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FATHER DAMIEN 
 
FATHER DAMIEN 
 
 A JOURNEY FROM CASHMERE 
 
 TO HIS HOME IN 
 
 HAWAII 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD CLIFFORD 
 
 ^London 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1889 
 
 All riglits reserved 
 
CGI 
 
 35'- 6-^ JO 
 
 \ 
 
Eo tfje IHemorg of 
 LORD MOUNT TEMPLE 
 
 I DEDIC\TE THIS BOOK 
 
 With him I associate nearly all the best things that 
 
 have come to me in the last twenty- five years. His 
 
 intelligent sympathy, his affectionate help, and his 
 
 faithful prayers have been a stimulus and a reward 
 
 in all the work that I have tried to do. His influence 
 
 was so far-reaching that the same testimony might 
 
 be given by hundreds of persons who, like myself, 
 
 have learned from him eternal lessons of faith, hope, 
 
 and love. 
 
 E. C. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In giving this short account to the public 
 of Father Damien de Veuster and his 
 field of labour, I desire to stir my country- 
 men in connection with his memory to do 
 their duty in fighting that terrible disease 
 whose victim he was. So practical a man 
 would choose rather than any other reward 
 that through his life and death the evil 
 and misery of the world should be less- 
 ened. I tender my hearty thanks to the 
 Editor of the Nineteejith Cenhtry for allow- 
 ing me to reproduce three articles of mine 
 which have appeared in that review. 
 
 EDWARD CLIFFORD. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introductory ...... i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Hawaiians and Hawaii 30 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Father Damien and Molokai . . . 45 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Lake of Fire 133 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Our Next Duty 148 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 ' Thy kingdom come. ' 
 
 This prayer of Christ's is evidently not yet 
 completely fulfilled, but for all that the king- 
 dom of God Is always coming, and even now 
 It Is within us and around us. 
 
 Wherever faith, purity, and devotion com- 
 pel the allegiance of men, there is the coming 
 of the kingdom ; and wherever love, joy, 
 and peace are reigning, there it has come. 
 
 It is no great virtue that we should praise 
 heroes like Father Damien, General Gordon, 
 and Lord Shaftesbury. But it is surely 
 
 B 
 
2 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 somethings for in admiring heroes we take the 
 first step towards becoming heroic. Only 
 the first step however, and there are probably 
 many people who never take the second, and 
 who will therefore find themselves very much 
 out in the cold as soon as they die. But we 
 know where it is said, ' Finally, brethren, 
 whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
 things are honest, whatsoever things are 
 just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- 
 ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are 
 of good report ; if there be any virtue, and 
 if there be any praise, think on these things.' 
 Therefore we are not only free to honour 
 such men as Father Damien, but it is even 
 our duty to do so. And it is to be noted 
 that good people have generally a little diffi- 
 culty at first in quite admiring a hero ; for 
 heroes are not made to order, and we cannot ' 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 get them just on our favourite pattern. None 
 of them are precisely Hke our grandmothers 
 or our favourite clergymen. Lord Shaftes- 
 bury was a party man, General Gordon was 
 unorthodox about everlasting punishment, 
 and Father Damien was a Roman Catholic. 
 
 When I was a little boy I thought that 
 all Roman Catholics were wicked, and went 
 steadily to hell. If I saw a nun I thought 
 she wanted to catch me and burn me. The 
 glaring redness of Bloody Mary was un- 
 relieved by any quieter colour. 
 
 As I grew older I found I had been mis- 
 taken. I read Charles Kingsley's Hermits, 
 and the lives of St. Francis and St. Catherine 
 of Sienna. I read Thomas a Kempis, and I 
 found that the Church of Rome had un- 
 doubtedly produced saints. 
 
 A revulsion of feeling often sets in when 
 
4 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 young people find that their teachers have 
 not told them the whole truth about religious 
 matters. Unfairness and untruth bring their 
 punishment with the same unerrlngness as 
 that with which an apple falls to the ground, 
 and often the desire to make amends for past 
 injustice turns the heart towards the Church 
 of Rome, with all its romance and bewitch- 
 ingness, and against Protestantism, with its 
 gravity and its unbending opposition to cer- 
 tain pleasant errors. Moreover, there are 
 many persons who are more anxious to sub- 
 mit to authority than to question its claims 
 to their obedience. To some it is even a 
 luxury to assent to what they more than 
 half think is untrue. They consider their 
 submission a sacrifice of sense to devotion, 
 forgetting that they are called to worship 
 God with all their mind as well as with all 
 
I INTRO D UCTOR V 5 
 
 their heart. If their newly chosen guide 
 recommends the delivering up of their Bible, 
 then they willingly let their Bible go. The 
 distress or persecution of friends is but the 
 incentive which finally seals their act and 
 fixes it steadily on the ground of martyrdom. 
 They become earnest disciples, and often 
 they become beautiful souls. 
 
 It is not well to dissuade such persons 
 from their secession by any other means than 
 the simple telling of the truth. It is better 
 that they should do what they think is right, 
 even if they find out later that it was wrong, 
 and that they must retrace their steps. The 
 way to truth may be blessedly painful, but it 
 will be trodden sooner or later if the soul 
 loves truth. God teaches slowly. 
 
 For myself, I feel that in sending forth 
 this little book I must needs say what the 
 
6 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 reasons are which prevent my joining the 
 Church of Rome, though my heart is full of 
 love for many of its people, as well as for 
 members of our English Church, and for 
 Wesleyans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Sal- 
 vation Army people, Plymouth Brethren, 
 Buddhists, heathen, and others too numerous 
 to name. I disagree with many of the doc- 
 trines of the Church of Rome, but as I do 
 not suppose that it will turn out that I 
 or any one else in the world is exactly 
 right about every doctrine, I take my stand 
 on principles rather than on even such im- 
 portant questions as prayers for the dead, 
 purgatory, indulgences, schism, everlasting 
 punishment, and modern miracles. Many 
 difficulties as to these matters may be 
 fairly explained, many may be wriggled 
 out of, and many may be maintained if 
 
I INTRO D UCTOR V 7 
 
 the defender speaks sufficiendy loudly and 
 impressively. The following, then, are the 
 principal reasons which prevent my becoming 
 a Romanist, and they may all be read in an 
 ordinary tone of voice. I hope that any 
 Roman Catholics who see this book will not 
 blame me for stating them, but will consider 
 that I could scarcely avoid doing so, as what 
 follows afterwards will be unmixed praise of 
 a Roman Catholic saint. If I am unjust I 
 shall be glad to apologise. 
 
 Firstly, I do not consider that the 
 Church of Rome is faithful to truth or to the 
 great eternal difference between right and 
 wrong, and this is the chief reason why I 
 stand apart from it. No Roman Catholic 
 that I have ever yet met forms his opinion on a 
 religious subject by his sense of what is right 
 or wrong, or true or untrue. He only in- 
 
8 FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 quires what the Church has decided, and then 
 he argues from that standpoint as well as he 
 knows how. The question is closed for him 
 of whether the Church was right or wrong. 
 There is no possibility of error. A dead wall 
 is between him and freedom of thought, 
 and he glories in the wall. If he doubted, it 
 would crumble to pieces, and it often does 
 crumble to pieces if he fixes his mind and 
 heart only on what is true and right. Then 
 he finds himself free but gasping. Roman 
 Catholicism means an iron slavery of thought, 
 both for individuals and nations. Slaves 
 may be good and happy, but English people 
 do not generally wish to be slaves. For 
 myself, the more I see of Roman Catholics, 
 and the more I love them, the less I wish to 
 become one of them. 
 
 Secondly, The Church of Rome, in spite of 
 
I INTRO D UCTOR V 9 
 
 plaintive explanations and protestations, does 
 fear the Bible as a cat fears the water. It 
 assures us that It loves the Bible, and has 
 almost created it. It even tells us that 
 we may read It, but it gives us a thousand 
 reasons why it is better for us not to do so, 
 and finally it puts it in its safe and locks 
 it up. 
 
