In an Unknown Prison Land: An account of convicts and colonists in New Caledonia with jottings out and homeGriffith, George Chetwynd
History
In an Unknown Prison Land: An account of convicts and colonists in New Caledonia with jottings out and home
Griffith, George Chetwynd
Crime; Criminals; New Caledonia -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Penal colonies -- New Caledonia
There are, however, two other celebrities left on Ducos. One of them
is a tall, erect, grizzled Arab, every inch a chieftain, even in his
prison garb. This is Abu-Mezrag-Mokrani, one of the leaders of the
Kabyle insurrection of 1871, a man who once had fifteen thousand desert
horsemen at his beck and call. Now he rules a little encampment in one
of the valleys of the peninsula, containing forty or fifty of his old
companions-in-arms, deported with him after the insurrection was put down.
When the Kanaka rebellion broke out in New Caledonia in 1878, Abu-Mezrag
volunteered to lead his men against the rebels in the service of France.
The offer was accepted and the old warriors of the desert acquitted
themselves excellently among the tree-clad mountains of “La Nouvelle.”
When the rebellion was over a petition for their pardon was sent to the
home government, but the remnant of them are still cultivating their
little patches of ground on Ducos.
The other surviving celebrity is known in Caledonia as the Caledonian
Dreyfus, and this is his story:
In 1888 Louis Chatelain was a _sous-officier_ of the line stationed
in Paris. He was dapper, good-looking, and a delightful talker. He
engaged the affections of a lady whose ideas as to expenditure were far
too expansive to be gratified out of the pay of a _sous-officier_. Poor
Chatelain got into debt, mortgaged or sold everything that he had, and
still the lady was unsatisfied. Finally, after certain recriminations,
and when he had given her everything but his honour, she suggested a
means by which he could make a fortune with very little trouble. She
had, it appears, made the acquaintance of a gentleman who knew some one
connected with a foreign army, who would give twenty thousand francs for
one of the then new-pattern Lebel rifles.
He entered into correspondence with the foreign gentleman, addressing
him—c/o the —— Embassy, Paris. His letters were stopped, opened,
photographed, and sent on. So were the replies. Then the negotiations
were suddenly broken off, Chatelain was summoned before the military
tribunal and confronted with the _pièces de conviction_. He confessed
openly, posing as a martyr to _la grande passion_—and his sentence was
deportation for life.
[Illustration: The remains of Henri Rochefort’s House.]
[Illustration: The Bedroom of Louis Chatelain, “The Caledonian Dreyfus”
in Ducos. The photographs on the wall and the one on the table are those
of the woman who ruined him.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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