NEW CALEDONIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 805, 4 May 1867, Page 9

NEW CALEDONIA.

(From the New Zealand Herald.)

We are glad to learn that through theenergy of our enterprising fellow-citizens ! Messrs Cruickshank and Smart, a regular trade between this place and New Caledonia is likely to 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 the growth of the products of the countries they h>>ve left. By the Kenil worth, Messrs Cruickshank and Smart received a fair sample of unthreshed 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 of the Colony — its climate, productions, and. capabilities as a field for immigration. The winter, he informsus, is somewhat equal in character to our 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, There 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 are 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. The land, we are told, is very rich, and, what is of great advantage, is easily procurable from the Government. The price is eight shillings per acre, but the Governor, willing to encourage settle- . ment, will allow immigrants to take up land on five years' credit, paying meanwhile a rent at the rate of six per cent, per annum on the cost. As the land produces at once and the cultivation of it is easy, men used to labor, 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 untimbered, is covered with a rich grass and ready at once for pasturage. At the time the Kenilworth left New Caledonia, the coffee plant was in full berry, and so heavy, we are told, was the crop, 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 attunes 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 are ineligible to hold Government appointments.

1 Musical. — A certain admirable Tenor always refreshes himself with oysters before he iuigs "In Native Worth."