Why France Wants to Abolish Its
"Land ofihz Living Dead''
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Five convicts from Devil’s Island who escaped by sea to Trinidad, photo*
graphed resting on their small boat. Convicts who reach Trinidad may
remain there for a time, and then are permitted to push on to any other
destination they select.
EDITORS NOTE: This is the
fourth of a series of six articles
dealing with the history of, and
conditions in, the famous French
penal colony in Guiana.
• * •
PARIS.
DEEP in their fevered hearts and
grievance-ridden brains, 5000
convicts in France’s penal col
ony ponder something which
they fantastically call “La Belle”—the
Beautiful.
“La Belle” is not a pretty girl. “La
Belle” is not wealth or position. “La
Belle" is, simply and solely, escape
Escape from jail, but, most of all, escape
from hopelessness. Escape from the
deadening limbo of the penal colony.
There is little or no prevention of
escape. The administration of the
“b; gne” blinks. The guards or keepers
let it go on. Secret fixers continue to
collect the funds—for “La Belle” is not
cheap. And convicts by the hundred
yearly take the road to liberty, more
likely to surrender or recapture, most
likely of all to death.
There are three general routes toward
freedom from the big convict center at
St. Laurent. One is across the Maroni
river, and thence by land into the heart
of the jungle. The Maroni is the boun
dary between French and Dutch Gui
ana. Maybe a stout-hearted convict can
win through to the Dutch ports, even to
British Guiana to the northwest, ev£n
to Venezuela, beyond the Orinoco.
The trouble with this route is the
fundame tal hazard of the jungle.
Beasts are in wait for the traveler.
Snakes, even small snakes, can kill him
with one thrust at his bare feet. Food
is lacking. Fever is always present.
Native tribes may be feared.
The overland route is the crudest of
all the cruel ways to freedom. Naked
men can thrash about the jungles for a
fortnight and suddenly find themselves
back where they started. They move
counter-clockwise; such is the law. So.
often, they move in circles.
By the end of 10 days the memory of
the “bagne” is like a heaven to ex
hausted, fever - ridden, forest - fogged
wanderers. They deliver themselves up
with joy The menace of the glooming
trees and the enemies that they con
ceal is too much. Hardly anybody finds
“La Belle” at the end of a jungle trail.
Not that the other routes are easy.
It is calculated that only one man in
10 makes his getaway. The rest perish.
They perish hard, by thirst, by sharks,
by tempest, by starvation; or they re
turn to try again.
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r PHE second route needs help. And
that means money.
A coast trader, sailing his “tapouille”
down ths meridians to Brazil, may pick
up the occupants of a fragile canoe toss
ing on the Atlantic billows beyond the
mouth of the Maroni. He will sail the
wanderers down to Para or farther.
Then it is a case of looking sharp. If a
convict has a trade, he is welcome.
The third and classic route is to Ven
ezuela via Trinidad. This is the normal
sea route for small craft because the
currents go that way.
By the law of the “bagne," a pris
oner’s time 14 his own from 5 o’clock in
the afternoon until 5 in the morning.
The tropic sundown comes sharp at 6.
A group of convicts lounges down the
village path at nightfall. A guard on
duty gazes the other way. Probably he
has been fixed.
Presently a tiny craft forges out into
Ihe great river from an obscure clump
of bankside brush and begins to drift
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- Many are the risks
V - M ' *■ 65* -«. „ devils of the sea route of
*’4er*f 7 ' ' rS ** «*_islano .
r escape, and many
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y U r { lose their lives in the
! R, T' S “ T Du7C “ \ FRENCH / attempt. The map
, GUIANA GLI 1 ANA \ GUIANA • *
SOUTH 'AMEHICA / shows the best route
I ■■ —— ——J for such ventures.
downstream. Only a helmsman is vis
ible from shore, the innocent figure of
a Chinaman, a native black, or some
other lawful individual. The bulwarks
hide whatever cargo the boat contains,
crouching men, a meager store of food.
Fugitives, reaching the mouth of the
'Maroni, may lie hidden for a few days
to mystify or exhaust pursuit. Sooner
or later, however, they must broach the
sea to make for Trinidad. At sea the
hell begins. Thirst, fever, hunger, shat
tering heat beating on cramped space,
and always looming the terrible might
of the sea in storm.
Innocent citizens of Trinidad, going
their peaceful ways under a slumbrous
moon, sometimes come upon a broken
ribbed boat stranded on their beaches,
filled with skeletons. Sometimes the
skeletons are alive, barely alive. If so,
they are lucky and will, for a few days
or weeks, be luckier still, for Trinidad
is more or less like a temporary garden
of Eden for fugitives from Cayenne.
Most dangerous way
•of escape is via the
“bush” and alliga
tor-infested river of
the Guiana jungle, as
this photograph hints.
r PRINIDAD is a British island. It has
*• no use for convicts, but at the same
time it has no particular desire to ac
commodate the governor of France’s
penal colony by sending them back.
A technical charge of vagrancy is
entered against them. Then charity and
a benevolent spirit step in. Representa
tives of the Howard Society, a species
of Salvation Army dealing principally
with convicts, welcome the strays. A
new boat is fitted out, if necessary, and
stores are contributed. Within a certain
time—the limit of Trinidad’s hospitality
—the fugitives embark agaift, better of!
than before. Their first objective has
been won. Their next is Venezuela.
Why Venezuela? The reasons go back
to the time when the late unlamented
Juan Vicente Gomez was dictator there,
and Venezuela lacked manual labor to
handle its oil boom. Candidates for
work were welcome.
Today conditions are different. Ven
ezuela does not receive the runaways
from French Guiana any more. The
police fire them back again.
Maybe the news hasn’t reached the
Maroni yet that Venezuela doesn’t give
a man the chance to become a rich, re
spected, gaudy resident, like the fab
ulous Dr. Bougras.
This Marseilles physician had been
sentenced to the “bagne,” for the mur
der of a long-time friend. He escaped
to Venezuela.
Soon people in France learned of Dr.
Bougras’ escape and, what was more
astonishing, of his appointment as
physician to the late Dictator Gomez.
He was lolling in influence, they heard,
and the medical profession in Caracas
was his debtor, his worshiper.
The fact of the matter is that Ven
ezuela has an excellent medical school
in Caracas, that nobody in the country
practices medicine without its permis
sion, and that Dr. Bougras was rele
gated to a tiny village on a small pearl
island, where he earns a modest living.
But for years to come, despite the
facts, Dr. Bougras will live in the an
nals of the French penal colony as the
man who has most brilliantly w’ooed
and won “La Belle”—that illusive, coy,
and fatal demoiselle called Liberty.
NF.XT WEEK: The tragic story of
“Mavdra” and of the evil Roussenq.