Trader, Old Style

By Lew Friday

MacLeod was a hard-headed Scot with a personality as tough and original as his appearance. His family had emigrated to Nova Scotia where, at bleak Cape Breton, he had been born. He took to the sea for a livelihood, and in 1888, at the age of 24, had arrived in Noumea as partner with an Australian in a trading concern opening up new territory. He soon moved his headquarters to Efate, where he be came Port Vila’s founder and first white inhabitant.

By the time Higginson came along, to offer him the job of Hebridean manager for the Compagnie Caledonienne, Mac- Leod was the richest settler in the group, with a large plantation around Port Havannah, acquired for trade goods from the local chiefs and registered with the British authorities in Suva.

By establishing a shipping service, which called as regularly as possible at places throughout the group, Higginson’s company, for the time being, got the Hebrides under its sway. Only Britain resisted the hoisting of the French flag, MacLeod, who knew the position as well as any-one, allowed Higginson to per suade him to sell out his interests to the French company, which agreed to give him a salary of £l,OOO per annum — fat enough in those times —as its Hebri dean manager. For some years MacLeod, like Higginson, worked on the assumption that French sovereignty over the group would be only a matter of time.

Prior to 1880, as leading planter, when all planters, traders and blackbirding captains were British, MacLeod had badly wanted England to take over the group. He had then made no bones about disguising his fear that France might get in first. But he had become tired of waiting, and when he saw that Britain was against outright annexation he turned over his properties to the French of course, at a handsome figure.

In Melbourne in 1884 he told the “Argus” that olanters would have wel comed being taken over by any one of JOHN HIGGINSON, New Caledonian nickel “king,” after being awarded grand nationalisation papers by the President of the French Republic who created him Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur returned to Noumea and founded the French company which, it was hoped, would give France sufficient excuse to annex the New Hebrides. Un til then there had not been a single Frenchmen settled in the group, Higginson saw immediately it would be a help if, besides introducing French colonists and traders, his company could rope in the British settlers already estab lished. Of them all, none had such large possessions; or so much influence among the natives and knowledge of the group, as Captain Donald MacLeod. This was in 1882. the great Powers. There was such a

complete lack of law and order, and so many massacres went unpunished, that a central authority was imperative. Titles to land were also insecure. It was time to end the confused situation by which some settlers registered titles in Fiji, others in New Caledonia, and others again in Queensland.

“As the company I now represent is French,” he said, “I would like to see the group annexed to France, The dif ferent ways in which France and Britain are treating the problems of Hebridean colonisation makes settlers prefer the French.

“When British warships come along it is only to punish and persecute us, never to protect our interests. Their officers treat us like pirates, and they don't even use the minimum of courtesy. The French are better; their officers don’t treat us like dirt, and their small attentions to lonely settlers are appreciated.”

A year before, a petition had been signed by all the whites, British, French and the few Americans, asking France to annex the group. “It’s ridiculous,” said MacLeod, “for the Colony of Vic toria, which has no money invested there, which hasn’t a single colonist and only one missionary, to talk about annexation The one complaint I have against the Presbyterian missionaries is that they are always trying to fight us traders instead of working with us. From the first, they seem to have set themselves against all other white interests in the Pacific.”’

Again and again M&cLeod called on one or other of the powers to set up a regular form of government in this “no man’s-land without law or justice.” At Vila, settlers were meeting to form their own laws and to declare couples living together to be regularly married; but elsewhere was chaos.

IN an interview with the Australian magazine, “Town and Country,” in 1885, MacLeod said that the Hebri dean native had grown so fond of gin and tobacco that he would readily pro mise allegiance to anv country that sup plied his needs. At bottom he probably preferred the French because it was easier to get gin, tobacco, and firearms from them.

MacLeod saw that the influence of re cruitment was physically disastrous for the islanders. Whole tribes were dying of illness introduced by ships repatriating boys from Queensland and Fiji. They were being landed irrespective of whether there was infectious illness aboard or not, A typical case he quoted was that of a Queensland ship obliged to call at Noumea to repair some damage. Her sick natives were placed in quarantine and visited by the doctor, but before they were well the master decided to leave. The French protested, but the master had the backing of the British Consul and the sick were finally sent on board. On arrival in the Hebrides, a few days later, thev ouickly infected their entire home village, with disastrous re sults.

MacLeod praised the French for stick ing to their rule that no natives could be returned to the Hebrides unless in sound health. Not a single native had been returned to the Loyalty Group, ly ing between Caledonia and the Hebrides, who was not fit, consequently these were the only islands where the population was not on the decline. MacLeod sug gested that doctors would be better for the natives than missionaries.

Soon after he resigned his job as manager of Higginson’s company. Both he and Higginson were men who liked to get their own way. In the early days at Vila, MacLeod had shot another trader dead during a quarrel probably both had taken drink. In 1884, he had had a considerable argument with a Victorian missionary named Peter Milne, who tried to make the Efate natives give back money and goods that MacLeod, on be half of the French, had paid them for some land. MacLeod, threw back their money, which the natives picked up and then quietlv took themselves off to their huts, leaving the whites to continue abus ing one another.

