268

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

chap.

XXIV.

1699 .

silver. On tlie whole, the new comers succeeded in makingfriends of the aboriginal race. One mighty monarch, theLewis the Great of the isthmus, who wore with pride a capof white reeds lined with red silk and adorned with an os-trich feather, seemed well inclined to the strangers, re-ceived them hospitably in a palace built of canes andcovered with palmetto royal, and regaled them with cala-bashes of a sort of ale brewed from Indian corn and po-tatoes. Another chief set his mark to a treaty of peace andalliance with the colony. A third consented to become avassal of the Company, received with great delight a com-mission embellished with gold thread and flowered riband,and swallowed to the health of his new masters not a fewbumpers of their own brandy.

Meanwhile the internal government of the colony wasorganised according to a plan devised by the directors atEdinburgh. The settlers were divided into bands of fiftyor sixty: each band chose a representative; and thus wasformed an assembly which took the magnificent name ofParliament. This Parliament speedily framed a curiouscode. The first article provided that the precepts, in-structions , examples, commands and prohibitions ex-pressed and contained in the Holy Scriptures should havethe full force and effect of laws in New Caledonia, an en-actment which proves that those who drew it up either didnot know what the Holy Scriptures contained or did notknow what a law meant. There is another provision whichshows not less clearly how far these legislators were from