Note 911 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

Many of these penal islands seem chosen with a view to their severe or unhealthy climate, which would forever repel free immigration and therefore render them useless for any other purpose. This is true of the French Isles du Salut off the Guiana coast, of Spanish Fernando Po in the Gulf of Guinea, of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, notoriously unhealthy, which receive the criminals of British India,911 and of numerous others. A bleak climate and unproductive soil have added to the horror of exile life in Sakhalin, as they overshadowed existence in the Falkland Islands, when these were a penal colony of Spain and later of Argentine.912