The New York Times, June 23, 1870
New York, New York
BRITISH GUIANA AND TRINIDAD
The number of coolies resident in British Guiana in 1861 was about 35,000, and in the same year it was 18,488 in Trinidad. In the season of 1861-2, there were 10,8880 landed in the West Indies; in the next four seasons, about 5,000 per annum, and 9.697 in the seasons 1866-7, the last season of which we have statistics at hand.
RESULT OF COOLIE LABOR IN
The result of the employment of the coolie has not been so remarkable in this colony as in the Mauritius, for while the planters in the latter colony have been desirous of developing its resources to the utmost extent, those of the former appear to have been content with the supply of an an amount of labor merely sufficient to fill the deficiency caused by the desertion of the negroes from the estates, and this, as the colony is one hundred times the area of the Mauritius and contains tens of thousands of square miles of rich virgin land, exhibits a great want of enterprise or of capital. But many of the obstacles to the obtainment of laborers and the distress caused by emancipation in Guiana were unknown in the Mauritius. The statistics of its exports will tell he story. When the compulsory labor of the negro was drawing to a close in 1838, the second year of the apprenticeship system, there were exported from Guiana 67,929 hogsheads of sugar, 34,485 puncheons of rum and 48,043 puncheons of molasses. In 1830, during the last five months of which the negroes had become entirely free, the falling off in exports from those of two years previous was about one fourth, and in the following year, 1839, the exports were only about half what they had been in 1836, the deficit in value at the prices which colonial produce then realized being nearly $5,750,000; for, notwithstanding that in this colony every mechanical contrivance that could be devised to ease manual labor had been introduced, it was almost impossible to prevail upon the negroes to work. Coolie labor has been the sole means of not only restoring to the colony its lost productive power, but it has latterly enabled it to considerably exceed its exports of 1886—those of 1865 being 80,262 hogsheads of sugar, 31,406 puncheons of rum and 4,565 puncheons of molasses—nearly the whole of it being the production of coolie labor.
BRITISH GUIANA.
The New York Herald
New York, New York
June 23, 1870
In British Guiana, in 1840 fifty-eight out of eighty estates were abandoned, and many thousand acres of the most fertile soil was lying waste for want of hands to cultivate it. Various schemes were proposed to supply the colony with laborers, but none ware carried out except that of following on a small scale the lead of the Mauritius and the importation in 1838 or 39 coolies from Calcutta, under contract for five years service at the rate of two and a hall dollars per month, with rations, lodging, clothing, medical attendance and medicines. Unfortunately, from due care having been omitted in the selection of these laborers and from proper precaution not being taken upon their arrival to prevent the diseases which are engendered by increase of food and change of climate, there was at first much sickness and a few deaths among these immigrants. This led to the putting into force of important and stringent sanitary regulations, which had very beneficial results and caused the coolies to execute their work well and with great cheerfulness. But notwithstanding that there were millions of coolies starving in Hindostan and eager for employment, and that besides the abandoned estates in British Guiana there were in that colony hundreds of thousands of acres of virgin soil open for cultivation, the Anti-Slavery Society now stepped in to prevent any further importation of coolies, upon the old plea that such introduction "must take away from the negroes the fair reward of their toil!"
The Evening News, February 5, 1895
Lincoln, Nebraska
The Land to Which Captain Dreyfus Has Been Banished
HORRORS OF A CONVICT COLONY.
French Guiana Is Worse Even Than Siberia—The Climate Murderous, the Guards Merciless and Escape Practically Impossible—The Transport Ships
Graphically portrayed as the
of Siberian exiles have been, they cannot
surpass the horrors of banishment to the
Iles de Salut, where France has begun to
send her anarchists and hardened felons
It Is here that Captain Dreyfus, the
Frenchman who was recently convicted of
treason in having revealed to German officers the plans of French fortifications and other secrets, will be taken to spend the remainder of his life.
