DELUDED FRENCHMEN. Terrible Experiences of Emigrants.—Left on an Island to Starve. Paris Lettish in Philadelphia Press.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 38, 23 February 1884, Page 3

DELUDED FRENCHMEN. Terrible Experiences of Emigrants.— Left on an Island to Starve. Paris Lettish in Philadelphia Press.

The readers of the "Press" have already been made acquainted with the Marquis de Kays and his infamous swindling schemes for colonizing the utterly barbarous parts of the island ot New Ireland in the Southern Pacific. During tho past week the grand sensation has been the trial of that worthy. Tho newspapers containing accounts of the trial have been selling enormously in the kirsks on the boulevards and the story already developed is so monstrous in many of its details that many persons do not know whether to decide that the Marquis was a crazy enthusiast or a swindler of the most cruel and unscrupulous description. New Ireland belongs to the Australasian group of island?, claimed by tho French, in the feouth Pacific ocean and lies almost directly west of Papua or New Guinea. Although in the interior there are fertile lands, tho coast-line is bold, sterile and inhospitable, while the natives arc almost entirely barbarous and hostile to ■white men. Port Breton lies in the south-western portion of tho island, and is about 400 miles from the French penal .settlement of New Caledonia. In J uly, 1877, tho Marquis de Kays, who is said to belong to an ancient Breton family, and to have Mich ;i passion for travelling that before tho age of 20 he had travelled over America and even attempted to found a "West African colony in Senegal, advcitised throughout France a .scheme for colouring Port Breton. Tic claimed that, he had obtained possession ox tho territory by a tieaty with Maraganio, King of Mew Ireland, who at first agreed to cede his lights ior 1530 franc-, but afterwards accepted, in lieu thereof!, two bales of tobacco, some bends, and a scarlet uniform. Intending colonists were offered feitilc land for about #] per hectare (nearly two and a half acres) and the Marquis painted for them bright pictures of speedy fortune.

UOKKIBLK TREATMENT OF THE COLONISTS. Subscription lists were opened in Europe, and were soon filled up by a number of small capitalists, chiefly hard-w orking agriculturists. In Paris 5,900,000 francs was subset ibed; in Havre, 990,000 francs; in Antwerp, 78,000 francs ; while in Brussels, Marseilles, and other cities, large sums Merc collected and sent to the Marquis de Eays. Styling himself King Charles 1., of the new colony and added to Jus gains by creating an order of nobility and selling titles, the Marquis aroused great enthusiasm among his, dupes, who became eager to start off at once for the land of promise. The vessel Chandevnagor was chartered by him and left a Dutch port with eighty-nine passengers. Then commenced the revelation of the fatuity of the romance. The company's ofiicials and the ship's crew were continually fighting and quarreling; the captain was a brutal drunkard, and the mate, a man named Sey hens, thoroughly incompetent to perform his duties. "Tho berths were mi etched, each consisting of a mattress and a sheet : the ship was iilthy, the diet was detestable, the biscuits being full of worms, the bacon putrid and the codfish covered with fungi." Passengers fell sick, but there was neither doctor nor medicinechest on board. Even this Mas not all. The captain called upon the emigrants to do the work of the crew, and if they refusod he had them triced up by the ! thumbs until they fainted, when they Mere levived by being deluged with buckets of salt water. 1) IS ATI I AXD.SUFFKUIXC ON Tl IK ISLAND. This wretched journey finished in January, ISSO. Sixteen men were put on shore at Laughlin Island with a small quantity of provisions and left th oi c. They could find neither fish nor game; the water was undrinkable, and tho ground was so rocky that cultivation was impossible. Four of them volunteered to go in search of assistance, and after thirty-five days' drifting about they reached Test Island, where they were relieved by some English missionaries. Many of those left behind died from starvation and despair, and the survivors were snbsequently rescued by an English gunboat and carried to Australia. The balance of the immigrants, or colonists, who had been carried to Port Breton, suffered similarly. The Marquis sent out from Europe another shipment of colonists, and only two of these Mere found to be alive when the ship India took out a third batch shortly afterwards. Still another crowd of men, women, and children to the number of ISO were sent out from Barcelona. Many of them Mere comparatively well-to-do and had paid large sums for settlements in Port Breton. At Singapore the captain heard rumours of the true state of affairs in Cape Breton, and tried to persuade the emigrants to go no further, but such was their confident enthusiasm in the colonization scheme that they persisted in their desire to be taken on to their destination.

"DEVOUKED BY CANNIBALS. Here is the public prosecutor's statement of what followed: — "On their arrival the colonists found at Port Breton, instead of a town, with churches, docks, and factories, two unfinished wooden buildings and a poor, half-famished Italian. This man related his sufferings on the adjacent isle of Bougainsville. He had five companions. These were killed and eaten by the native cannibals. He, too, would have shared the same fate but for his tears. The barbarian chief thought it so funny to see him weeping that he spared his life on condition that ho should weep or laugh whenever he was told to amuse the savages in that way. He was compelled to live on raw human flesh. He was rescued after three months' awful misery." This narrative was a terrible blow to the hopes of the sanguine colonists, who found Port Breton to be shut in by mountains, with an eight-months' rainy season, and absolutely without pasturage or arable land. They, too, saw starvation staring them in the face.

PREPARING HIS OWN COFFIN. The captain of the ship left for Manila, where he hoped to receive funds from the Marquis, and a batch of coolies, who would be useful in helping the colonists to found a settlement elsewhere than in Port Breton. Ho was absent four months, and found nothing from De Rays. Meanwhile the people left at Port Breton were suffering terribly from scarcity of food and malarial fever. Several persons died, and, finally, out of 170 survivors, only four men were left in health. One of these, a carpenter, was so certain of his approaching death that he made his own coffin and cut his name upon it. Shellfish cast among the rocks were literally devoured, and even the

rainwater that drenched them was a blessing, for it, at least, was drinkable. The Captain returned from Manila, took off all the survivors,and carried them to Sydney, where the ship had to be sold to pay expenses. Many children, whose parents had died at Port Breton, were compelled to wander through Australia and bog for charity, and, as the agent of the Marquis in Australia absconded without offering to provide a passage back to France for any of the unfortunate Port Breton colonists, the majority had to seek the assistance of the French Consuls, who brought the scandal prominently under the notice of the Home authorities, with the result that the Marquis de Hays finds himself to-day a prisoner in the criminal docks.