 Thirdly, The priests of the Church of 
 Rome are compulsorily celibate. The rule is 
 no doubt a wise one as far as the attainment 
 of worldly power goes. But it is not possible 
 to believe that out of the tens of thousands 
 of young men who in their first youth vow 
 to live celibate lives a majority preserve 
 their purity through all the conflicts of life. 
 And when they fall the whole soul gets 
 crooked, and does crooked work. An un- 
 married clergyman is a good thing, but he 
 
lo FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 must be free to marry if he should by and 
 by very much wish to marry. 
 
 Fourthly, I could not join the Church of 
 Rome because it so little recognises other 
 Christians that a Roman Catholic is actually 
 forbidden even to kneel down and say the 
 Lord's Prayer with a Protestant. This is 
 quite detestable. 
 
 Fifthly, The heart's devotion with the 
 great body of Roman Catholics is apparently 
 given to the Virgin Mary and to the Church 
 rather than to the Lord. I say this un- 
 willingly, and I know that there are many 
 exceptions to the rule, but, alas ! it is true 
 in the main. 
 
 So, God helping me, I will never be a 
 Roman Catholic. And having said this, I 
 feel free to tell my story. 
 
 One Sunday morning, in the spring of 
 
I INTRODUCTORY n 
 
 1887, I read an account of Father Damien 
 in the magazine of the Soho girls' club, and 
 I made up my mind almost immediately that 
 I would go and see him, and find if there 
 were any way of helping him. The thought 
 of doing so naturally gave me great delight, 
 even though it seemed to me then that visit- 
 ing Molokai would be the nearest thing to 
 descending into hell. 
 
 My plan was to spend the next winter in 
 India, where I had been asked to help in a 
 winter Mission among the native Christians 
 (under the auspices of the Church Missionary 
 Society), and where I was anxious to investi- 
 gate certain facts as to the prevalence of 
 leprosy, and its possible prevention by some 
 law of segregation. Of the results of this 
 tour in India I hope to speak later, and I 
 would also refer all readers who are willing 
 
12 FATHER DAMIEN ' chap. 
 
 to acquire further information on this subject 
 to an excellent book by Archdeacon Wright, 
 entitled Leprosy an Inipeinal Danger^ which 
 is published by Messrs. Churchill. 
 
 After completing my tour in India I took 
 refuge from its terrible heat in Cashmere, 
 where I found more lepers, and where the 
 cholera was raging fearfully. Cashmere is 
 the loveliest country in the world, as far as 
 my experience has gone — a land of snow 
 mountains and rushing rivers, but rich also in 
 noble parklike scenery, where grow the most 
 beautiful trees I ever beheld. The apple and 
 pear orchards were then in such profusion 
 of white and pink blossoms, and the roses, 
 red, white, and yellow, were so delightful, that 
 it seemed as if a universal wedding were 
 going on. The large stars of the white 
 clematis wreathed the trees ; all kinds of irises. 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 great and small, abounded ; red tulips were 
 to be seen in crowds ; and by the glacier's 
 edge grew immense poppies of a gorgeous 
 blue colour. And with all this there was a 
 familiar air about Cashmere. It was like an 
 ideal and glorified England, and I always 
 look back to it as an intimation of 
 
 ' What the world will be, 
 When the years have passed away.' 
 
 From this paradise a telegram summoned 
 me back to London, and during my some- 
 what unwilling journey to Bombay I was 
 glad to learn experimentally what the heat is 
 which so many of our countrymen and women 
 endure year after year. 
 
 The wind that smote me at the door of the 
 railway carriage was like nothing else but the 
 blast of a furnace, my watch was almost too 
 hot to hold, and the sheets on the bed felt at 
 
14 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 night as if a warming-pan had just been 
 passed over them. A fellow-passenger told 
 me that in travelling that way some years ago 
 during an exceptionally hot season he had 
 found printed notices in the carriages with 
 directions what to do in case of heat apoplexy, 
 and with particulars of the stations at which 
 coffins could be obtained. Several people 
 died of heat during their journey. Ice was 
 at hand continually, and we sat with towels, 
 in which powdered ice had been folded, round 
 our heads. It was of course a very ordinary 
 experience, so ordinary that little pity is usu- 
 ally spent on it, but one feels proud that one's 
 countrymen are willing to bear so much and 
 to say so little for the sake of ordinary every- 
 day duties. The sea voyage that follows is 
 often worse than the land journey, but we 
 were on this occasion blessed with a head- 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 wind and had a prosperous time, and we 
 reached England happily and well. 
 
 It is of course not necessary to say any- 
 thing about my journey across that grayest 
 and most uninteresting of oceans, the Atlantic, 
 or to talk of the Falls of Niagara and the 
 Rocky Mountains. To comfort those who 
 can never see the former I would only re- 
 mark that the photographs are so excellent 
 that not much is lost by not going to see the 
 original. It is very large, very colourless, 
 and one often remembers how easily it could 
 kill one. But that is a poor sort of thought, 
 and does not generally quicken the pulse. I 
 do not wish, however, to spoil the pleasure of 
 any ' Britisher ' as he stands on the soil of 
 Canada gazing at the falls, and rejoices in the 
 proud thought that Queen Victoria owns this 
 beautiful sight! It is certainly well adapted 
 
i6 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 for crowds of travellers to say * Oh ! ' at. As 
 to the Rocky Mountains, which some people 
 think so surpassingly beautiful, they are, in 
 my opinion, the ugliest mountains I ever saw, 
 just enormous, disorganised masses of rock, 
 shapeless, bare, and with no idea of how to 
 look like a mountain. Towards the end of 
 the Rio Grande route they certainly become 
 finer, and acquire a grim kind of fairy-tale 
 beauty. Curious pillars and columns and 
 tables stand up on all sides, and the plains 
 between are often rich and beautiful in colour. 
 A soft light yellow grass grows everywhere, 
 with patches of golden or whitish plants. 
 Sometimes the ground is burnt black ; some- 
 times there are the most lovely willow beds, 
 with stems of crimson, purple, and gold. I 
 sketched, but sketching in a very joking 
 narrow gauge train has its limitations. 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 I always greatly enjoy the society of 
 Americans who belong to the Eastern States. 
 They are generally delightful, hearty, and 
 witty, and they have a desire to please and a 
 willingness to be pleased which should teach 
 us Englishmen useful lessons. The Boston- 
 lans are especially charming, and are highly 
 cultivated in art, music, and in social qualities. 
 
 As one gets farther west one finds a 
 notable difference as to good manners, and 
 It must be admitted that the behaviour of the 
 officials at the railway depots Is often very 
 bearish. 
 
 But there is so much to admire, and the 
 air is so Inspiriting, that the traveller generally 
 finds himself in a good humour. 
 
 After setting sail from San Francisco we 
 had favouring winds, and our voyage across 
 the Pacific Ocean was full of interest. 
 
 C 
 
1 8 FATHER DAM IE N chap. 
 
 Being an artist, I naturally paint a good 
 deal when I am travelling, and I confess that 
 I suffer occasionally from people who kindly 
 come and take an interest In my work. 
 
 I was copying Burne Jones's ' Chant 
 d'Amour ' one Saturday In the Art Museum 
 at ' Merton ' when a polite gentleman came 
 up with a bright " looking boy and said, 
 * My boy is very much interested in seeing 
 you work. Have you any objection to our 
 watching you ? ' They watched for some 
 considerable time, at the end of which the 
 bright boy said, ' Which is he copying, 
 papa ? ' My picture was about half-finished. 
 Presently a pleasing young man came up from 
 the art school below, and I civilly asked him 
 if he was working downstairs. 
 
 * No,' he said ; * there are no breadcrumbs 
 on Saturdays,' 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 19 
 
 This mysterious answer staggered me 
 somewhat, but I rallied and asked, ' Do they 
 find you in breadcrumbs, then ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; but I wouldn't want a whole loaf, 
 you see, and there are not students enough 
 to divide.' 
 
 ' I almost wonder you don't bring a roll in 
 your pocket sooner than lose the day.' 
 
