NEW CALEDONIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume IV, Issue 1055, 2 April 1867, Page 5

NEW CALEDONIA.

We are glad to learn that through the energy of our enterprising fellow citizens. Messrs. Cruickshank and Smart, a regular trade between this place and New Caledonia is likely 10 spring into activity. This would be for the benefit of both the English and French colony, and will doubtless prove satisfactory to the enterprise of the above firm. New Caledonia produces very many of the products which from luxuries have become necessaries of life. Coffee, sugar, cotton, rice, tropical fruits, and a variety of other productions, form her staple articles of growth, and the range of her productions will no doubt be from time to time extended as her lands are brought into cultivation, and strangers arrive from various countries skilled in tlie growth of the products of the countries they have left. By the Kenilworth Messrs. Cruickshauk and Smart received a fair sample of untlii'eshed rice, as cut in the field, which may be seen at their place of business. We are indebted to a Mr. Higginson, for eight years a resident in New Caledonia, and who arrived in Auckland by the Kenilworth, for the purpose of perfecting certain business arrangements with the above firm, for some interesting particulars relative to that colony—its climate, productions, and capabilities as a field for immigration. The winter, lie informs us, is somewhat equal in character to cur summer, only with more frequent rains, while the summer weather, though much hotter, is not, as might be supposed, oppressively so. The cause of this is that the island being a long and narrow one, theer is constantly a sea breeze playing over it, which tempers the heat, and that extreme • drought is unknown ; that as many as three crops of rice are taken from the same ground in the same year, the first crop only being sown, the second and third springing from the stems of the preceding one. Of maize, too, we arc informed the cultivator may take two crops in the year off the same field, or five crops in two years, though for this crop of course the land must be cultivated and planted each time.

Tlie land, we are told, is very rich, and, wliat is of great advantage, is easily procurable from the Government. Tlie price is eiglit shillings per acre, but the Governor, willing to encourage settlement will allow emigrants to take up land on five years credit, paying meanwhile a rent at the rate of G per cent, per annum on the cost. As the land produces at once, and the cultivation of it is easy, men used to labour, and with only a small capital .sufficient to furnish provisions for the first eight or ten months, cannot, says our informant, fail of success. Much of the land, which is for the most part open or untinibeved, is covered with a rich grass and ready at once for pasturage. At the time the Kenilwortb left New Caledonia, the coffee plant was in full berry, and so heavy, we are told, was the crops that shrubs were literally bowed down to the ground, unable to sustain the fruit.

With regard to the climate, it is said to be extremely healthy; the natives, if at times troublesome, are dealt with as natives, and in French fashion. There is no interference of a Parisian Aborigines' Protection Society. Englishmen, and all foreigners, indeed, are placed on the same footing as French residents —with this exception .that they arc ineligible to hold government appointments.

Amongst the passengers by the Eenilworth Mr. William Thorburn, of the Wade, with a family of some thirteen or fourteen in number, will proceed to join his brotlicr James, who has been some time settled there, and who is succeeding beyond his expectations.