[Illustration:  A Kanacka family traveling.]

After a long pause, during which the old Bourarte seemed lost in thought, he said, “It is true that my people revenged themselves.  They killed a good many, and among them one of your chiefs.  What is most strange about this war is, that three English colonists, who lived peacefully among us by their commerce and fishing, were taken by the French and shot.  Another Englishman, Captain Paddon, to whom I had sold many a cargo of sandal-wood, on learning the fate of his compatriots, fled on board a little boat with one Kanacka and a few provisions, got out to sea, and, as I have been told, actually gained the port of Sydney.”  This, it seems, is a historical fact.  It was a boat without a deck, and the distance is three hundred and sixty marine miles!

The result of the exploring mission of M. Garnier was not a discovery of gold-mines, as so many had hoped.  He is of the opinion that gold deposits are scarce in the island.  His report of the natives is on the whole favorable, and confirms the testimony of missionaries and others, that they are superior savages, easily civilized and Christianized, but from some cause or combination of causes fast dying out before the advance of civilization.  In some respects they are less rude than other South Sea Islanders, but they treat their women in much the same way.  M. Garnier gives us a photograph of a New Caledonia family on the road, the head of the family, a big, stolid brute apparently, burdened only with his club, while his wife staggers along under the combined load of sugar-canes, yams, dried fishes and other provisions.

A more revolting, but also, happily, a far rarer sight, was that of a cannibal banquet, of which M. Garnier was a concealed witness.  The scene was a thicket in the wildest portion of the country, and only the chiefs of the tribe, which had just gained a victory over its enemies, took part in the feast.  A blazing fire threw its bright glare on a dozen figures seated around huge banana-leaves, on which were spread the smoking viands of the diabolical repast.  A disgusting odor was wafted toward the spot where our Frenchman and his companions lay perdu, enchained by a horrible fascination which produced the sensation of nightmare.  Directly in front of them was an old chief with long white beard and wrinkled skin, who gnawed a head still covered with the singed hair.  Thrusting a pointed stick into the eye-sockets, he contrived to extract a portion of the brain, afterward placing the skull in the hottest part of the fire, and thus separating the bones to obtain a wider aperture.  The click of a trigger close to his ear recalled M. Garnier to his senses, and arresting the arm of his sergeant, who, excited to indignation, had brought his musket to his shoulder, he hurried from a scene calculated, beyond all others, to thrill the nerves and curdle the blood of a civilized spectator.