ITTHILE helping to make Vila the ff group’s main commercial centre, MacLeod was also recruiting Hebri dean natives for Higginson and sending them to Noumea in his (MacLeod’s) schooner “Havannah,” under French licence.

Later, following a campaign of calumny in Australia, New Caledonia decided to adopt more stringent recruiting regula tions, and the Noumea court questioned Higginson about the methods used. He said the natives, who were employed in mining and on the plantations and as house boys, came to New Caledonia of their own free will. He acted as agent for the immigration department and re ceived 5 per cent, commission.

One day, he added, he had seen two small natives crying and had said to Captain MacLeod, “You’ll take these children back where they came from. 1 don’t want children brought here against their will.”

MacLeod had replied; “But it’s the chiefs that engage them to go. It’s not they who receive the snoods, it’s the chiefs.” k * Higginson told the court his answer had been: “Then I don’t understand any thing. I regret having been mixed up in such a traffic and I shall abandon this kind of operation.”

The French, starting from scratch and with MacLeod’s backing, soon had three million hectares under their control in the Hebrides at a time when the largest Australian concern onlv had 125,000 hec tares. But later the British acquired a bigger hold, largely after Burns Philp started operating with a Commonwealth Government subsidy.

MACLEOD had made his home aboard an old French man-o-war, the “Chevert,” which he used as a houseboat. The French Navy having condemned her, she had been used for trading until she went on the reefs near Port Sandwich. Her master regarded her as a complete loss, and MacLeod was allowed to buy her for a song. He suc ceeded in refloating her and patching her up. She served him as home and fortress and store, and proved ideal for all three purposes. For the settlement was by no means established or safe. A ship was more difficult to attack, and MacLeod could have defended her indefi nitely.

MacLeod sold her to the French com pany. But by this time Vila and Port Havannah were no longer tiny outposts but settled communities. So she was towed to another and more dangerous island bv the company’s ship -“Ambroua,” which nearly lost her en route. Here she became the company’s new base of operations, and store-house and habita tion for the personnel. Chiefs were brought on board her to make their mark and sign away their lands to the French for guns and beads and Calico.

RESIGNING his job as Hebridean manager for Higginson, MacLeod visited Sydney to buy the schooner “Windward Ho” with which, in partner ship with another Briton who had worked

for the company, he went into trading on his own account.

Disappointed in his hope that the French would take control, he resumed liberty of action. In fact, for a while at Port Sandwich, he abused the French, telling the missionaries that it was be coming impossible to acquire land or trade against French competition because they received a government subsidy which took the form of monthly payments. For this reason the French were able to buy copra from planters at a figure with which he, about the only English copra buyer left, could not compete. He him self was even obliged to make use of French shipping. .

MacLeod now worked hard to bring about British annexation. He cannot very well be blamed for changing sides and he could always claim that he was thinking of what would best serve the in terests of planters and natives. As a trader he had felt that the French, if he supported them, would help to keep out other trade rivals. Also he had watched Macdonald, an influential Vic torian missionary, and other Australians go away with hopes to start trading com panies, only to return disappointed.

By 1890, MacLeod had become again a large scale plantation-owner on his own account. He was busily talking of estab lishing a big Australian-backed trading and colonising company when the per suasive Higginson returned from Europe with new money and power to reorganise the now languishing French Company.

Once again MacLeod allowed the interests he had acquired in the Hebrides to pass back to the French. He then retired to Noumea, where he became a well known and honoured figure.

THIS Vicar cd* Bray among traders had done wfe £of the incipient inter national Rivalry in the now Anglo- French Condominium. .When he died, on May 14. 1894, aged 50, he had amassed a fortune of two million francs not at all a bad sum in those days, when the franc was worth lOd. He is buried in Noumea’s “fourth kilometre” cemetery, on the left hand side as you go in, his grave dwarfed by an imposing French family mausoleum.

He had lived his life like a grand chieftain of the isles. The natives re garded him unquestioningly as king, sui generis, of the territory. “No man,” says a contemporary French obituary notice, “had more influence over them. Their affection for him,” it adds, “was in no way lessened by the fact that he left behind a numerous orogeny of half-caste children. These might have had some claim on his property in a land where the code of civilised laws was de rigueur.

As it is, his white kinsmen can take com fort in the fact that the New Hebrides do not come under any recognised system of administration.”

So disappeared one of those dauntless planters of an early age, who accepted the savages at their own valuation, and who had a genuine liking and under standing of them. His dourness hid a sense of humour; in his blood adventure was allied with shrewdness; he combined energy and tenacity with more audacity and imagination than many of his race.

The French said of him that he always went straight to the point, and if at the first attempt he did not get what he wanted, he always came back for another try.

The Paris paper, “La Politique Colon iale,” remarked that in him Australia had lost a coloniser of the front rank, whom the French also at times had found an opportune and valuable instrument of policy.

Mr. Cliff Bailev, of the headquarters staff of W. R. Carpenter & Co., Ltd., has been transferred to Fiji, where he will occupy an executive post with W. R. Car penter & Co. (Fiji) Ltd.