One man was lying down scraping with bleeding fingers at the black asphalted floor under the impression that he was burrowing his way to freedom; others were sitting or lying on the floor motionless as death; and others sprang at the bars like wild beasts the moment the door was opened. But the most horrible sight I saw during that very bad quarter of an hour was a gaunt-faced, square-built man of middle-height who got up out of a corner as his cell door opened, and stood in the middle facing us. He never moved a muscle, or winked an eyelid. His eyes looked at us with the steady, burning stare of hate and ferocity. His lips were drawn back from his teeth like the lips of an ape in a rage, and his hands were half clenched like claws. The man was simply the incarnation of madness, savagery, and despair. He had gone mad in the Black Cell, and the form that his madness had taken was the belief that nothing would nourish him but human flesh. Of course he had to be fed by force. When we got outside a big warder pulled up his jumper and showed me the marks of two rows of human teeth in his side. If another man hadn’t stunned the poor wretch with the butt of his revolver he would have bitten the piece clean out—after which I was glad when the Doctor suggested that I should go to his quarters and have a drink with him. V _A CONVICT ARCADIA_ I visited two or three other industrial camps and the farm-settlements before I left Ile Nou, but as I had yet to go through the agricultural portions of the colony it would be no use taking up space in describing them here. There are practically no roads to speak of in New Caledonia outside a short strip of the south-western coast. In September, 1863, Napoleon the Little signed the decree which converted the virgin paradise of New Caledonia into a hell of vice and misery—a description which is perhaps somewhat strong, but which history has amply justified. In the following year the transport _Iphigénie_ took a cargo of two hundred and forty-eight galley-slaves from Toulon and landed them where the town of Noumea now stands. This consignment was added to by rapidly following transports, and for thirty years at least the administration of New Caledonia has had at its disposal an average of from seven to ten thousand able-bodied criminals for purposes of general improvement, and more especially for the preparation of the colony for that free colonisation which has been the dream of so many ministers and governors. Now the area of New Caledonia is, roughly speaking, between six thousand and seven thousand square miles, and after an occupation of nearly forty years it has barely fifty miles of roads over which a two-wheeled vehicle can be driven, and these are only on the south-western side of the island.