138 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



hurriedly but carefully bearing the ghastly object thrown 

 across his shoulder. F. saw it first, and hastily pointed 

 out of the opposite window at anything or nothing to divert 

 my attention, but he was just too late by a second : the 

 sight was, indeed, enough to haunt one ever after, and it 

 made us feel quite sick. The fact itself seemed unaccount- 

 able till we learned that a hospital for lepers had been 

 started in the neighbourhood by some nuns, an old fortress 

 perched high on a hill having been converted into a convent 

 for this purpose. Far from appreciating the boon, the 

 relatives of those they succoured sometimes stole them 

 away, as perhaps in the present instance. 



Nature is said to have her antidote for every poison, her 

 remedy for every disease. Her cure for leprosy has not as 

 yet been discovered. Such a quest would seem a more 

 worthy employment for great intellects than the devising 

 of engines of destruction and death. That cure, perhaps, 

 lies in the direction of radium. 



I have seen the afflicted creatures in the great leper hos- 

 pital — colony, rather — at the French settlement of Pondi- 

 cherry. They were behind walls so high that one could see 

 over them only from such a place as that in which I was 

 then living, namely, a roof-house ; not the roof of a house, 

 merely, but a suite of rooms on the roof — a very coveted 

 suite it was, too. This commanded a view of both the 

 buildings — for men and for women — and of the park-like 

 grounds surrounding them, with their green expanse of 

 grass, water-lilied ponds, and shady avenues. About it 

 the poor things crept or crawled ; amongst them moved 

 the sisters of mercy, self -doomed volunteers in a forlorn hope, 

 for no one who enters through the gates may ever pass back 

 into the world again. The cemetery also is within. The 

 community receives a grant from the French Government. 



It seems to me now, as it did then, when in the fulness 

 of my own health and strength I watched that quiet scene, 



