As a rule the petition is granted, plus a free passage, unless the woman has friends who can pay. Generally the experiment turns out a success. The woman gets into service or a business, or perhaps marries a _liberé_ or concessionnaire, and so wins her way back not only to respectability as it goes in Caledonia, but sometimes to comfort and the possession of property which she can leave to her children. As a matter of fact, the proprietress of the little hotel at the port was one of these women. She had come out with a few hundred francs that her friends had subscribed. She now owns the hotel, which does an excellent business, a freehold estate of thirty or forty acres, and she employs fifteen Kanakas, half a dozen convicts, and a Chinaman—who is her husband, and works harder than any of them. The anecdote hinged somewhat closely on the fact, and was itself a fact. There is a weekly market at Bourail, to which the convict farmers bring their produce and such cows, horses, calves, etc., as they have to sell. Every two or three years their industry is stimulated and rewarded by the holding of an agricultural exhibition, and, as a rule, the Governor goes over to distribute the prizes. One of these exhibitions had been held, I regret to say, a short time before my arrival, and the Governor who has the work of colonisation very seriously at heart, made speeches both appropriate and affecting to the various winners as they came to receive their prizes. At length a hoary old scoundrel, who had developed into a most successful stock-breeder, and had become quite a man of means, came up to receive his prizes from his Excellency’s hands. M. Feuillet, as usual, made a very nice little speech, congratulating him on the change in his fortunes, which, by the help of a paternal government, had transformed him from a common thief and vagabond to an honest and prosperous owner of property. So well did his words go home that there were tears in the eyes of the reformed reprobate when he had finished, but there were many lips in the audience trying hard not to smile when he replied: “_Ah, oui, mon Gouverneur!_ if I had only known what good chances an unfortunate man has here I would have been here ten years before.” What his Excellency really thought on the subject is not recorded. The hotel was crowded that night for the steamer was to sail for Noumea, as usual, at five o’clock in the morning; but as Madame was busy she was kind enough to give up her own chamber to me; and so I slept comfortably to the accompaniment of a perfect bombardment of water on the corrugated iron roof. Others spread themselves on tables and floors as best they could, and paid for accommodation all the same.