The fierce tropical sun and ever humid here would of themselves speedily suffice to kill any but the hardiest, but when to these is added cruel and unremitting toil it is no wonder that the miserable exiles seek swifter death at the hands of their merciless guards, whose orders are to shoot and kill at the first sign of insubordination. France has thus inflicted on the traitor the most dreadful punishment in her power.
These "Islands of Safety" are three in number and lie a few degrees north of the equator, off the coast of French Guiana, South America. They are small in area and, except for their narrow maritime selvage, are covered with dense tropical forests.
The climate is murderous. To stand bareheaded In the blazing sun for a moment's space is certain death. The wet season lasts eight months, from November to June, and the average rainfall during this time is 180 inches, four times as much as in New York City. The mercury never drops below 85 degrees F. and climbs to 116 degrees during the four dry months. The atmosphere is always so charged 'with moisture and poisonous exhalations that it seems like an ill smelling Turkish bath. It has been estimated that, should all the fluvial outlets to French Guiana be blocked, a single wet season would be sufficient to submerge the country to the depth of 15 or 16 feet.
In 1852 France began deporting to Guiana criminals from her possessions in Asia and Africa, and until recently the convict colony consisted almost entirely of Arabs and Anamites, the white malefactors being sent to New Caledonia, where the climate is less severe. Since 1892, however, the most hardened French criminals have been sent to Guiana, and less than a year ago a law was passed authorizing the banishment to the Iles de Salut of anarchists and the like, instead of mercifully guillotining them.
The voyage on the convict transport lasts a month, and its horrors are a fit preparation for those to come. The prisoners, already dressed in their convict garb, are confined pellmell in companies of 50 in great iron cages on the spar deck. These cages are lined on their four sides with benches, and at night hammocks arc slung. Day and night the guards stand beside loaded mitrailleuses, ready to fire at the first sign of rebellion.
Those prisoners whom a life of misery or long sojourning in prisons has hardened pass the time at first shouting, singing obscene songs, jesting at the sad newcomers and mocking at the frightful and unknown fate toward which they are going, for the echoes which reach the outer world are faint, and those who return from the convict colony of Guiana are few. The novices in crime, the "bleus," in whom still lingers some sense of shame and humiliation, and who are yet bound by memories to the soil of France, sit silently huddled together on the benches, dreaming of the expiation of their misdeeds which has now begun.
But when the ship begins to roll upon the open sea, the prisoners, pale and fainting from illness, cease their noisy jests and songs, and the scene becomes too repulsive for description . . . Sometimes there are outbreaks on those convict ships. Eight weeks ago, the transport Ville de Saint Nazmire took from the Iles d'Aix 130 felons and 170 who had been condemned to banishment for political crimes. Among the number were four well known anarchists named Lautier, Marpraux, Catineac and Golombat. As they neared Guiana, an exile named Gaouyer broke the rules, and when the guard, ordered by the commandment, came to put him in irons, Gaouyer sprang upon and attempted to strangle him.
The guard, however, succeeded in drawing his revolver and firing, and Gaouyer fell mortally wounded. Seeing this, the other prisoners, incited by the anarchists above named, attempted to break from their cages, but the officers drenched them with water and suffocated them with steam from pipes especially placed for such an emergency, and they were subdued . . .
From the moment of his arrival, the convict has no name. He is known only by the number of his hammock . . .The new arrivals are put at the most severe tasks—draining marshes and clearing ground—to break their spirits . . . about their heads hang clouds of stinging insects, who bites swell their faces and hands. Great red ants cover their bare legs, and sometimes poisonous serpents twist about their ankles and inflict mortal wounds . . . some lose hope, go mad and die from deliberately exposing themselves to the fierce rays of the tropic sun.