 * Rolls are too greasy. We want Graham 
 bread.' 
 
 (I then became silent, and said to myself— 
 
 * I would that my tongue could utter 
 The thoughts that arise in me/) 
 
 Two dirty but agreeable Irishmen came 
 up next, one of whom presently remarked, 
 ' I give you great praise. I am not an artist 
 myself, but I can tell. Any one could hardly 
 say which is the copy ' (my canvas was 
 nearly half of it still white). ' Excuse me, 
 
20 FATHER DAMIEN chap, 
 
 friend, but this is not your first picture, is it ? 
 Ah ! I should say not. Am I a Bostonian ? 
 No, I am from the old counthry. I am 
 living with an aunt. I find it pleasant. I 
 have had nothing to do for ^v^ weeks.' 
 
 A particularly intelligent boy was my next 
 visitor ; he stayed a very long time, and even 
 walked back with me to the hotel door. 
 
 He began, * Are you copying ? It's pretty 
 exact. It looks a good deal like it. I could 
 easily tell it. You don't use your stool. 
 How many pictures have you copied ? 
 Which? ... If I was doing it, it would be 
 all done now. You have to take drawing 
 lessons first, I suppose ? How much shall 
 you sell it for ? I don't see how in the 
 world you could make it cost so much. 
 D'you know Mr. Duncan in England .'^ He's 
 the foster-father of one of my friends.' 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 21 
 
 Another student watched me for two hours, 
 saying that all the places downstairs had 
 been taken, and that he derived great benefit 
 from seeing me paint. He said, ' How funny 
 it seems to snap on the colour that way 
 — rush it ^on any way. I suppose you 
 think you get a better effect '^, I am 
 trying lithography. There's a good deal 
 to be got at it if you could. If you 
 couldn't, why, there's nothing at all. I've 
 got a friend and he's so disagreeable he can't 
 earn his living. He's disagreeable all round. 
 I think he's real mean.' When I painted the 
 red on the robe of Eros he said, ' Looks as if 
 you had cut your finger over it, doesn't it ? ' 
 
 Generally people give me an impression 
 of being considerably disappointed in my 
 work — notably one lady did, who belonged 
 to the class of persons who try to look 
 
22 FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 haughty at hotels. Most of the remarks 
 which I am going to record have been made 
 very many times during a sea voyage. 
 
 Yotmg man of the dandy kind. — ' Painting 
 must be a pleasant way of passing the time, 
 I should suppose ? ' 
 
 Older man. — ' Well, I should never have 
 the patience to do it.' (This is a very 
 common observation, implying that the 
 speaker possesses all the requisites except 
 patience, and that he would think twice before 
 choosing work which produced such small 
 results in comparison with the outlay of his 
 valuable time.) 
 
 Little girl (willing to take advice if she is 
 wrong\ — ' You have soft colours. I have a 
 paint-box, but I have to scrub my paints.' 
 
 Young lady (a constant attendant), for the 
 fifth time. — ' Isn't it wonderful to see it grow ? 
 
I INTRO D UCTOR V 23 
 
 I like to see it grow. You don't mind me 
 watching you, do you ? because it is as good 
 as a lesson to me. I do so like to see it 
 grow' 
 
 Man. — * Looks almost like coloured cray- 
 ons, doesn't it ? ' 
 
 Impetuous child of thirteen {rtishhtg 
 suddenly to my side). — ' Oh my ! that's 7jzu.ch 
 better, isn't it ? Don't yotc think it's much 
 better than what you did yesterday ? ' 
 
 Gentleman. — ' I suppose when you get 
 home you will work these up into large 
 pictures, won't you ? ' (This is a very usual 
 thing to say, and means that to the ordinary 
 naked eye there is no excuse for producing 
 such poor results.) 
 
 Lady {to comfort me). — ' It would be im- 
 possible to make much of such a subject as 
 that. I am sure no one could do it. You 
 
24 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 are so good-natured not to mind (! ! !) our 
 looking on.' 
 
 Aforesaid yotmg lady. — ' Oh, can't you see 
 it growing ! ' 
 
 Such comments are certainly a little disturb- 
 ing, but they are all kindly meant, and it 
 would be a shame to complain of them. I 
 look back with pleasure on all the voyages I 
 have ever made, and on nearly all my fellow- 
 passengers. 
 
 On the nth of last December I found my- 
 self sailing past the longed-for island of 
 Molokai, and could see the little white build- 
 ings of the leper villages, and make sketches 
 of the cloud-capped island, with the rays of 
 light slanting down among its mountains. 
 The weather was deliciously warm and the 
 sea at last was calm. My heart went out to 
 Father Damien. 
 
I INTRO D UCTOR V 2 5 
 
 Hitherto the swell had been enormous, 
 though the surface of the waves was as 
 smooth as oil. We sailed past numbers of 
 nautiluses, which looked like tiny deep-blue 
 dishes with a delicate little transparent sail 
 set up ; and following us all the way there 
 were fifteen sooty albatrosses, which fed 
 on the ship's refuse — dark birds with 
 long crooked pinions, and always on the 
 wing. 
 
 The coming to Honolulu is very pleasant. 
 The country is beautiful, the hotel is com- 
 fortable, and the inhabitants — white and 
 brown — give visitors a hearty welcome. 
 
 I received unvarying kindness from every 
 one in the Sandwich Islands, and it is 
 pleasant to find what a high moral and 
 religious tone is established there. The 
 principal people are chiefly the children and 
 
26 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 grandchildren of the first missionaries, and 
 they have held to the traditions of their 
 fathers. 
 
 The leading banker, Mr. C. A. Bishop, 
 married a royal princess, who was a woman 
 of great power and goodness, and their chari- 
 ties have been at once wise and munificent. 
 
 There has been some annoyance felt in 
 Honolulu at the sensational and exaggerated 
 accounts which have been written about 
 Hawaiian leprosy, and it is only right to say 
 that visitors need have no fear of contracting 
 this disease, as the Government removes all 
 sources of danger far more efficiently than is 
 done in Europe, Asia, or Africa. In India 
 the opportunities of contracting leprosy are 
 ten times greater than in Hawaii. Visitors 
 are rightly discouraged, and even prevented, 
 from going to the leper settlement, and it was 
 
1 INTRO D UCTOR V 27 
 
 with some difficulty that, owing to the kind- 
 ness of Dr. Emerson, the President of the 
 Board of Health, I at last obtained permission 
 to visit it for a fortnight, and to take with me 
 a case of gurjun oil in which I was much 
 interested as a remedy. I may mention here 
 that this oil is the produce of a fir-tree which 
 grows plentifully in the Andaman Islands 
 (off the coast of Burmah). Its efficacy was 
 first discovered by Dr. Dougall, and I am 
 assured by Sir Donald Stewart, Vv^ho was then 
 Governor of the Islands, and who has lent me 
 the official medical report, that every case in 
 the place was cured by it after some months' 
 treatment. The lepers were convicts, and It was 
 therefore possible to enforce four hours a day 
 of rubbing the ointment all over their bodies. 
 They began early in the morning by cleansing 
 their bodies with dry earth, then they rubbed 
 
28 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 in the oil for two hours, and finally washed it 
 off. They went through the same process in 
 the afternoon, and each time they took a 
 small dose internally. In some of the cases 
 the disease was of many years' standing, and 
 the state to which it had reduced its victims 
 was indescribably dreadful, yet after eight 
 months the sufferers were able to run and to 
 use a heavy pickaxe, and every symptom of 
 leprosy had disappeared. The oil Is brown 
 and sticky in Its raw condition, but when 
 shaken up with three parts of lime-water it 
 makes an ointment as soft and smooth as 
 butter. It can be obtained in London for 
 elghtpence or tenpence a pound through the 
 principal chemists. The internal maximum 
 dose is half an ounce of a mixture of equal 
 quantities of lime-water and oil. The taste 
 Is not disagreeable. The real difficulty in 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 29 
 
 the cure lies in the fact that lepers are as a 
 rule too inactive and too callous to take the 
 exertion of sufficient rubbing in of the oil, and 
 it is difficult both in Hawaii and in India to 
 force them to do so. In Molokai there are 
 three Franciscan sisters who take charge of 
 the leper girls, and who are now using the 
 oil. I think that their quiet systematic 
 endeavours are likely to produce important 
 results, and that children will be more 
 obedient patients than adults. I have lately 
 (loth of June) received satisfactory accounts 
 of the state of the lepers who have been 
 using this remedy. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HAWAIIANS AND HAWAII 
 
 We English cannot be expected to take great 
 interest In the production of tons and tons of 
 brown sugar, and we shall willingly admit 
 that the things In the Hawaiian Islands which 
 we chiefly care to hear about are, firstly, the 
 leper settlement at Molokai, and secondly, 
 the volcano of Kilauea, the great lake of 
 fire. 
 
