THE ISLAND OF EXILE. 



295 



Lunalilo's reign, when the work of segregation was undertaken 

 in earnest. At the present time the number on the island is 

 703, including 22 children. These unfortunates are neces- 

 sarily pauperised, and the small Hawaiian kingdom finds itself 

 much burdened by their support* It is not surprising that 

 officials called upon to meet this sad emergency are assailed in 

 all quarters of the globe by sentimental criticisms and misstate- 

 ments regarding the provision made for the lepers on Molokai. 

 Most of these are unfounded, and the members of the Board 

 of Health deserve great credit both for their humanity and for 

 their prompt and careful attention to the complaints made by 

 the sufferers. 



A.t present the two obvious blots on the system are, the 

 insufficient house accommodation, involving a herding together 

 which is repulsive to foreign, though not to native, ideas ; and 

 the absence of a resident physician to prescribe for the ail- 

 ments from which leprosy is no exemption. Molokai, the 

 island of exile, is Molokai aina pali, " the land of precipices, 55 

 in the old native meles, and its walls of rock rise perpendicu- 

 larly from the sea to a height varying from 1000 to 2500 feet, 

 in extreme grandeur and picturesqueness, and are slashed, as 

 on Hawaii, by gulches opening out on natural lawns on the sea 

 level. The place chosen for the centralization and segre- 

 gation of leprosy is a most singular plain of about 20,000 

 acres, hemmed in between the sea and a precipice 2000 

 feet high, passable only where a zigzag bridle track swings 

 over its face, so narrow and difficult that it has been found 

 impossible to get cattle down over it, so that the leper 

 settlement below has depended for its supplies of fresh meat 

 upon vessels. The settlement is accessible also by a very 

 difficult landing at Kalaupapa on the windward side of 

 Molokai. 



Three miles inland from Kalaupapa is the leper village of 

 Kalawao, which may safely be pronounced one of the most 

 horrible spots on all the earth ; a home of hideous disease and 

 slow coming death, with which science in despair has ceased 

 to grapple j a community of doomed beings, socially dead, 

 " whose only business is to perish ; " wifeless husbands, hus- 

 bandless wives, children without parents, and parents without 

 children ; men and women who have " no more a portion for 

 ever in anything that is done under the sun," condemned to 



* In 1874 the expense of the leper establishment was $55,000. 



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