Occasionally one finds in the Paris papers a paragraph like the following from a recent number of The Petit Journal:
"The governor of Guiana has just addressed a report to the government, stating that the convicts on the Iles de Salut, incited by the anarchists confined there, resulted on the nights of the 21st and 22nd of October, struck down and killed two guards—Mosea and Cretellaz—killed an overseer and seriously wounded two others. It was necessary to call out all the troops to quell the revolt, which threatened to become, successful, and in the brief struggle 12 of the exiles perished. It appears that, an anarchist named Pini was the ringleader in this revolt. He found it easier to work upon the feelings of the newly arrived prisoners, who were super excited by the rude sufferings of the voyage and the first glimpses of the terrible life which they must thenceforth lead, than those in whom all hope of escape had long since died."
For convicts to escape alive from the mainland or island colonies in French Guiana is rare, and there is but one case of any having reached civilization again. Two years ago four felons, criminals of the most hardened type, succeeded in eluding the vigilance of their guards one night and escaping. They were Paul Parizot, Henri Helyot, Cahmuzeau and one other who died upon the march through the forest. They had been banished to a settlement some distance from the coast, on the Maroni river, which divides French from Dutch Guiana. By means of a raft they proceeded down this river for some distance and then struck into the dense tropical forest. There they wandered for 23 days, armed with nothing but clubs and beset by dangers on every hand. At night they lit fires to frighten away the savage beasts and monkeys and serpents, with which the forests swarmed.
When their provisions, were exhausted, they lived on herbs and fruits, and after unspeakable hardships the three above named succeeded in reaching Paramaribo, the capital of the Dutch possessions. There they were arrested by the Dutch authorities, who set them to work in the gold mines. Cahmuzeau was the first to escape and reached the coast, where he embarked in a little boat and drifted out to sea. For many days he lived on raw fish and drank brackish water until, more dead than alive, be was picked up by an English tramp steamer which landed him in New York. Ho finally reached Antwerp, and shortly afterward Paris, where ho resumed his old profession of housebreaking and for a time escaped arrest.
About 3 o'clock in the morning of the 7th of July Mile. Busse, a dramatic artist living in the Rue dc la Pompe, was awakened by the sound of footsteps. She had scarcely lighted the candle when a man threw himself upon her, stifling with his hand her cries and demanding her purse. Frightened out of her senses, the poor girl let him take it from the mantel. It contained 42 francs. By a happy chance she identified Cahmuzcau as the thief, and lie received the maximum sentence of 20 years at hard labor in Guiana. Cahmuzeau's two companions also escaped from their Dutch captors, and Parinot reached Guatemala, where, the country being in full revolution, he took service on an insurgent vessel as engineer and later aa a locomotive fireman. Having saved 1,200 francs and being homesick for France and Paris, the scene of his former exploits, he returned to that city. His savings were almost spent, when one day he met face to face on the Boulevard Montmarte his former comrade Helyot, whom he had believed dead. Together they resume their old trade of thieving and four weeks later, as they were going along the Rue Colbert, they were stopped by two inquisitive detectives . . . on hearing his sentence of deportation to French Guiana for 20 years, Heylot remarked nonchantly, "Oh, I'll get away again. You can't keep me there."
Georgetown
Georgetown lies below the high-tide level, protected by a seawall ( photo)
with a series of canals crisscrossing the city. Located on the mouth of
the Demerara River fronting the Atlantic Ocean, Georgetown, originally
called Stabroek, was an ideal location for European presence in the Caribbean.
Rich in timber, bauxite, gold and diamonds, the land supported sugar cane
plantations and enriched the colonial governments. The Spanish, Dutch,
French and English all had their eyes on this region and for years each
struggled to possess it. The Dutch initially gained the upper hand and
established Stabroek on the lines of any tidy, Dutch city.
The British
occupied the Dutch colony during the Napoleonic Wars and renamed the capital,
and largest city, in 1812 as Georgetown in honor of George III. This was
convenient for the British who were also fighting what they termed the
“American War” and what is known in the US as the War of 1812.
