154 PROC. COTTESWOLD CLUB vol. xiii. (3) 



Straight and clear without a single branch, and scarcely 

 tapering at all until they reached a height of about 70 ft., 

 when a few strong branches stretched out and joined hands, 

 as it were, over the centre of the causeway. 



The Bishop told me he was going over to hold a Con- 

 firmation at Robben Island the following day, and invited 

 me to accompany him, a suggestion w^hich I most gladly 

 accepted, as in those days it was not easy to get leave to 

 go there. 



The island is certainly a most curious place. It is in- 

 habited entirely by lepers, convicts, lunatics and paupers. 

 At the time of my visit, there were in it about 120 lepers, 

 250 lunatics, 75 convicts and 50 paupers. It has been 

 used for lepers and lunatics for some 50 years, and until a 

 year or two ago the methods adopted here were primitive 

 in the extreme. For instance, till quite lately all the foul 

 linen from the lepers was carried by them to the female 

 lunatics, who washed it in cold water ; but the most dis- 

 gusting thing of all was that the same vehicle which was 

 used for conveying the corpses of lepers (the coffins are so 

 frail that they frequently burst en route) was immediately 

 aftervi^ards used for carrying about the food for the lunatics 

 and convicts. 



The lunatics were in the constant habit of resorting to 

 the leper settlement to clear out and devour scraps of 

 food left, after meals, by the lepers. And yet, notwith- 

 standing all this, I was assured most confidently that no 

 instance is on record in the island where a case of leprosy 

 can clearly be traced to contagion. 



However, everything has been altered now. I went 

 over the whole of the establishments, and no exception 

 could be taken to anything in any department. Everything 

 is clean, and there is a generous dietary, which is the same 

 for all, except that the convicts have half-a-pound of meat 

 a-day more than the others. The lepers do everything 



