THE HALF-BEBED. 17 



as well as a statesmau-Iike aud progressive priuce. When it is recalled that little more 

 than half a century ago the Hawaiian group was peopled by savages, meet descendants of 

 Capt. Cook's murderers, the present condition ol" the kingdom, with its educated and law- 

 abiding citizens, is 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 

 labour. Tahiti, the capital of which is described as a miniature Tolynesian Paris, is 

 another instance of successful missionary and colonizing enterprise, and ec^ually remark- 

 able has been the transformation which the establishment of British rule has effected in 

 Fiji. 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 dwindled 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 con- 

 tribution to that journal, presents a striking, though melancholy picture of the popinées, or 

 native companions of the French settlers or pardoned criminals. While the rare French 

 women, who have ventured to share the discomforts and perils of such an exile, are petted 

 aud courted in Noumea (the capital of New Caledonia), away off in the bush, the poor 

 faithful popinée 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 own 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 popinée 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 aud 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 pic- 

 ture 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 nations. And in 

 North America, too, it was by allying themselves with the willing davighters of the 

 Abenakis that the sons of France created that vigorous Acadian stock, whose patriotic 

 spirit has more than once kept at bay the proud rulers of ( )Id and New England. ' What 

 a pity,' said the Indians after the capitulation of Quebec, ' that the French were conquered ! 

 Their young men used to marry our daughters.' Those mixed marriages gave us faithful 

 allies and enabled our colonists, abandoned by the Mother-country, to make head for a 



Sec. 11., 1885. 3. 



