323 



CHAPTER XXII. 



NEW CALEDONIA.— LOYALTY ISLANDS. 



(September 28 to October 8. ) 



Loj'alty Islands — Aspect of New Caledonia — Havanuah Passage — Prasline 

 JBaj' — Cauoes — At Anchor in Port-de-Frauce — Visit from the GoTernor — ■ 

 Visit Returned — Madame Guilkin— M. Guillain — Government House and 

 Gardens — The Governor and the Protestant Missionaries — The Capital of the 

 Colony — The Model Farm of Yahove — A New Kind of Plough — Coffee 

 Trees — The Aborigines — Religion — Manners and Customs — Infamous Usage 

 of Natives by Whites — Captain Cook's Favourable Notice of them — Basset, 

 Chief of Yengen— His House in the Interior — Appearance of the Country — 

 Trimly-kept Houses— Poles Surmounted by Skulls — Remarkable Irrina- 

 tion — Remains of Ancient Aqueducts — Return to Sydney. 



On September 26, the day of the shelhng of Sifii, the 

 'Cura^'oa' weighed at eight p.m., and stood away for New 

 Caledonia. Favoured by a steady breeze from ESE., we 

 made an excellent passage, and on the morning of the 27th, 

 reached Mare, one of the Loyalty Islands, a low level land 

 apparently neither wooded nor fertile. After leavino- Mare, 

 wliere we received a supply of cabbages from the natives, 

 who brought them off from the island, wliich we did not 

 get near enough to land, we stood away for Sifu,' which 



' It is painfully illustrative of the brutality of manners disgracing our 

 vaunted snpei-iority over heathenism, that when H.M.S. ' Havannah ' 

 anchored off Sifu, the natives, both men and women, wlio swam to the 

 ship in a swarm, eagerly saluted the crew with the foulest Eno-lish 

 oaths, of the purport of which they were manifestly ignorant, and for 



I 2 



