This was just the beginning of the German occupation. During the bombardment the first shot fired from the German warship had wrecked the German Consulate on the beach instead of hitting the hills beyond, where Mataaffa’s men were supposed to be concealed; and this, with other things, seemed to have produced a bad impression in the minds of the natives. At any rate, after the second whistle had gone, when the band played “God Save the Queen” and the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the Samoans sang their versions of the words for all their lungs were worth, but when, in deference to the presence of the German Consul on board, an attempt was made at “Die Wacht am Rhein,” there was first a deadly silence and then a deep-voice “hoo-o-o,” which I interpreted as being the Samoan for “come out of it,” or words to that effect. This, by the way, is a humble, but by no means unmeaning “footnote to history.” Part II _PRISON LAND_ A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON CONVICTS AND COLONISTS There are not many portions of the sea-realm of Oceania, or, indeed, of the whole Southern Hemisphere, of which the name is so well and the history so little known as New Caledonia. Throughout Europe, not excepting even France, it has for fifty years been the name of a convict station. To the _forçat_ and the _relégué_ its name meant something even worse than the traditions of the old galleys could tell of. It meant banishment over an illimitable stretch of ocean; and, through the hazes of distance, the French criminal, caged in the penal transport, saw horrors unspeakable. To him it was the Land of the Chain, of the Lash, and the Guillotine, a hell upon earth, a paradise of Nature transformed by despotism into an inferno of crime and cruelty, and, above all, it was the Land of Banishment. In earlier times it really was something like what the _evadés_ who had reached Australia, through a thousand miles of sea-peril and starvation, described it to be. It will be seen from the chapters which follow that all this has long ago been done away with, but even now the commandants of the various camps are careful to remind the visitor from the other ends of the earth, that not the least part of the punishment of transportation to New Caledonia consists in the fact of banishment for many years, perhaps for ever from France.