CONVICTS' BRIDES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XX, Issue 1356, 1 June 1887, Page 6

CONVICTS' BRIDES.

No worse hell can be imagined than a convict village in New Caledonia. One cannot even suggest in print the enormities winch take place there. During the native war in 1878, I was with the French troops, and we had our quarters at convict depots, says a writer in the San Francisco " Call." Convictß accompanied us on our marches as our camp-followers, and I had many convict servants appointed to wait on me. Ode xtba a man, a nice grey haired old fellow, who, suspicious of his wife, kilted his rival, cut the heart from the body, cooked it, told his wife it was a sheep's heart, ate it with her and then slew her. A modern Titus Andronicus. These recidivistes who are to be sent out are not quite so bad as this. They are the habitual criminals of France who are to be despatched, male and female, after the manner of their kind to perpetuate a population near Australian shores, the most iniquitous the world has ever known. It is not so very long back that I 'went on board a French transport in the port of Melbourne, bound from Havre to Noumea. Sixty young women were among the passengers, under the charge of some good sisters of St. Jbßeph. TBey had been selected, as orieHelect^batfcle, ho bVgiven as wives to the gobd tSßMhct -prisoners of Noumea. Tfiey $§fc'*isirly all murderesses — of hustfand, lover or child. One in a fit of^jpassion had thrown her baby out of,tne port-hole during the voyage. Better, perhaps that the infant should 'die innocent than that it should grow up and be the mother of a family of criuiiuak Tho

recidivistes are to be allowed to breed, but neither they nor their children are ever to be allowed to return to France. Where will the brood go but to the neighbouring shores of Australia ? It is little wonder that we have made an outcry about this, and have demanded that the French and German rule should not be further extended in the South Seas, the islands of which are our natural heritage.