DEVIL’S ISLAND CONVICTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 August 1930, Page 12

DEVIL’S ISLAND CONVICTS

"THEY DO ESCAPE.” The following are excerpts from an interesting article, under the above caption, written by Desmond Holdrigge for the New York “Outlook”: If a condemned man were given the opportunity to name his place of incarceration he would do well to choose tlie Devil’s Island, colony, in French Guiana, for it is doubtful if there is a penal settlement in the world where the chances of escape are so good and the percentage of successful breaks so high. This is contrary to popular belief: nevertheless, it is true. . If the convict has friends or a family that will finance him to the extent of five hundred dollars, American, only the lack of an ordinary degree of prudence and an ability to paddle a good-sized canoe over the most placid area in the whole Atlantic Ocean can prevent him from reaching Venezuela and freedom. If he has neither friends nor family he can still tackle the jungle, and if he can sing and laugh the primitive people he meets will help him on his way. His chances of success are less than those of the man who goes by the sea route —the difficulties . are great —but they are still infinitely better than those of a convict in an American prison. So numerous h«ve the escapes from Devil’s Island been that the Venezuelans dwelling on the banks of the Orinoco have a special word to designate the fugitives that they so often meet; they are all terified Cayenneros. Venezuela has no extradition treaty with France, so the big, sparsely inhabited republic is the vision of paradise to every prisoner in French Guiana, and the broad Orinoco the highway to liberty. It is an incredibly much-used highway. Venezuela offers the fleeing outcast even more than liberty; she offers him the chance to bury himself in her thousands of miles of unexplored jungles, where he can make a living by washing the gold and diamonds in her streams or by bleeding the balta trees in her forests. . If his crime has not been one that will make him the object of continual persecution by influential countrymen, she offers him the chance to accumulate wealth and attain a place of power within her borders. Most of all, she offers him the chance to return to France some day, for the escaped men seem to love their mother country as fiercely and constantly as if the horrors of Devil’s Island had never existed.

Five hundred dollars is the standard fee for a de luxe escape. For this sum the gaolers will supply convicts with a large canoe equipped with a sail, and food and water sufficient to see them to the mouth of the Orinoco. The methods of bribing the gaolers differ, but it is obvious that if they can be bribed at all, they can be bribed in such a manner that the performance of their side of the bargain is ensured. France is said to have as her aim in sending men to Guiana, “the expiation of crime, the regeneration of the guilty, and the protection of Society.” In the case of the escaped men the thing is fully accomplished though certainly • not in the way that the French planned. Almost invariably those convicts who stay in Venezuela become useful and singularly lawabiding citizens in this land where the law' is held lightly and an insurrection started every time a few malcontents feel that their all precious liberty has been infringed. In the prosperous mining town of Tumeremo, in Southern Venezuela, one of the most important merchants in the place is a man who escaped from Devil’s Island in a canoe. El Callao, once the richest gold mine in the world, has several prosperous businesses operated by Cayenneros who, before committing the crime that put them in Guiana, were small merchants in France. About each of the escaped convicts who have achieved a measure of material success there is usually a little group of newly-arrived fugitives, who rely on the loyalty of convict to convict to secure protection and assistance. Once they have established themselves in some occupation that yields a living, they are quiet and well behaved, esteemed alike by their fellow citizens and the authorities. The British officials tacitly recognise the fact that the man who has escaped from Devil’s Island is likely to be unobtrusive and their policy is to leave them alone as long as the convicts are well conducted. When I was in Georgetown there were a few Cayenneros about the place. One filled a clerical'position on the wharves and most of the people in town knew his history. Nevertheless, at about the same time, two men who had made their way through the jungle committed some minor felony and were at once returned to Devil’s Island. Occasional incidents (such as the demand for the return 'of an important prisoner) lend colour to the belief that only a very few men have ever successfully broken out of Devil’s Island, and the existence of this perfect stream of escaping men goes unnoticed. But they do escape. Lots of them;