[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]
CHAPTER I
NOUMEA AND PORT VILA
ON April 26, 1910, I arrived at Nouméa by the
large and very old mail-steamer of the Messageries
Maritimes, plying between Marseilles and Nouméa,
which I had boarded at Sydney.
Nouméa impresses one very unfavourably. A
time of rapid development has been followed by a
period of stagnation, increased by the suppression of
the penitentiary, the principal source of income to
the town. The latter has never grown to the size
originally planned and laid out, and its desolate squares
and decayed houses are a depressing sight. Two or
three steamers and a few sailing-vessels are all the
craft the harbour contains; a few customs officers
and discharged convicts loaf on the pier, where
some natives from the Loyalty Islands sleep or
shout. I i
Parallel streets lead from the harbour to the hills
that fence the town to the landward. Under roofs of
corrugated sheet-iron run the sidewalks, along dark
stores displaying unappetizing food, curios and cheap
millinery. At each corner is a dismal sailors’ bar,
smelling of absinthe. Then we come to an empty,
decayed square, where a crippled, noseless “Gallia”
