George Chetwynd Griffith - In an Unknown Prison Land / An account of convicts and colonists in New Caledonia with / jottings out and home: (Illustrated Edition)

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Frontispiece.

---

IN AN UNKNOWN
PRISON LAND

AN ACCOUNT OF CONVICTS AND
COLONISTS IN NEW CALEDONIA
WITH JOTTINGS OUT AND HOME

BY
GEORGE GRIFFITH

AUTHOR OF MEN WHO HAVE MADE THE
EMPIRE, THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN,
A TALE OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU,
BRITON OR BOER? A STORY OF THE
FIGHT FOR AFRICA, ETC., ETC.

WITH A PORTRAIT AND NUMEROUS
ILLUSTRATIONS

London: HUTCHINSON & CO
Paternoster Row 1901

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LD.
LONDON AND AYLESBURY

---

To
THE EARL OF DUNMORE
WHOSE KINDNESS AND HOSPITALITY MADE MY
SOJOURN IN PRISON-LAND MUCH MORE
PLEASANT THAN IT MIGHT
HAVE BEEN.

---

CONTENTS

PAGE
A STREAK THROUGH THE STATES
I.	DUTIES AND DOLLARS
II.	CONCERNING CITIES, WITH A PARENTHESIS ON MANNERS
III.	THE QUEEN OF THE GOLDEN STATE
A SEA-INTERLUDE
PRISON LAND
A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON CONVICTS AND COLONISTS
I.	SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS
II.	SOME SOCIAL SIDELIGHTS
III.	ILE NOU
IV.	MEASUREMENT AND MANIA
V.	A CONVICT ARCADIA
VI.	SOME HUMAN DOCUMENTS
VII.	THE PLACE OF EXILES
VIII.	A PARADISE OF KNAVES
IX.	USE FOR THE USELESS
X.	A LAND OF WOOD AND IRON
XI.	MOSTLY MOSQUITOS AND MICROBES
HOMEWARD BOUND
I.	TWENTY YEARS AFTER
II.	DEMOS AND DEAR MONEY
III.	A COSMOPOLITAN COLONY

---

NOTE

The last sentence on should read:

The Cachots Noirs were never opened except at stated intervals,once every morning for inspection, and once every thirty days for exercise and a medical examination of the prisoner. I am glad to be able to state on the authority of the Minister of Colonies that this terrible punishment has now been made much less severe. Every seventh day the prisoner is placed for a day in a light cell; he is also given an hours exercise every day; and the maximum sentence has been reduced to two years, subject to the medical veto. In the text I have described what I saw; but this atrocity is now, happily, a thing of the past.G. G.

---

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Portrait of the Author
Two Snapshots up and down the Rio Sacramento, taken as the train was crossing the bridge	Page
Diamond Head, Honolulu
Sanford B. Dole. First Governor of the Territory of Hawaii
A Lake in the interior of New Caledonia
The Plague Area at Noumea. Offices of the Messageries Maritimes, with Sentries in front
The Convict Band playing in the Kiosk in the Place des Cocotiers, Noumea
The Town and Harbour of Noumea
In the Harbour, Noumea
The Inner Court of the Central Prison, Ile Nou
The Central Prison, Ile Nou
The Bureau of Anthropometry, Ile Nou
An Arab Type of Convict. A combination of Ideality and Homicidal Mania
The Courtyard of a Disciplinary Camp, Ile Nou
The Avenue of Palms, leading to the Hospital, Ile Nou
Part of the Hospital Buildings, Ile Nou
The Island of Le Sphinx, one of the tying-up places on the south-west coast of New Caledonia
A Native Temple, New Caledonia
Permit to visit a Prison or Penitentiary Camp en dtail
The Kiosk in which the Convict Courtships were conducted at Bourail
Berezowski, the Polish Anarchist who attempted to murder Napoleon III. and the Tsar Alexander II. in the Champs Elyses
One of the Lowest Types of Criminal Faces
The Peninsula of Ducos
The remains of Henri Rocheforts House
The Bedroom of Louis Chatelain, The Caledonian Dreyfus in Ducos
The Market in the Convent, Isle of Pines
The Convict Railway at Prony
The Mines of the International Copper Co., Pilou, New Caledonia
The Saloon of the Ballande Liner, St. Louis
The Quarantine Station, North Head, Sydney
The Storage House at Seppeltsfield, forty years ago
The Present Storage House
Grape-crushing by machinery, at Seppeltsfield
A Vineyard at Seppeltsfield, South Australia

---

Part I
A STREAK THROUGH THE STATES

---

I
DUTIES AND DOLLARS

It was on the fifth night out from Southampton that the threatening shadow of the American Custom House began to fall over the company in the saloon.

One could see ladies talking nervously together. The subject was the one most dear to the female heart; but the pleasure of talking about things was mingledat least in the hearts of the uninitiatedwith an uneasiness which, in not a few cases, amounted to actual fear; for that evening certain forms had been distributed by the purser, and these forms contained questions calculated to search out the inmost secret of every dress-basket and Saratoga trunk on board.

By the time you had filled in the blanks, if you had done it honestlyas, of course, no one except myself didyou had not only given a detailed list of your wardrobe, but you had enumerated in a separate schedule every article that you had bought new in Europe.

You were graciously permitted to possess one hundred dollars, or, say, twenty pounds worth of personal effects. If you had more than that you were treated as a commercial traveller importing dry goods, and had to pay duty in case you sold them again, and thus came into competition with the infant industries of Uncle Sam.

At the foot of the schedule was a solemn declaration that you had given your wardrobe away to the last pocket-handkerchief, and the next day you had to repeat this declaration verbally to an urbane official, who was polite enough to look as though he believed you.

When it came to the actual examination in the wharf-shed, I found myself wondering where Uncle Sams practical commonsense came in. You had to take a paper, given to you on board in exchange for your declaration, to a desk at which sat a single clerk.

As there were about four hundred first- and second-class passengers, this took some little time, and provoked considerable language. When you had at length struggled to the desk the clerk gave you a ticket, beckoned to a gentleman in uniform, handed him your paper, and remarked:

Here, George, see to this.

In my case George seemed to have a pressing engagement somewhere else, for he went off and I never set eyes on him again. My modest effects, a steamer trunk, a Gladstone-bag, and a camera-case, lay frankly open to the gaze of all men in cold neglect, while small mountains of trunks were opened, their contents tickled superficially by the lenient fingers of the examiners, closed again, and carted off.

A couple of hours later, when I had interviewed every official in the shed on the subject of the missing George, and made a general nuisance of myself, I was requested to take my things out and not worryor words to that effect. Outside I met a fellow-voyager, who informed me that he and his wife had taken thirteen trunks full of dutiable stuff through without paying a cent of dutyat least not to the Exchequer of the United States Customs.

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