 The islands lie in the Pacific Ocean, about 
 half-way between America and Australia, and 
 they were discovered a hundred and twenty 
 years ago by Captain Cook. For fifty years 
 
CHAP. II HAIVAIIANS AND HAWAII 31 
 
 they were visited by no white people except 
 merchantmen and whalers, who often exer- 
 cised on the people a pernicious influence 
 which it makes one's blood boil to hear of. 
 The natives were a fine muscular race, with 
 brown skins and handsome countenances. 
 They were wonderfully hospitable, and they 
 welcomed the first foreigners almost as if they 
 had been gods, giving them freely the best of 
 their food, their shelter, and their daughters. 
 They numbered about four hundred thousand. 
 Their visitors brought them vices — drink and 
 wicked diseases — and now the number of 
 natives has shrunk to forty thousand. Of 
 these it is feared that two thousand are in- 
 fected with leprosy. Their constitutions are 
 often enfeebled, and their lands are largely 
 held by their guests ; but the same hospitable 
 smiles adorn their friendly faces, and the same 
 
32 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 simple, dignified manners grace their be- 
 haviour. They bear no malice. 
 
 Happily there is a bright side as well as 
 a dark side to the incoming of the whites. 
 
 In the year 1809 a brown boy was found 
 crying on the doorsteps of a college in 
 America. His name was Obookiah, and he 
 came from the Hawaiian Islands. His father 
 and mother had been killed in his presence, 
 and as he was escaping with his baby-brother 
 on his back, the little one was slain with a 
 spear and he himself was taken prisoner. 
 Circumstances brought him to America, and 
 at last to the doorsteps of Yale College. In 
 this extremity he was taken in and kindly 
 used by Mr. Dwight, a resident graduate. 
 Obookiah loved his people, and soon he asked 
 that he might ' learn to read this Bible, and 
 go back home and tell them to pray to God 
 
II HAWAIIANS AND HAWAII 33 
 
 up In heaven.' Two other lads, Tennooe and 
 Hopu, had come to America with him. 
 They w^ere all taken and educated by Mr. 
 Dwight, and the result was that in ten years 
 a band of twelve men and women started 
 from Boston for the Sandwich or Hawaiian 
 Islands, with Tennooe and Hopu as guides. 
 Obookiah had died a peaceful Christian 
 death about a year after his arrival at 
 Yale. 
 
 When the party left Boston it was said to 
 them, ' Probably none of you will live to 
 witness the downfall of idolatry.' But when 
 they reached the islands the downfall had 
 already come. 
 
 Kamehameha the First — a king as great 
 in his way, perhaps, as our King Alfred — 
 had effected an immense revolution. He 
 had, after long wars, united all the islands 
 
 D 
 
34 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 in one sovereignty, and he had abolished 
 the degrading system of caste, or ' tabu.' 
 ' By this system ' (I quote from Dr. Bartlett's 
 historical sketch of the Hawaiian Mission) 
 ' it was death for a man to let his shadow 
 fall upon a chief, to enter his enclosure, or 
 to stand if his name were mentioned in a 
 song. In these and other ways ''men's 
 heads lay at the feet of the king and the 
 chiefs." No woman might eat with her 
 husband, or eat fowl, pork, cocoanut, or 
 bananas — things offered to the idols : death 
 was the penalty.' ' How did you lose your 
 eye?' said Mrs. Thurston, a missionary's wife, 
 to a little girl. ' I ate a banana,' replied the 
 child. If any man made a noise when 
 prayers were being said he died. When 
 the people had finished building a temple 
 some of them were offered in sacrifice. I 
 
II HAWAIIANS AND HAWAII 35 
 
 myself saw a great quadrangular temple, on 
 the coast of Hawaii, which contained quanti- 
 ties and quantities of human skulls. A cord 
 is preserved with which one high priest had 
 strangled twenty-three victims. Infanticide 
 was a common practice. Maniacs were 
 stoned to death. Old people were often 
 buried alive or left to perish. There was 
 no written language. 
 
 The missionaries reached Hawaii on the 
 31st of March 1820, after a long, wearisome 
 journey round South America, and one can 
 imagine how delightful the aspect of these 
 delicious tropical islands must have been to 
 them. The whole scene is so exactly de- 
 scribed in the following lines of Tennyson 
 that it seemed to me, when I was there last 
 January, as if they must have been written 
 to describe it — 
 
36 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 * Courage ! ' he said, and pointed toward the land, 
 ' This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.' 
 In the afternoon they came unto a land 
 In which it seemed always afternoon. 
 All round the coast the languid air did swoon. 
 Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. 
 Full-faced above the valley stood the moon ; 
 And like a downward smoke, the slender stream 
 Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. 
 
 A land of streams ! some, like a downward smoke, 
 
 Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go ; 
 
 And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, 
 
 Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. 
 
 They saw the gleaming river seaward flow 
 
 From the inner land : far off, three mountain-tops, 
 
 Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, 
 
 Stood sunset-flush'd. 
 
 The mountains and the river are there, 
 and the deHcious streams are for ever falHng 
 by scores down the green precipices of 
 Hawaii into the blue sea. How lovely that 
 sea is can scarcely be told. One puts one's 
 
II HAWAIIANS AND HAWAII yj 
 
 hand in, and all round it is the softest and 
 most brilliant blue ; below are growths of 
 pure white coral, and among them swim 
 fishes as brilliant as paroquets. Some are 
 yellow like canaries, some are gorgeous 
 orange or bright red. I tried to paint a 
 blue fish, but no pigment could represent 
 its intensity. The loveliest of all was like 
 nothing but a rainbow as it sported below 
 me. Groves of cocoanut-trees rise from the 
 water's edge. The gardens are rich with 
 roses, lilies, myrtles, gardenia, heliotrope, and 
 passion-flowers. 
 
 Near by is a great tropical forest, which 
 I always feared as I entered ; for there 
 is an element of the terrible in this tre- 
 mendous vegetation, and in the perfect 
 silence of it all. The trees are wreathed 
 with humid creepers ; the ferns are fourteen 
 
38 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 feet high ; even the stag's-horn moss grows 
 taller than a man. Every foot of space is 
 occupied with rank vegetation. 
 
 When the Bostonians reached the coast 
 they sent Hopu on shore to reconnoitre. 
 He soon returned, and as he came within 
 hail he shouted, * Kamehameha is dead. 
 His son Liholiho reigns. The tabus are 
 abolished. The images are burned. The 
 temples are destroyed. There has been 
 war. Now there is peace ! ' 
 
 This was news indeed. The great king 
 had one day risen up from the place where 
 he was feasting and had stalked over to his 
 wives' table, and sat down with them to eat 
 and to drink. The high priest had followed 
 his example. The people were aghast with 
 apprehension ; but no judgment from heaven 
 followed, and soon the tabu was broken 
 
II HAWAIIANS AND HAWAII 39 
 
 everywhere, and a new freedom spread 
 through the islands. 
 
 Kamehameha's work was done; he fell ill, 
 and took to his bed. As he lay dying he 
 asked an American trader to tell him about 
 the Americans' God. ' But,' said the native 
 informant, in his broken English, 'he no tell 
 him anything.' 
 
