Then I went to the Direction, and in a few minutes I was sitting in a half-darkened, comfortable room, with double doors, through which no sound could penetrate. This room is the centre of the system which really controls the destinies of bond and free throughout New Caledonia. On the other side of an ample writing-table sat a square-headed, strong-jawed man of about five-and-thirty, with close-cropped hair, and moustache and shaven chin _à l’Anglais_. This was M. Edouard Telle, Director of the Penitentiary Administration for New Caledonia and Dependencies, the strongest, politest, and most friendly Frenchman I have ever met. He is supreme chief of an army of commandants, surveillants, and jailors, whose duty it is to keep watch and ward over between ten thousand and twelve thousand convicts, _relégues_ and _libérés_—terms which I have already explained. He is absolutely independent of the Governor, who cannot even employ convicts on public works without his permission. He is responsible to no one but the Minister of Colonies and the President of the Republic, and they are many a long thousand miles away. With the stroke of a pen he could instantly stop all convict labour throughout the colony, and so bring its principal industries to a standstill. It was he, too, and not the Governor, who could have issued that ukase which would have closed the prisons and turned my long journey into a wild-goose chase. [Illustration: In the Harbour, Noumea.] But, instead of this, he took quite as much trouble with me as if I had been an inspector sent out by the French Government, rather than a wandering Englishman who was only there on sufferance. He took the utmost pains to find out exactly what I wanted; he mapped out my journeys for me; gave me special passes authorising me to inspect all the prisons and camps _en détail_—which is a very different thing to the ordinary, but still rarely bestowed, visitor’s pass. He addressed a circular letter to the commandants, enjoining them to do everything to help me; and, not content with this, he telegraphed to each prison and camp so that conveyances might be ready for me. At the same time, when I suggested fixing dates, he replied: “No, Mr. Griffith, go when you please. I wish you to see the establishments exactly as they are always, and not as they might be if they were got ready for you. When you have seen them come back and tell me what you think of them. From what you have told me of your English prisons”—this was at the end of a somewhat long conversation—“your opinion will be most valuable to me.” Then I thanked him, and mentioned the delicate subject of photographs, and his good nature and indulgence once move proved equal to the strain. “Photograph anything you please,” he said, “inside or outside the prisons; but I shall ask you to remember that good English rule of yours about photographing individual prisoners.”