" PHANTOM PARADISE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

" PHANTOM PARADISE."

TRAGEDY OF "COLONISATION."

Few true stories have been as strange, fantastic and horrible as the one told by J. IT. Nieu in "The Phantom Paradise" (Angus a-ud Robertson, Sydney). On July 2(i, 1R77. an advertisement was/ published in Paris inviting subscriptions for a project known as the "Free Colony of Port Breton." The promoter was Charles Bona venture du Brcil, Marquis de Pays, the descendant of a family which for centuries enjoyed public confidence and prestige. fie conceived the idea of planting a colony somewhere in the Pacific, and in an old book he read a glowing description of the beauty and fertility of Port Praslin (later Port Breton), at the southern extremity of Xe w Ireland. The writer, Captain Duperry, had spent nine days at the port, and it so happened that in that time the weather was dry, whereas normally, for eight months in the year, there is a torrential downpour. Of this de Pays knew nothing, but had he known it it does not appear tint he would have eared.

De Pavs induced hundreds of people French. Italian and Belgian, to invest their savings in and to emigrate to this veritable Kden. Tn four ships they went, and —with scarcely anything that as pioneers they needed —they were dumped on the shore of "La Nouvelle France." The island (which lies northeast of Xew Ouinea) was beautiful, but utterly unsuitcd for settlement. _ Ihe arable land was scanty and the climate unhealthy, and the natives were cannibals. Very soon the colonists were HI and starving and dying. Meanwhile two other ships had left, with colonists full of hope, but foredoomed to a miserable fate. And. after he knew what was happening, de Pays dispatched a fourth ship, on the very day when the remnant of the colonists who had gone by the second ship were arriving" in Sydney, "emaciated, covered with sores, absolutely penniless and dependent 011 the large-lieartedness of the kindly folk of Sydney Town for shelter and raiment . .

The whole tragic story leaves the reader marvelling, not only at theciedu litv of the colonists, but at the character of de Kavs, who seems to have been a completely callous megalomaniac. and a swindler to boot. V.ventually he was sentenced to six years' imprisonment, but his punishment wans nothing when compared with the death and suffering, and the blasting or hopes for which he had been responsible. The author of "Phantom Paradise" is a daughter of one of the unfortunate colonists, who afterwards settled in Australia. Even at this time, so long after the events she describes, she writes with deep indignation of what she describes as the "crudest lioax in history."