 The missionaries had arrived at the right 
 moment, and they were cordially welcomed. 
 The new king, with his five wives, came to 
 call — straight out of the sea, and all un- 
 dressed. The missionaries hinted that it 
 would be better if they wore clothes, and 
 the next time the king called he wore a pair 
 of silk stockings and a hat. He threw him- 
 self down on the bed, the first he had ever 
 beheld, and rolled himself over and over on 
 it with extreme delight. 
 
40 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 The Princess Kapuliholiho said to the 
 missionary's wife, ' Give us your eldest son, 
 and we will adopt him.' But the tempting 
 offer was politely declined. There were five 
 dowager-queens, one of whom was dressed 
 with great state in a robe made of seventy 
 thicknesses of bark. The white ladies found 
 favour in the eyes of the brown ladies, 
 who described their visitors in the following 
 terms : ' They are white and have hats with 
 a spout. Their faces are round and far in. 
 Their necks are long. They look well.' 
 
 The royal feasts were on a large scale ; 
 sometimes as many as two hundred dogs 
 were cooked, and it was a favourite joke to 
 put a pig's head on a roasted dog, to deceive 
 a too fastidious white visitor. 
 
 The royal personages and the chiefs 
 claimed the privilege of first learning to read. 
 
II HAWAIIANS AND HAWAII 41 
 
 but the king's intemperate habits made him 
 a somewhat irregular pupil. 
 
 A majestic chieftainess, six feet high, 
 named Kapiolani, was one of the first con- 
 verts to Christianity, and a faithful ally of 
 the teachers of the new faith. It was she 
 who in 1824 broke the spell which hung over 
 the great volcano, the supposed home of the 
 terrible goddess Pele. She marched with 
 her retinue across the plains of lava till she 
 reached the lake of fire. Then she flung 
 into it the sacred ohelo berries, and defied 
 Pele to hurt her. There was a horror- 
 stricken silence, but no calamity followed, 
 and Kapiolani calmly turned to her people 
 and told them of Jehovah and of her new- 
 found faith in Christ. 
 
 It is said that a third of the population 
 became Christians in consequence of this 
 
42 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 brave deed. We who do not believe in Pele 
 may scarcely appreciate the heroism of this 
 action, but the courageous Kapiolani had all 
 the beliefs of her youth to combat, and must 
 have stifled many qualms before she per- 
 formed her act of defiance. 
 
 I have heard an interesting account of 
 the first Sunday school held in Hawaii. 
 The native monitor was found arranging the 
 class into divisions of Christian and non- 
 Christian. He asked every one the question, 
 'Do you love your enemies?' If they 
 said * Yes ' they were arranged with the 
 Christians, if they said 'No' with the 
 heathen. I have known less sensible 
 divisions made in England ; but the mis- 
 sionaries took a broader view, and checked 
 their pupil, much to his surprise. 
 
 Only one thing was taught on this occa- 
 
II HAWAIIANS AND HAWAII 43 
 
 sion to the scholars. They were asked, 
 ' Who made you ? ' and they were taught 
 to answer, ' The great God, who made heaven 
 and earth.' 
 
 It was a simple beginning, but great re- 
 sults soon began to appear. The most 
 intense religious interest was felt all over 
 the islands. Thousands of converts were 
 baptized, a wonderful devotion became ap- 
 parent, and In a comparatively small number 
 of years the whole population became Chris- 
 tian, and has remained so ever since. 
 
 The first band of missionaries were Con- 
 gregationalists, and to their zeal and godly 
 living Is due mainly the praise of chang- 
 ing the religion of the Sandwich Islands 
 from heathenism to Christianity. Their 
 influence Is transmitted to their successors, 
 and the services at Fort Street Church and at 
 
44 FATHER DAMIEN chap, ii 
 
 the native churches are models of simple 
 hearty worship. 
 
 The Roman Catholic religion was estab- 
 lished there in 1839, and our English Church 
 raised its cathedral later still. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 
 (Written at Honolulu in last January) 
 
 The little steamer Mokolii leaves Honolulu, 
 the capital of the islands, on Mondays at 
 five o'clock for Molokai, and on the 17th of 
 last December I took my passage and went 
 on board. 
 
 The sunset was orange, with a great 
 purple cloud fringed with gold. It faded 
 quickly, and by the time we reached a small 
 pier-head outside the town it was dark, and 
 the moon was casting a long greenish light 
 across the sea. From the pier came a con- 
 
46 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 tinuous tremolo wail, rather mechanical, but 
 broken by real sobs. I could see a little 
 crowd of lepers and lepers' friends waiting 
 there. ' O my husband ! ' cried a poor 
 woman again and again. Thirteen lepers 
 got into the boat and were rowed to the 
 steamer. Then we sailed away, and gradu- 
 ally the wailing grew fainter and fainter till 
 we could hear it no longer. 
 
 These partings for life between the lepers 
 and their families are most tragic, but they 
 are inevitable ; for whether the disease be 
 propagated by heredity or by contagion, the 
 necessity for absolute segregation is equally 
 evident, and the Hawaiian Government has 
 risen to the emergency — would that our 
 Indian Government with its probable two 
 hundred and fifty thousand lepers would do 
 likewise! — and, sparing neither labour nor 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 47 
 
 expense, has sought out the cases one by- 
 one, and provided a home so suitable to their 
 needs, so well ordered, and so well supplied, 
 that, strange to say, the difficulty often arises 
 of preventing healthy people from taking up 
 their abode there. I know many sadder 
 places than Molokai, with its soft breezes, 
 its towering cliffs, and its sapphire sea. The 
 Hawaiians are a happy, generous people, the 
 fit offspring of these sunny windy islands ; 
 they yield themselves up readily to the 
 emotion of the present whether for grief or 
 laughter, and .(even with lepers) smiles and 
 play follow close behind tears and sorrow. 
 
 The sleeping accommodation on the 
 Mokolii is necessarily limited, but being a 
 foreigner, and therefore a passenger of dis- 
 tinction, a mattress was spread for me on 
 the little deck. It was very short, and. 
 
48 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 moreover, it was soon invaded from the 
 lower end by two pairs of legs — a Chinese 
 pair and a Hawaiian pair. I could not be 
 so inhospitable as to complain of their 
 vicinity, and as a lady kindly enlivened the 
 company by continuous guitar music, accom- 
 panied by her own voice and by as many of 
 the passengers as chose to chime in, I re- 
 linquished my couch, and, retiring to another 
 part of the vessel, gave myself up to the 
 enjoyment of the moonlit precipices and 
 ravines of Molokai, which we began to coast 
 about midnight. Very solemn and rather 
 terrible they looked. 
 
 The island is long, and shaped like a 
 willow-leaf; it lies in the form of a wedge 
 on the Pacific, very low on the south coast, 
 and gradually rising to its greatest altitude, 
 from which the descent — 1500 feet — to the 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 49 
 
 northern coast is precipitous. Between the 
 base of these precipices and the sea He 
 the two leper villages of Kalawao and Kalau- 
 papa. Not improbably half the island is 
 sunk in the sea, and the villages are in the 
 actual cup of the crater of an immense 
 volcano, half of which is submerged. 
 
 The Sandwich Islands are a collection of 
 volcanoes of which the fires appear to have 
 died out in southward order. In Hawaii, 
 the largest and most southerly island, they 
 still rage. Out of its great lake of liquid 
 boiling lava the fire-fountains toss themselves 
 high into the air, red as blood in daylight, 
 orange at twilight, and yellow as a primrose 
 by night — a fearful sight, and approached by 
 three miles of scarcely less terrible lava, 
 black and glittering, and hardened into 
 shapes like gigantic crocodiles and serpents. 
 
 E 
 
50 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 Sometimes the traveller sees that It is red-hot 
 only eight inches below the sole of his foot. 
 
 Even more wonderful, perhaps, is the great 
 extinct crater of Haleakala on the island 
 of Maui. It is the largest crater in the 
 world — nine miles in diameter — and it con- 
 tains in its hollow fourteen great tumuli or 
 extinct volcanoes, some of them 700 feet high. 
 As I watched the scene at sunrise it seemed 
 to me that I was not only in another planet, 
 but in another dispensation. 
 
