Islands for Sale

To the early French settlers in the new South American colony of Guiana in the 18th century, the three tropical islands rising out of the water a few miles off the coast were a sight to behold. According to legend, the largest and most beautiful they named Royale in honor of their sovereign, King Louis XV. The second was named St. Joseph after the patron saint of their voyage, and the third was named Devil's Island because of the angry sea around it. But when the settlers christened the cluster as a whole, they became the authors of one of history's ironies: they called the group the Islands of Salvation.

In 1848, when France abolished slavery, the oldest of its colonies found itself in desperate need of cheap labor. Since the next best thing to a black slave was a white convict, the Islands of Salvation became a part of the most notorious penal colony in the world. Over the next century, 70,000 Frenchmen were to learn what it meant to be sentenced to the "dry guillotine," but not more than 2,000 lived long enough to get back to France.

On the mainland, the wretched prisoners--guarded always by the thick jungle, the malarial swamps, the shark-infested waters around them--worked the plantations, cleared the forests, built the roads.

But the islands had a special character of their own. On St. Joseph were the solitary underground cells for the incos (incor-rigibles)--concrete tombs with openings at the top for the guards to spy through. On Royale stood the notorious Crimson Barracks, so named because of the killings that took place after the guards bolted the great iron door at 6 each evening. And on Devil's Island were the lonely huts of the political prisoners, in one of which Captain Alfred Dreyfus spent four years.

The Dreyfus Case spread the infamous name of Devil's Island all over the world, but the prisoners, often shrunken to 70 or 80 lbs., worked and died as before. At night, a "bar of justice" would hold the incos manacled to plank beds, and on execution days the prisoners would be forced to kneel around the guillotine to watch.

But finally, in 1953, a ship carrying 88 prisoners back to France landed at Bordeaux--the last survivors.

On the islands the thick walls became mildewed and pocked, the plank beds began to rot, and rust spread slowly over the huge locks and chains. Last week the deserted colony was put up for public auction. It was one of a number of "chattels"--a dry canal, 15 coast guard stations, five silos, two restaurants, two sand dunes, 43 prisons--that the French government is eager to get rid of, and in this case, anxious to forget.

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