Bourail

NC Town With A Shocking History

Noumea, Oct. 20.

BOURAIL, in the centre of the west coast, is still the second largest town in New Caledonia, with a population of 1,381 Europeans, 525 natives and 209 Asiatics Founded in 1868, it was for 40 years the largest penitentiary settlement out side Noumea, and the centre of the great sugar-growing scandal in the days of the mining magnate, John Higginson.

With New Zealand capital Higginson built there the Colony’s largest sugar mill, on an undertaking that the penitentiary would annually supply the mill with a large quantity of sugar-cane grown by convicts in the surrounding countryside.

After some years, being unable to fulfil its contract, the penitentiary took over the sugar mill, and gave Higginson, in exchange, many hundred convicts to work in his mines for a guaranteed period of 20 years.

This “market in human flesh” arrange ment was never broken. Indeed, Higgin son and the Nickel Company got grants of thousands of virtually unpaid convict hands before transportation came to an end. The system, however, came under severe criticism from the liberal element in the Colony, and during a long debate in the French Chamber of Deputies.

During the present century convict labour, of course, has been gradually re placed by Asiatic coolie labour.

The solid walls of Bourail’s old peni tentiary settlement are still standing, but the buildings they hide are now put to pleasanter uses. One of the now historic buildings is the convent, which used to

house convicted women who volunteered to come out from France, and who were mar ried off to convict farm concessionnaires.

To-day, Bourail is the centre of one of the best cattle areas in the Colony; but the plain is liable to a good deal of flooding in the cyclone season.

Hopk Ins-Mi Tch Ell

Wedding Group

A snapshot taken after the wed ding of Miss Mary Hopkins to Mr.

Gus Mitchell, in Madang, New Guuinea, on June 8. (See August PIM). Left to right: Mr. E. .J.

Kernan, best-man; groom and bride; Miss Theresa O’Brien, bridesmaid; Mr. J. A. Crockett, who gave the bride away.

Mr. K. J. Keegan, Administrative Officer at Ocean Island, accompanied by Mrs.

Keegan, passed through Sydney in Nov ember, on their way back from Suva, Mr. Keegan had to go to Fiji several weeks ago to give evidence at the trial of a Chinese labourer for murder on Ocean Island: and, after the trial, he spent a period in hospital, to get rid of

an old complaint, which he apparently picked up during his long service in the Solomons.

The Rev. Stewart Hurse, of the Pres byterian Overseas Mission in the New Hebrides who recently was flown to Aus tralia for a head operation, is now re covering.