 Except the crater, there was nothing to 
 be seen around or below me but miles 
 and miles of white clouds, slowly turning 
 pink before the coming sun. Above them 
 arose two far distant mountain -tops, Mona 
 Loa and Mona Kea, and occasionally there 
 was a rent in the great tracts of cloud, and 
 a bit of blue sea appeared. 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 51 
 
 The vast crater yawned in the Immediate 
 foreground, a deathly abandoned place, but 
 not without the beauty which almost always 
 marks Nature's works, if we have but eyes 
 to see them aright. The strange lights and 
 shadows were unlike anything which I have 
 ever beheld before or since. The colours of 
 the tumuli were dim but splendid, going 
 through the range of dull purple, dull pink, 
 dull brown, dull yellow, dull green. The 
 floor of the crater was gray and black, com- 
 posed of the dust of lava accumulated 
 through centuries, and probably never trod- 
 den by the foot of man. Long ago it was 
 a nine miles' expanse of boiling fiery liquid. 
 
 As we approached Molokai I found that 
 the slow work of centuries had nearly 
 covered its lava with verdure. At daw^n 
 we w^ere opposite Kalaupapa. Two little 
 
52 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 Spired churches, looking precisely alike, 
 caught my eye first, and around them were 
 dotted the white cottages of the lepers, who 
 crowded the pier to meet us. But the sea 
 was too rough for us to land. The coast is 
 wild, and, as the waves dashed against the 
 rocks, the spray rose fifty feet into the air. 
 I never had seen such a splendid surf. 
 
 We w^ent on to Kalawao, but were again 
 disappointed ; it was too dangerous to disem- 
 bark. Finally it was decided to put off a boat 
 for a rocky point about a mile and a half dis- 
 tant from the town. Climbing down this point 
 we saw about twenty lepers, and ' There is 
 Father Damien ! ' said our purser ; and, 
 slowly moving along the hillside, I saw a 
 dark figure with a large straw hat. He 
 came rather painfully down, and sat near 
 the water -side, and we exchanged friendly 
 
in FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 53 
 
 signals across the waves while my baggage 
 was being got out of the hold — a long busi- 
 ness, for, owing to the violence of the sea, 
 nothing else was to be put on shore. The 
 captain and the purser were both much in- 
 terested in my gurjun oil, and they spared 
 no trouble in unshipping it. At last all was 
 ready, and we went swinging across the 
 waves, and finally chose a fit moment for 
 leaping on shore. Father Damien caught 
 me by the hand, and a hearty welcome shone 
 from his kindly face as he helped me up the 
 rock. He immediately called me by my 
 name, * Edward,' and said it was 'like every- 
 thing else, a providence,' that he had met 
 me at that irregular landing-place, for he 
 had expected the ship to stop at Kalaupapa, 
 and Father Conradi had gone there. But a 
 leper young lady, who had landed before me 
 
54 FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 in the boat with the other lepers (I had 
 eschewed this boat), had told him that there 
 was a real foreigner on board not merely 
 from America, but from England, and in 
 consequence of her information he had come. 
 He is now forty-nine years old — a thick-set, 
 strongly-built man, with black curly hair and 
 short beard, turning gray. His countenance 
 must have been handsome, with a full, well- 
 curved mouth and a short, straight nose ; but 
 he is now a good deal disfigured by leprosy, 
 though not so badly as to make it anything 
 but a pleasure to look at his bright, sensible 
 face. His forehead is swollen and ridged, the 
 eyebrows are gone, the nose is somewhat 
 sunk, and the ears are greatly enlarged. His 
 hands and face look uneven with a sort of 
 incipient boils, and his body also shows many 
 signs of the disease, but he assured me that 
 
Ill FATHER DAM JEN AND MOLOKAI 55 
 
 he had felt little or no pain since he had tried 
 Dr. Goto's system of hot baths and Japanese 
 medicine. The bathrooms that have been 
 provided by the Government are very nice. 
 
 I think he had not much faith in the 
 gurjun oil, but at my request he began using 
 it, and after a fortnight's trial the good effects 
 became evident to all. His face looked 
 greatly better, his sleep became very good 
 instead of very bad (he had only been able to 
 sleep with his mouth open), his hands im- 
 proved, and last Sunday he told me that he 
 had been able that morning to sing orisons — 
 the first time for months. One is thankful 
 for this relief, even if it should be only tem- 
 porary ; but it is impossible not to fear that 
 after several years' progress the disease has 
 already attacked the lungs or some other vital 
 organ, and that the remedy comes too late. 
 
56 FA THER^DAMIEN chap. 
 
 I had brought with me a large wooden 
 box of presents from EngHsh friends, and it 
 had been unshipped with the gurjun oil. It 
 was, however, so large that Father Damien 
 said it would be impossible for his lepers 
 either to land it from the boat or to carry it 
 to Kalawao, and that it must be returned to 
 the steamer and landed on some voyage when 
 the sea was quieter. But I could not give 
 up the pleasure of his enjoyment in its con- 
 tents, so after some delay it was forced open 
 in the boat, and the things were handed out 
 one by one across the waves. The lepers all 
 came round with their poor marred faces, and 
 the presents were carried home by them and 
 our two selves. 
 
 First came an engraving of Mr. Shield's 
 * Good Shepherd,' from Lady Mount Temple; 
 then a set of large pictures of the Stations of 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 57 
 
 the Cross, from the Hon. Maude Stanley; 
 then a magic-lantern with Scriptural slides ; 
 then numbers of coloured prints ; and finally 
 an arlston from Lady Caroline Charteris, 
 which would play about forty tunes by simply 
 having Its handle turned. Before we had 
 been at the settlement half an hour Father 
 Damlen was showing his boys how to use it, 
 and I rarely went through Kalawao afterwards 
 without hearing the arlston active. 
 
 There were beautiful silver presents from 
 Lady Grosvenor and Lady Airlle, and several 
 gifts of money. And, most valuable of all, 
 there was a water-colour painting of the Vision 
 of St. Francis by Mr. Burne Jones, sent by 
 the painter. This now hangs in Father 
 Damlen's little room. 
 
 I did not feel disposed to have my bag 
 carried by a leper, so the walk to Kalawao 
 
58 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 was a tiring one, up and down hill, through 
 a broad stream, and then along a beach of 
 boulders shaded by great precipices. But 
 the pleasure of gradually discovering that 
 Father Damlen was a finer man than I had 
 even expected made it delightful. And about 
 half-way I refreshed myself by a bathe in the 
 foam of the waves, which were too big to 
 allow of a swim, even if the sharks which 
 infest the place had not been a sufficient 
 reason against it. I was impressed by the 
 quiet way in which he sat down and read 
 and prayed while I bathed, retiring at once 
 into that hidden life which was so real to him. 
 When I was ready to walk on with him he 
 was all animation again, and pointed out to 
 me all the objects of interest. 
 
 The cliffs of Molokai are in many places 
 almost perpendicular, and rise to a great 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 59 
 
 height from the water's edge. They are 
 generally in shadow, but the sun almost 
 always casts long rays of light through their 
 sundered tops, and I shall ever remember 
 these rays as a distinguishing mark of the 
 leper towns. The sea foam, too, rises up 
 from their bases in a great swirling mist, and 
 makes an enchanting effect in the mornings. 
 Where the slopes are not precipitous the 
 tropical vegetation grows very rank, and not 
 beautiful, I think, to eyes that have learned 
 to love the birch, the gorse, and the heather. 
 The coarse wild ginger with its handsome 
 spikes of flowers grows everywhere, and the 
 yellow hibiscus (ugliest of trees), and quanti- 
 ties of the Ki-tree, from the root of which is 
 made the intoxicating spirit which has done 
 such a disastrous work among the natives. 
 The ferns are magnificent. Of birds, the 
 
6o FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 most noticeable that I saw were an exquisite 
 little honeybird, with a curved beak and plum- 
 age like scarlet velvet; a big yellow owl, which 
 flies about by daylight; a golden plover, which 
 is very plentiful and very nice to eat ; and a 
 beautiful long-tailed, snowy-white creature 
 called the bos'un bird, which wheels about the 
 cliff heights. Besides these there are plenty 
 of imported mynahs and sparrows. The 
 curious little apteryx is almost extinct. 
 
