Echo Of 1880.

Survivor of De Rays’ Expedition Dead.

ONE of the few remaining links with the ill-fated colonising expedition of the Frenchman, Marquis De Rays, in 1880, was severed when Madame Niau died in Sydney on July 31, at the age of 83.

Madame Niau and her husband, en ticed by the attractive colonisation scheme, joined the expedition shortly before the three-masted “Chandernagor” left Holland for New Ireland, in 1879.

Arriving in Australia, Madame Niau de cided to remain in Sydney, while her husband went on to Port Breton, New Ireland, where it was proposed to estab lish the first settlement of this ambitious scheme.

However, New Ireland presented a totally different scene to that which the settlers had been led to expect. Fever, discontent and home-sickness caused the emigrants to abandon the enterprise and some of them, including M. Niau, returned to Australia disillusioned.

M. and Madame Niau then tried to settle in North Queensland, as sugar planters, on the Daintree River. But again circumstances compelled them to return to Sydney, where M. Niau died in 1888.

Madame Niau decided to devote her self to educational work and her book, in French, on pioneering in the Aus tralian tropics was published and adopted by the Education Department as a text book. She is survived by a daughter—Mlle. Josephine Niau.