Far Worse than Siberia.

Manawatu Herald, 3 June 1899, Page 2

Far Worse than Siberia.

WHERE FRENCH fr&SONERS ARE EXILED. The " lies de Salut " or " Isles of Safety," where Captain Dreyfus has to serve his sentence,* are three small islands off the coast of French Guiana, a few degrees north of the equator, and, except this narrow sea frontage,*' are covered with tropical forests. The . climate is simply murderous, certain death being the . result of standing bareheaded in the sun even for an instant. From November to June is the wet season, during which the average rainfall is 180 inches ; yet the temperature is never less than 95 deg., and rises to 115 deg. dnring the four dry months. Convict ships bound for these " Islands of the Curst " gener- $ ally sail either from the He de Re, in Bay ot Biscay, or the He d'Aix, in the Mediterranean. A month i$ occupied by the voyage, the horror*, of which are a fit prelude for those yet to come. Dressed in their convict garb, the prisoners are confined in batches of fifty in great iron cages on the spar deck. -Benches are placed round the sides 6t the cage, and hammocks are slung at night. But day and night they are watched by guards standing beside loaded mitrailleuses, ready to fire at the first sign of mutiny. S^Ctimes indeed, such outbreaks do (Jccur, • but they are invariably quelled wim remorseless severity. The horrors^of the passage are too repulsive for description, the scene* resembling rather

those observable a century or two back than what one would associate with the present times. On the arrival of the prisoners at the Illes de Salut they are taken to the •• Camp," a clearing occupied by strongly built iron barred huts, furnished with double rows of hammocks. But at night the foetid atmosphere within, combined with the noisome vapours of the outer air and the ever-present swarms of stinging insects, render any but the sleep of exhaustion impossible. From the moment of his arrival the convict has no name. He is known only by the number of his hammock. The new arrivals are put to the most severe tasks draning marshes and clearing ground-—" to break their spirits." They are conducted to their work by armed guards, who are ordered to fire at the least attempt at flight. Hardly any try to escape, for they know that if they evade the bullets of the guard and their pursuit, it will be necessary to traverse the sea and the virgin forest. At every step will, lie in wait for them death by hunger, by fatigue, by disease, or by the poisoned arrows of the natives, who receive a reward for every convict they bring back, dead Or alive. Meanwhile, with bodies broken by their awful toil in a climate where a walk of a hundred yards is a formidable task, they labour in the blazing sun with spades and picks. About their heads hang clouds of stinging insect 6. Great red ants cover their bare legs, and sometimes poisonous serpents twist about their ankles and inflict mortal wounds. They stand in trenches up to their knees in water and mire, and the exhalations rising from the earth con sume them with fever, or set their teeth chattering as with cold, while the sweat rolls from their foreheads. Occasionlly, in their despair, some of the convicts revolt, in the hope, which is seldom disappointed, of finding in the bullets of their custodians a relief from this living torture. Others, again, go mad, or end their lives by deliberately exposing themselves to the sun, while* very few ever succeed in escaping. Indeed, only once have any fugitives reached civilised countries again, and even then their period of freedom was comparatively brief.