I might call the gold syndicate, while Sirri and I shared the ground floor. In the East the West is reversed; you climb to the garret with your rising fortunes, and descend with them, as they fall, to the lower floors. Instead of having Saier or Baggara guards to watch me, Awwad gave me some slaves from the Beit-el-Mal as guardians, and they had, in addition to watching me, to perform the household duties ”