A.—4

24

" An insult to the French flag " could easily be magnified in Europe to " an attack on French settlers " and " outrages by the natives," which is what the authorities require as a palliation for the action of sending troops hither. It must be remembered that when more than a year ago two companies of infantry were landed on Vate and Mallicolo the excuse given by the authorities in Paris was that it was merely a temporary measure. The soldiers were camped on shore to defend French settlers from the attacks of the natives in the future, as well as to exact reparation for outrages in the past. It was argued that France had as perfect right in operating by land to avenge the murders of Frenchmen as Great Britain's men-of-war had to shell villages. As regards any temporary action, this theory might be correct if it had any foundation in fact, or if it had been carried out in practice. But, taking the French view of the case, there was never any excuse for the landing of troops on Vate. There is no record in our generation of any white man having been killed here, and there has never been any trouble of any kind with the natives. The troops simply took possession of the best harbour in the islands, by their presence acting as the official support to the doings of the New Hebrides Company. And their presence has also been used to provoke the natives to overt action. But for the Presbyterian missionaries, who have counselled moderation, the ignorant savages might have broken out, when little mercy would have been shown to them, and annexation would have followed. I cannot help thinking that all the proceedings here have been the result of a premeditated scheme, which has not succeeded as well as its promoters wished. This flag on the rock on the sands of the Island of Vila seems to be part of that scheme of provoking the natives, which, if successful, will end in the island becoming the property of the French New Hebrides Company, and its acres cut up into blocks for the colonists to be imported from France, who will die here as their predecessors settled in Port Vila this year have died. The best of immigrants cannot succeed in this climate, and the best are not at all likely to come here. Bacon, in his essay "Of Plantations," gave good advice to the adventurers who founded Virginia. He wrote: " The people wherewith you plant ought to be gardeners, ploughmen, labourers, smiths, carpenters, joiners, fishermen, fowlers, with some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks, and bakers." And again, "Itis a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked men to be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation, for they will ever live like rogues and not fall to work, but be lazy and do mischief and spend victuals and be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country to the discredit of the plantation." Without saying that the immigrants sent out to work and occupy the lands of the New Hebrides Company were the " scum of the people," they have proved just as useless here. Female Parisians accustomed to buy all their food ready cooked, women having never done more of household work than to light a charcoal fire to boil their coffee with, and to whom even the baking of a loaf of bread was a mystery, are as much out of place in a new land as any grand lady of the Faubourg St. Honore. Small shopkeepers, pedlars, and clerks, to whom the use of an axe and a spade is an unknown art, men lacking both physical strength and skill, finding the handling of tools as difficult to acquire as penmanship to an ignorant adult, would be more helpless in the forests of America or the bush of Australia than half the members of the Jockey Club. The latter would to an extent know how to use their muscles : the gymnasium in youth, and afterwards riding, shooting, and fencing, having trained their eyes and arms. In the healthiest of colonies such people as have been sent here would be failures, " and be quickly weary, and certify to the discredit of the plantation." But put on shore in this country, where no white man can do labouring-work, where fever haunts every yard of ground, the Parisian immigrants looked at the jungle-covered acres which were pointed out to them as their future homes and lost heart and cried to be returned to Noumea and to France, and were taken sick and died, till now only seven remain at Port Vila. These men, of stronger constitutions or better heart, live on in hope of getting the grants to their twenty-five hectares of land, when they imagine that they can sell the properties which originally were bought from the natives for about a stick of tobacco the acre. The best of the immigrants here is undoubtedly the Alsatian Klehm, who says that his companions were mostly lazy and unfit to work. Klehm, however, has lost his eldest son by fever. I have pleasure in recording his testimony to the great kindness extended to the women and children by Madame Bernier, wife of the manager of the plantations of the New Hebrides Company at Port Vila. Klehm says : "We were left here in the greatest misery, and without the attention of this good lady and her husband more would have perished. She was our guardian angel." Madame Bernier is a Bourbonnaise, and therefore can stand the climate better than a European. But even she suffers from the fever, and often has to go to Noumea to recover her health. From the slight acquaintance I have with Madame Bernier, I can quite believe Klehm's testimony. Klehm is the "curly-headed boy" of the colonisation scheme. He is pointed out as an example of what can be done by the right kind of people here—those, namely, who do not mind sickness or death in their families, and have money enough to hire native labour and buy provisions until they can obtain a title to their lands. Klehm has a grass house on the shores opposite the Island of Mele, and has cleared a patch of land and planted it with maize. If people can live on corn they can feed well here, for this cereal in the New Hebrides produces three crops a year, often averaging 150 bushels to the acre. The officials of the French company are now, I find, endeavouring to cover up the gross failure of colonisation at Port Vila by citing Klehm as the industrious colonist, and all those who have died or returned to Noumea as the discontented " ne'er-do-wells." But who brought them hither? However unfitted every man or woman might be, they came in ignorance, seduced by glowing promises to the ear, while their eyes were pleased by coloured plans of the settlement of Mele, with roads and streets which as yet only exist in the imagination of the promoters of the company's colonisation. This same powerful imagination has magnified the acreage of the properties of the New Hebrides Company to nearly the entire acreage of the islands. On Vate they at first claimed more land than it possesses. To have a share in