When the Snark sailed along the windward coast of Molokai, on her way to Honolulu, I looked at the chart, then pointed to a low-lying peninsula backed by a tremendous cliff varying from two to four thousand feet in height, and said: "The pit of hell, the most cursed place on earth." I should have been shocked, if, at that moment, I could have caught a vision of myself a month later, ashore in the most cursed place on earth and having a disgracefully good time along with eight hundred of the lepers who were likewise having a good time.Their good time was not disgraceful; but mine was, for in the midst of so much misery it was not meet for me to have a good time.That is the way I felt about it, and my only excuse is that Icouldn't help having a good time.
For instance, in the afternoon of the Fourth of July all the lepers gathered at the race-track for the sports.I had wandered away from the Superintendent and the physicians in order to get a snapshot of the finish of one of the races.It was an interesting race, and partisanship ran high.Three horses were entered, one ridden by a Chinese, one by an Hawaiian, and one by a Portuguese boy.All three riders were lepers; so were the judges and the crowd.The race was twice around the track.The Chinese and the Hawaiian got away together and rode neck and neck, the Portuguese boy toiling along two hundred feet behind.Around they went in the same positions.
Halfway around on the second and final lap the Chinese pulled away and got one length ahead of the Hawaiian.At the same time the Portuguese boy was beginning to crawl up.But it looked hopeless.
The crowd went wild.All the lepers were passionate lovers of horseflesh.The Portuguese boy crawled nearer and nearer.I went wild, too.They were on the home stretch.The Portuguese boy passed the Hawaiian.There was a thunder of hoofs, a rush of the three horses bunched together, the jockeys plying their whips, and every last onlooker bursting his throat, or hers, with shouts and yells.Nearer, nearer, inch by inch, the Portuguese boy crept up, and passed, yes, passed, winning by a head from the Chinese.I came to myself in a group of lepers.They were yelling, tossing their hats, and dancing around like fiends.So was I.When I came to Iwas waving my hat and murmuring ecstatically: "By golly, the boy wins! The boy wins!"I tried to check myself.I assured myself that I was witnessing one of the horrors of Molokai, and that it was shameful for me, under such circumstances, to be so light-hearted and light-headed.But it was no use.The next event was a donkey-race, and it was just starting; so was the fun.The last donkey in was to win the race, and what complicated the affair was that no rider rode his own donkey.They rode one another's donkeys, the result of which was that each man strove to make the donkey he rode beat his own donkey ridden by some one else, Naturally, only men possessing very slow or extremely obstreperous donkeys had entered them for the race.One donkey had been trained to tuck in its legs and lie down whenever its rider touched its sides with his heels.Some donkeys strove to turn around and come back; others developed a penchant for the side of the track, where they stuck their heads over the railing and stopped; while all of them dawdled.Halfway around the track one donkey got into an argument with its rider.When all the rest of the donkeys had crossed the wire, that particular donkey was still arguing.He won the race, though his rider lost it and came in on foot.And all the while nearly a thousand lepers were laughing uproariously at the fun.Anybody in my place would have joined with them in having a good time.
All the foregoing is by way of preamble to the statement that the horrors of Molokai, as they have been painted in the past, do not exist.The Settlement has been written up repeatedly by sensationalists, and usually by sensationalists who have never laid eyes on it.Of course, leprosy is leprosy, and it is a terrible thing; but so much that is lurid has been written about Molokai that neither the lepers, nor those who devote their lives to them, have received a fair deal.Here is a case in point.A newspaper writer, who, of course, had never been near the Settlement, vividly described Superintendent McVeigh, crouching in a grass hut and being besieged nightly by starving lepers on their knees, wailing for food.This hair-raising account was copied by the press all over the United States and was the cause of many indignant and protesting editorials.Well, I lived and slept for five days in Mr.McVeigh's "grass hut" (which was a comfortable wooden cottage, by the way; and there isn't a grass house in the whole Settlement), and I heard the lepers wailing for food--only the wailing was peculiarly harmonious and rhythmic, and it was accompanied by the music of stringed instruments, violins, guitars, ukuleles, and banjos.Also, the wailing was of various sorts.The leper brass band wailed, and two singing societies wailed, and lastly a quintet of excellent voices wailed.So much for a lie that should never have been printed.The wailing was the serenade which the glee clubs always give Mr.
McVeigh when he returns from a trip to Honolulu.
Leprosy is not so contagious as is imagined.I went for a week's visit to the Settlement, and I took my wife along--all of which would not have happened had we had any apprehension of contracting the disease.Nor did we wear long, gauntleted gloves and keep apart from the lepers.On the contrary, we mingled freely with them, and before we left, knew scores of them by sight and name.The precautions of simple cleanliness seem to be all that is necessary.
On returning to their own houses, after having been among and handling lepers, the non-lepers, such as the physicians and the superintendent, merely wash their faces and hands with mildly antiseptic soap and change their coats.