 As we ascended the hill on which the 
 village is built Father Damien showed me 
 on our left the chicken farm. The lepers are 
 justly proud of it, and before many days I had 
 a fine fowl sent me for dinner, which, after a 
 little natural timidity, I ate with thankfulness. 
 
 On arriving at Kalawao we speedily found 
 ourselves inside the half-finished church which 
 is the darling of his heart. How he enjoyed 
 
Ill FATHER DAM IE N AND MOLOKAI 6i 
 
 planning the places where the pictures which 
 I had just brought him should be placed ! 
 He had incorporated as a transept of the new 
 church the small building which had hitherto 
 been in use. By the side of it he showed me 
 the palm-tree under which he lived for some 
 weeks when he first arrived at the settlement 
 in 1873. 
 
 His own little four-roomed house almost 
 joins the church, and here Father Conradi, 
 who lives on the ground-floor, and who is a 
 man of considerable refinement, met us, and 
 ushered us into the tiny refectory where a 
 meal was prepared. Here we found Brother 
 James, a tall powerful-looking Irishman, who 
 pleased me greatly by his simple earnestness, 
 and by the intense affection which he bore to 
 Father Damien. 
 
 By Father Damien's desire we sat at a 
 
62 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 separate table, as a precaution against Infec- 
 tion ; but he was close by, and we were all 
 very happy together. 
 
 It was hard to disappoint my kind hosts, 
 but I did not feel hungry enough to eat any- 
 thing, except some biscuits out of a tin ; and 
 when on later occasions I had food pressed 
 upon me, I always chose oranges gathered 
 from a tree which grew not far off. After 
 dinner we went up the little flight of steps 
 which led to Father Damlen s balcony. This 
 was shaded by a honeysuckle in blossom. A 
 door from it led into his sitting-room — a busy- 
 looking place, with a big map of the world — and 
 inside it another door opened on his bedroom. 
 
 Some of my happiest times at Molokai 
 were spent in this little balcony, sketching 
 him and listening to what he said. The 
 lepers often came up to watch my progress, 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 63 
 
 and it was pleasant to see how happy and 
 at home they were. Their poor faces were 
 often swelled and drawn and distorted, with 
 bloodshot goggle eyes ; but I felt less horror 
 than I expected at their strange aspect. 
 There were generally several of them play- 
 ing in the garden below us. 
 
 I offered to give a photograph of the 
 picture to his brother in Belgium, but he 
 said perhaps it would be better not to do 
 so, as it might pain him to see how he was 
 disfigured. 
 
 He looked mournfully at my work. ' What 
 an ugly face ! ' he said ; ' I did not know the 
 disease had made such progress.' Looking- 
 glasses are not in great request at Molokai ! 
 
 While I sketched him he often read his 
 breviary. At other times we talked on 
 subjects that interested us both, especially 
 
64 FATHER DAM IE N chap. 
 
 about the work of the Church Army, and some- 
 times I sang hymns to him — among others, 
 ' Brief Hfe is here our portion,' ' Art thou 
 weary, art thou languid ? ' and ' Safe home 
 in port.' At 'such times the expression of 
 his face was particularly sweet and tender. 
 
 One day I asked him if he would like to 
 send a message to Cardinal Manning. He 
 said that it was not for such as he to send 
 a message to so great a dignitary, but after 
 a moment's hesitation he added, ' I send my 
 humble respects and thanks.' 
 
 I need scarcely say that he gives himself 
 no airs of martyr, saint, or hero — a humbler 
 man I never saw. He smiled modestly and 
 deprecatingly when I gave him the Bishop 
 of Peterborough's message. ' He won't 
 accept the blessing of a heretic bishop, but 
 tell him that he has my prayers, and ask him 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 65 
 
 to give me his.' — ' Does he call himself a 
 heretic bishop ? ' he asked doubtfully, and I 
 had to explain that the bishop had probably 
 used the term playfully. 
 
 He asked many affectionate questions 
 about Mr. Hugh Chapman, who had shown 
 him warm friendship and had sent him a 
 large sum of money. 
 
 One day he told me about his early 
 history. He was born on the 3d of January 
 1 84 1 near Louvain in Belgium, where his 
 brother, a priest, still lives. His mother, a 
 deeply religious woman, died about two 
 years ago, and his father twelve years 
 sooner. On his nineteenth birthday his 
 father took him to see his brother, who was 
 then preparing for the priesthood, and he left 
 him there to dine, while he himself went on 
 to the neighbouring town. 
 
 F 
 
66 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 Young Joseph (this was his baptismal 
 name) decided that here was the opportunity 
 for taking the step which he had long been 
 desiring to take, and when his father came 
 back he told him that he wished to return 
 home no more, and that it would be better 
 thus to miss the pain of farewells. His 
 father consented unwillingly, but, as he was 
 obliged to hurry to the conveyance which 
 was to take him home, there was no time for 
 demur, and they parted at the station. After- 
 wards, when all was settled, Joseph revisited 
 his home, and received his mother's approval 
 and blessing. 
 
 His brother was bent on going to the 
 South Seas for mission work, and all was 
 arranged accordingly ; but at the last he was 
 laid low with fever, and, to his bitter disap- 
 pointment, forbidden to go. The impetuous 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 67 
 
 Joseph asked him if it would be a consolation 
 for his brother to go instead, and, receiving 
 an affirmative answer, he wrote surrep- 
 titiously, offering himself, and begging that 
 he might be sent, though his education was 
 not yet finished. The students were not 
 allowed to send out letters till they had been 
 submitted to the Superior, but Joseph ven- 
 tured to disobey. 
 
 One day, as he sat at his studies, the 
 Superior came in, and said, with a tender 
 reproach, ' Oh, you impatient boy ! you 
 have written this letter, and you are to 
 
 go.' 
 
 Joseph jumped up, and ran out, and 
 leaped about like a young colt. 
 
 ' Is he crazy ? ' said the other students. 
 
 He worked for some years on other 
 islands in the Pacific, but it happened that 
 
68 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 he was one day in 1873 present at the 
 dedication of a chapel in the island of Maui, 
 when the bishop was lamenting that it was 
 impossible for him to send a missioner to 
 the lepers at Molokai and still less to 
 provide them with a pastor. He had only- 
 been able to send them occasional and 
 temporary help. Some young priests had 
 just arrived in Hawaii for Mission work, and 
 Father Damien instantly spoke. 
 
 ' Monseigneur,' said he, ' here are your 
 new missioners ; one of them could take my 
 district, and if you will be kind enough to 
 allow it, I will go to Molokai and labour for 
 the poor lepers whose wretched state of 
 bodily and spiritual misfortune has often 
 made my heart bleed within me.' 
 
 His offer was accepted, and that very day, 
 without any farewells, he embarked on a boat 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 69 
 
 that was taking some cattle to the leper 
 settlement. 
 
 When he first put his foot on the island 
 he said to himself, ' Now, Joseph, my boy, 
 this is your life-work.' 
 
 I did not find one person in the Sandwich 
 Islands who had the least doubt as to leprosy 
 being contagious, though it is possible to be 
 exposed to the disease for years without con- 
 tracting it. Father Damien told me that he 
 had always expected that he should sooner 
 or later become a leper, though exactly how 
 he caught it he does not know. But it was 
 not likely that he would escape, as he was 
 constantly living in a polluted atmosphere, 
 dressing the sufferers' sores, washing their 
 bodies, visiting their deathbeds, and even 
 digging their graves. 
 
 I obtained while I was in the islands a 
 
70 FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 report he had written of the state of things at 
 Molokai sixteen years ago, and I think it 
 will be interesting to give a portion of it in 
 his own words. 
 
