346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



one of the most striking testimonies that modern history affords to the 

 benefits which the dark places of the world have derived from •well- 

 directed missionary labor. Tahiti, the capital of which is described 

 as a miniature Polynesian Paris, is another instance of successful mis- 

 sionary and colonizing enterprise, and equally remarkable has been 

 the transformation which the establishment of British rule has effected 

 in Feejee. Unhappily, the contact of even the best civilization with 

 aboriginal races is not always a boon to the latter. The Maoris, one 

 of the finest of the dark-skinned occupants of Polynesia, have dwin- 

 dled away in the hopeless struggle with an aggression which they 

 were not strong enough to resist and were too proud to conciliate. 

 Neither in their native New Zealand, nor in the lost heritage of the 

 far inferior Australians, has a half-breed population sufficiently large 

 to affect the destiny of the colonies as yet sprung up. To what extent 

 the presence of convicts in New Caledonia has affected the half-breed 

 problem, a writer in " L'Expansion Coloniale " gives us some means 

 of judging. M. P. Joppicourt, in a clever contribution to that journal, 

 presents a striking though melancholy picture of the popinees, or 

 native companions of the French settlers or pardoned criminals. While 

 the rare Frenchwomen, who have ventured to share the discomforts 

 and perils of such an exile, are petted and courted in Noumea (the 

 capital of New Caledonia), away off in the bush the poor, faithful 

 popinee hugs with rapture the white man's child of which she is the 

 proud and loving mother. She looks upon her husband as her master, 

 and does homage to her offspring as of a superior race. For their sake 

 she has severed herself from her tribe, and refrains from the use of 

 her own language, lest her little ones should be thereby degraded. 

 Her kindred have turned against her as a renegade, but she minds not 

 their reproaches. Alas ! a day comes when they have their revenge, 

 when the white man closes his door against her and bids her begone. 

 She has served his purpose, and he needs her no longer. He is paying 

 suit to a countrywoman of his own, and the popinee must get out of 

 the way. And so, with misery in her heart, she betakes herself with 

 her children back to the tribe, where for a long time she must put up 

 with taunts and every humiliation. But she, too, has her revenge. 

 By-and-by love changes to bitterness, and his children learn to hate 

 the name and race of the father who has disowned them. When the 

 cry of war is raised, they are the most eager to sink their battle-axes 

 in the white man's skull, to burn his farm, to massacre his wife and 

 children. And thus the innocent and good pay with their lives for 

 the craven treachery of a heartless wretch. Let us hope that the pict- 

 ure is not representative, but exceptional. The same writer seems to 

 see in the half-breed some ground of hope for the future of a colony 

 avoided by the luxurious ladies of France. " Has not South America," 

 he asks, "been entirely peopled by the crossing of Spaniards and 

 Indians ? Yes : those mestizos have formed powerful and respectable 



