1304 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



On the whole, then, though it must be conceded that the experiment in New 

 Caledonia tells rather against the adaptability of the French settler to the work of 

 colonization, it must be acknowledged that the disabilities he labours under there have 

 much to do with the unpromising result. The competition between the penal and free 

 labour is the first of the colony's drawbacks. It has long been proved by experience in 

 other places that settlement clevelopes better under responsible effort than under the 

 forced and subsidized labour of convicts. Then the coldness and sterility of the soil, 

 which, in all the plains but those formed by alluvial deposit at the mouths of the rivers, 

 is of a stiff clayey nature, constitutes a permanent discouragement. The lack of capital 

 in the colony, which is only to be got in small amounts, and at the exorbitant legal rate of 

 twelve per cent, interest, seriously discounts one of the first conditions of enterprise. 

 But the chief cause of the stagnation of the colony is to be found in the hasty and 

 inexperienced legislation of the local authorities, and the unwise attempt to acclimatize 

 unsuitable French laws that necessarily conflict with the conditions of a new colony. 

 This has especially been the case with regard to agriculture, while the mining laws have 

 hopelessly retarded what should have been the principal industry. The first discoverers 

 of gold, for example, obtained concessions of blocks of land so large that they embraced 

 the whole field and shut out all enterprise. This so discouraged the miners who were 

 drawn to the spot that little or no attempt at gold-seeking has -since been made. The 

 prospects of New Caledonia as a mining centre hold out, however, great promise for the 

 future. Gold doubtless exists in the Island in considerable quantities. Nickel is found 

 in almost inexhaustible stores, and this mineral itself, especially were science to apply its 

 non-oxidizing qualities largely in the arts and manufactures in conjunction with the 

 common metals, might afford occupation for many times the present population. At 

 present, in the absence of enterprise and capital, mines are frequently found and 

 declared, and then left unworked. Coal-seams have been discovered, but the authori- 

 ties, with a strange indifference, long left them undeveloped and unexplored. Efforts 

 have lately been made to induce the Government to test these seams by diamond 

 borers, and examinations were only quite recently entered upon of the more important 

 outcrops of coal. All these considerations enter, more or less, into the question of the 

 adaptability of the French settler to the work of colonization. Intensely economical, 

 sober, and consistently hard-working as the -French free colonist of the working classes 

 in New Caledonia uniformly is, it is a subject for regret that his energy and courage 

 have not been displayed under fairer and more favourable conditions. 



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