SEA-GIRT FRISONS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17279, 21 September 1916, Page 8

SEA-GIRT FRISONS.

TURKEY’S "ISLE OF PRINCES.” GENERAL TOWNSHEND’S PRISON. Prinkopo, General Townshend’s island prison, is in the Sea of Marmora, an hour’s steam from Constantinople. It is a pretty spot, with villas and gardens, and a yacht club; but it has long been utilised by the various Sultans of Turkey as a place of banishment for State prisoners. Its very name —“Isle of Princes”—proclaims this fact. . Many a scion of the Imperial Ottoman house has lingered out his existence amid its olive groves and orange orchards, seeing afar off the dim blur of the Turkish capital, but cut off for ever from all participation in the life of pleasure and gaiety that is led there in normal times. Britain, although few people probably are aware of it, possesses a similar island prison. This is Mahe, in the Indian Ocean, one of the Seychelles Archipelago, and which is known locally as "The Island of Captive Kings. 8000 MURDERERS ON ONE ISLAND, To this lonely spot was exiled King Prompeh of Ashanti, after we deposed him on account of his_ many cruelties. To Maho, too, came m due course the bloodthirsty King Kabbareroa of Unyoro, King Mwanga of Uganda, the murderer of the martyred Bishop Hannington, and other savage potentates from various parts of the world, interned there for their own £.nd their cbuntry’s good. Sakhalin has been christened the “Isle of Murderers. It is situated off the coast of Siberia, ana the whole of the northern portion, which belongs to Russia, is utilised as a penal establishment for prisoners convicved of what in most other countries would be a capital crime. A few years bacn it was estimated that there were above eight thousand murderers on this lonely sea-girt island, of whom about seven hundred were women. Britain set the example more than a hundred years ago by establishing penal colonies on Norfolk Island and elsewhere. France followed suit by utilising New Caledonia in the Pacific and Devil’s Island in the Atlantic Chili sent her convicts to the Chmcha islands, and other similar islets oft her long stretch of coast line, where they were employed in gathering guano often under circumstances of great cruelty. PLACES OF TORMENT.

This is the worst of these island prisons. Owing to the difficulty of pioperlv supervising them, they are very apt to degcrerate into places of torment for the hapless beings conconquered German West Africa we found upon an island there some fifteen hundred native Herreros the sole survivors of six thousand poor wretches transported there by the Huns after the stamping out of the rebellion into which they were driven some years previously by the crueltj of their conquerors. It must not be supposed, however, that all island prisons are badly managed. There are exceptions. One such is found m Fernando de Noronha, an island that serves ns a place of banishment for Brasal s conrule here is that two-thirds of the prisoners must labour on the land. These live in villages, and are employed in field and plantation work, and in tending the sheep and cattle. The rest live in the town, and are engaged at different handicrafts in the workshop, or fish in catamarans, the nativo Brazilian canoes. All have to work for their food and clothing, which they obtain from tho Government stores, iu proportion to the work performed. , , , ~ There are two good schools on the island; one for the children of the officers and soldiers and one for tho children of convicts. At the age of twelve the sons of convicts are sent to a military school at Pernambuco. The girls are allowed to stay on the island if they wish to do so.