The influx of convicts produced many projects for their employment over and above the development of Noumea. Following the practice that had prevailed in Guiana, agricultural settlements, half farm, half prison, were established at various points on the mainland. One of the first of these was at Bourail, about a hundred miles from the capital. Another was founded nearer home at Ourail, on the mouth of the Foa. A third was at Canala, on the opposite and northern shore of the island. A fourth was at its eastern end, in the Bay of Prony. Besides these a number of smaller stations were distributed at various points through the colony. The works undertaken were everywhere much of the same kind. At Bourail the sugar cane was cultivated, and various vegetables; at Canala, rice, maize and coffee; at Ourail the land was poor, and the settlement was moved further up the river to Fonway, where the raising of tobacco, and the cultivation of fruit trees and the quinine bush were attempted; at the Bay of Prony the convicts became woodcutters to supply fuel for the rest of the colony. The inner life of one of the smaller stations, the labour camp of Saint Louis, has been graphically described by M. Mayer, a political transport, who published the "Souvenirs d'un Deporté," relating his personal experiences, on his return to France. This camp consisted of 124 convicts, a heterogeneous collection, herded together indiscriminately in the wretched _cases_, or straw-thatched huts, the prevailing prison architecture of New Caledonia. Among these, of whom forty were political and non-criminal convicts, there were twenty-six Arabs, four Chinamen and two negroes. Several notorious desperadoes, Frenchmen born, were associated with the rest. One had been at the head of a band of poisoners of Marseilles; another, who had murdered a girl in Paris, had been arrested and sentenced during the Commune by a Communist commissary, who, by a strange fate, was now his comrade convict in this same camp of Saint Louis. Except for the scantiness of diet and the enforced association with the worst criminals, M. Mayer did not find the work hard. The hours of labour varied; the daily minimum was eight, the maximum from ten to twelve. But the work performed was desultory and generally unproductive. The principal aim was to clear the land by removing the rocks, which were afterward broken up for road-making material. The supervision was lax and ineffective; the few warders were most active in misappropriating rations. The chief warder himself, who had a fine garden and poultry yard, stole the wine and soft bread issued for the sick. Many convicts eked out their meagre fare by cooking roots and wild fruits, _pommes de lianes_ and Caledonian saffron.