[Illustration: A HALT IN THE BRUSH.]

Perhaps as good an illustration of the purely absurd (according to
civilized notions) as can be imagined is a congregation of cannibals in
a missionary church weeping bitterly over the story of Calvary. Fresh
from their revolting feasts upon the flesh of their conquered enemies,
these gentle savages weep over the sufferings of One separated from them
by race, by distance, by almost every conceivable lack of the conditions
for natural sympathy, and by over eighteen hundred years of time! Surely
there must be hope for people who manifest such sensibility, and we may
fairly question whether cannibalism be necessarily the sign of the
lowest human degradation. A good deal of light is thrown upon the
subject by the writings of the young engineer, Jules Garnier, who was
lately charged by the French minister of the interior with a mission of
exploration in New Caledonia, the Pacific island discovered by Captain
Cook just one hundred years ago, and ceded to the French in 1853.

It is about three hundred and sixty miles from Sydney to New Caledonia,
a long, narrow island lying just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and
completely surrounded by belts of coral reef crenellated here and there,
and forming channels or passes where ships may enter. Navigation through
these channels is, however, exceedingly hazardous in any but calm
weather; and it was formerly thought that the island was on this account
practically valueless for colonization. Once inside them, however,
vessels may anchor safely anywhere, for there is in effect a continuous
roadstead all around the island. The passage through the narrow pass of
Dumbea, just outside of Noumea, affords a striking spectacle. On each
side of the ship is a wall of foam, and the reverberating thunder of the
waves dashing and breaking upon the jagged reefs keeps the mind in