THE DYING OUT OF THE POLYNESIAN RACES. 



255 



fectious by competent authorities. To prevent 

 all risk of infection, and to stamp out the heredi- 

 tary taint, which threatened to spread through 

 the whole community, the Hawaiian Legislature 

 about ten years ago took up the question in a 

 spirit at once patriotic and scientific. Under the 

 auspices of a Board of Health a leper settlement 

 was established in a secluded valley on the small 

 island of Molokai, to which all persons known to 

 be affected with leprosy were transported by of- 

 ficials appointed for the purpose. Considerable 

 difficulty was experienced at first in discovering 

 the unfortunate creatures, who were concealed 

 by their friends, and a more painful duty could 

 hardly be imposed upon a kindly Kanaka than to 

 surrender a companion to pass the remainder of 

 his days a hopeless exile in a lazaretto. But 

 the sternness of the law did not prevent the 

 Hawaiians from realizing its expediency, and the 

 necessity for its strict enforcement in the interest 

 of the public. Examples of self-devotion were 

 not wanting on the part of persons whose ex- 

 ternal symptoms of leprosy were so slight as to 

 escape detection, but who surrendered themselves 

 spontaneously in obedience to the law. Nothing 

 can well be more touching than the story told 

 by Miss Bird, in her book on the Hawaiian Archi- 

 pelago, of poor " Bill Ragsdale," whose generous 

 self-immolation savors rather of the antique Ro- 

 man than of the Kanaka. This talented half- 

 white, who had filled among other honorable of- 

 fices that of interpreter to the Hawaiian Legisla- 

 ture, avowed himself to be a leper before any 

 visible symptom betrayed him, and passed amid 

 universal lamentation from the joyous society of 

 Hilo to a living death at Kalawao. In that dis- 

 mal valley of Molokai he is now a ruler, by virtue 

 of his abilities ; but perhaps since the Odyssey 

 was composed the well-known words have never 

 been so applicable to any living mortal : 



"BovAovxijk k eirapovpo; s'ov Br)Tivep.sv aX\ia, 

 'AvSpl nap' aK\rjpu>, u> pLY) (Si'otos jtoAu; eirj. 

 *H iraa-iv vexveacrt. <ca.Ta<£0i. / u.eVoicru' avatraeiv.'''' 



Certainly the hardest life that a slave can lead 

 elsewhere seems preferable to that of Governor 

 Ragsdale, who now rules with beneficent and 

 almost absolute authority over seven hundred 

 lepers in every stage of a lingering but fatal dis- 

 ease. The last effort of his eloquence, when bid- 

 ding farewell to his weeping friends, was to urge 

 submission to the stringent measures taken by 

 the Government for the purpose of stamping out 

 leprosy. The law for the seclusion of lepers has 

 been enforced without distinction of rank or 



! nationality, and in the course of eight years more 

 than eleven hundred persons have been trans- 

 ported to Molokai; of these a large proportion 

 died within a short time of their arrival, but in 

 1874 there remained alive more than seven hun- 

 dred Although all hope must be abandoned by 

 those who enter Kalawao, the natural cheerful- 

 ness of the Kanakas seems not to desert them 

 even there, and a visit from the king and queen 

 caused no little rejoicing among the lepers. The 

 support of these unfortunate exiles entails a heavy 

 burden on a small community like Hawaii, with 

 a diminishing revenue and an increasing expendi- 

 ture. The burden, however, will soon be removed 

 by the hand of death, and no item in an annual 

 outlay of some $600,000 is less worthy of being 

 expunged than the cost of the leper settlement. 

 The courage and liberality displayed in grappling 

 with this national curse are worthy of the emula- 

 tion of advanced European governments. 



In explanation of the disinclination to steady 

 labor which characterizes the Polynesian, and dis- 

 tinguishes him in so marked a manner from the 

 Chinese, it must be borne in mind that the islands 

 of the Pacific are very much under-peopled, and 

 that almost all of them lie between the tropics, 

 and enjoy a climate in which existence is happi- 

 ness and exertion is pain. As for the natives of 

 New Zealand, whose climate may be compared to 

 that of Italy, they are, indeed, more energetic 

 and warlike than the gentle Kanakas of the tropi- 

 cal islands, but their close resemblance in charac- 

 ter, appearance, and language, indicates a very 

 recent separation from their northern cousins. 

 The Maoris themselves affirm that their original 

 home was a country named Ilawaiiki, in the far 

 north, and at Roto Iti is still exhibited an elabo- 

 rately-carved canoe with fifteen benches, in which 

 the ancestors of the Arawa tribe are said to have 

 crossed the ocean. " Te Arawa " is the largest 

 native craft which I saw in New Zealand, and it 

 is about as seaworthy as a university eight-oar. 

 On board European vessels the Maoris prove 

 themselves to be bold and skillful seamen, but in 

 naval architecture they are inferior even to the 

 black islanders of Melanesia. The seas around 

 New Zealand are swept by gales very different 

 from the soft trade-winds of the tropical Pacific, 

 and the transport of provisions and water suffi- 

 cient for a long voyage in a canoe across these 

 seas seems to be an impossibility. On the map 

 the islands of Polynesia appear to lie thickly 

 sprinkled, but in reality they are so few and so 

 small as to occupy a space almost inappreciable 