 *By special providence of our Divine Lord, 
 who during His public life showed a par- 
 ticular sympathy for the lepers, my way was 
 traced towards Kalawao in May 1873. ^ 
 was then thirty-three years of age, enjoying 
 a robust good health. 
 
 ' About eighty of the lepers were in the 
 hospital ; the others, with a very few Kokuas 
 (helpers), had taken their abode farther up 
 towards the valley. They had cut down the 
 old pandanus or punhala groves to build 
 their houses, though a great many had 
 nothing but branches of castor-oil trees with 
 which to construct their small shelters. 
 These frail frames were covered with ki 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 71 
 
 leaves or with sugar-cane leaves, the best 
 ones with pili grass. I myself was sheltered 
 during several weeks under the single 
 pandanus-tree which is preserved up to the 
 present in the churchyard. Under such 
 primitive roofs were living pell-mell, without 
 distinction of age or sex, old or new cases, 
 all more or less strangers one to another, 
 those unfortunate outcasts of society. They 
 passed their time with playing cards, hula 
 (native dances), drinking fermented ki-root 
 beer, home-made alcohol, and with the 
 sequels of all this. Their clothes were far 
 from being clean and decent, on account of 
 the scarcity of water, which had to be 
 brought at that time from a great distance. 
 Many a time in fulfilling my priestly duty at 
 their domiciles I have been compelled to run 
 outside to breathe fresh air. To counteract 
 
72 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 the bad smell I made myself accustomed to 
 the use of tobacco, whereupon the smell of 
 the pipe preserved me somewhat from carry- 
 ing in my clothes the noxious odour of the 
 lepers. At that time the progress of the 
 disease was fearful, and the rate of mortality 
 very high. The miserable condition of the 
 settlement gave it the name of a living grave- 
 yard, which name, I am happy to state, is 
 to-day no longer applicable to our place.' 
 
 In 1874 a 'cona' (south) wind blew down 
 most of the lepers' wretched, rotten abodes, 
 and the poor sufferers lay shivering in the 
 wind and rain, with clothes and blankets wet 
 through. In a few days the grass beneath 
 their sleeping-mats began to emit a ' very 
 unpleasant vapour.' * I at once,' says Father 
 Damien, 'called the attention of our sym- 
 pathising agent to the fact, and very soon 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI y2> 
 
 there arrived several schooner - loads of 
 scantling to build solid frames with, and all 
 lepers in distress received, on application, 
 the necessary material for the erection of 
 decent houses.' Friends sent them rough 
 boards and shingles and flooring. Some of 
 the lepers had a little money, and hired 
 carpenters. * For those without means the 
 priest, with his leper boys, did the work of 
 erecting a good many small houses.' 
 
 Since the accession of King Kalakaua 
 the care and generosity of the present 
 Hawaiian Government for their lepers cannot 
 be too highly praised. The Queen and the 
 heir - apparent (Princess Llliuokilani) have 
 visited the settlement in person. The 
 cottages are now neat and convenient, and 
 raised on trestles so as not to be In contact 
 with the earth. There are five churches, and 
 
74 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 the faces one sees are nearly always happy 
 faces. Each person receives five pounds of 
 fresh beef every week, besides milk, poi, and 
 biscuits. There is a large general shop 
 where tinned fruits and all sorts of things can 
 be bought. Food, no doubt, is somewhat 
 monotonous in quality, and it pleases me to 
 remember how Father Damien enjoyed some 
 raisins I had brought from America as he 
 sat on my balcony. 
 
 Of course I saw cases in the hospitals 
 that were terribly emaciated and disfigured, 
 but there is no doubt that the disease has 
 taken a milder form than it wore years ago. 
 As a rule, the lepers do not suffer severe 
 pain, and the average length of life at 
 Molokai is about four years, at the end of 
 which time the disease generally attacks 
 some vital organ. Women are less liable to 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 75 
 
 it than men. One woman accompanied her 
 husband to Molokai when he became a leper, 
 and at his death became the bride of another 
 leper. He died, and she married another, 
 and another after his demise. So that she 
 has lived with four leper husbands, and 
 yet remains healthy. 
 
 Dr. Swift, the resident physician, is kind 
 and diligent, and the Government is scrupu- 
 lous about meeting the wishes of the people 
 in all possible ways. 
 
 The children are well cared for in the 
 Kapiolani Home at Honolulu if they show 
 no signs of disease, and those in Molokai 
 certainly do not lead an unhappy life. 
 
 They sing very nicely. One man had a 
 full sweet baritone, and there was a tiny 
 child who made a great effect with a bawling 
 metallic voice. A refined -looking woman 
 
76 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 played the harmonium well, with hands that 
 looked as if they must have been disabled. She 
 had been a well-known musician in Honolulu. 
 
 I enjoyed the singing of the Latin Christ- 
 mas hymn * Adeste fideles.' But the most 
 touching thing was the leper song (composed 
 by a native poet), a kind of dirge in which 
 they bewailed the misery of their lot. When 
 I visited the boys with Father Damien in 
 the evening they were drawn up in a long 
 narrow lane, which it was rather terrible to 
 inspect by the dim light of oil lamps. 
 
 On Sunday evening I showed them the 
 magic-lantern, and Father Damien explained 
 to them the pictures from the life of Christ. 
 It was a moving sight to see the poor 
 death -stricken crowd listening to the story 
 of His healings and then of His sufferings, 
 His crucifixion and His resurrection. 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 77 
 
 How wonderful Is the power of our 
 Saviour to give joy even to lepers. I shall 
 never forget visiting last ^larch an asylum 
 of these poor sufferers at Agra. Their faces 
 w^ere too dreadful to look at ; they were lame 
 and maimed and mutilated, but they were 
 singing with husky voices the praises of 
 Jesus Christ, and as I spoke to them of Him 
 they kept repeating the last words of every 
 sentence with the greatest delight, and when 
 I left them the cry rang out again and again, 
 'Victory to Jesus.' An American Baptist 
 missionary, Mr. Jones, had found time to 
 visit them about once a fortnight with the 
 good news, and here was the result mani- 
 fested. 
 
 In the daytime at Molokal one sees the 
 people sitting chatting at their cottage doors, 
 pounding the taro root, to make it Into their 
 
78 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 favourite food pol, or galloping on their little 
 ponies — men and women alike astride — be- 
 tween the two villages. And one always 
 receives the ready greeting and the readier 
 smile. These changes have been brought 
 about partly by the increased care of the 
 Government itself, and partly by the repre- 
 sentations of the noble man who went alone 
 to that plague-stricken place when it was the 
 abode of unmitigated terrors. 
 
 It would undoubtedly be a great trial 
 to heart and nerve to live even now at 
 Molokai, as eight noble men and women 
 have elected to do for Christ's sake. I 
 found it distressing during only fourteen days 
 to see none but lepers, and it often came 
 with a specially painful shock to find a child 
 of ten with a face that looked as if it might 
 belong to a man of fifty. But I had gone to 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 79 
 
 Molokai expecting to find it scarcely less 
 dreadful than hell itself, and the cheerful 
 people, the lovely landscape, and the com- 
 paratively painless life were all surprises. I 
 was specially impressed by a good old blind 
 man in the hospital, who told me that he was 
 thankful for the disease, because it had saved 
 him from so much evil. 
 
 God's care is surely over all His children, 
 and sooner or later the darkest horrors reveal 
 Divine wisdom and love. 
 
 *I learnt by experience,' said a friend of 
 mine to me once, ' that in falling over 
 precipices, in sinking in swamps, in tumbling 
 into pits, in drowning in seas, I did but find 
 God at the bottom — 
 
 ' Thus does Thy hospitable greatness he 
 Outside us hke a boundless sea ; 
 We cannot lose ourselves where all is home, 
 Nor drift away from Thee.' 
 
8o FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 In the early days the state of things must 
 have been very dreadful. 
 
 * On my arrival,' says Father Damien, ' I 
 found the lepers in general very destitute 
 of warm clothing. If they have suitable 
 clothes to protect themselves from the 
 inclemency of the weather, they usually 
 resist the cold very well, but they suffer 
 greatly if, through neglect or destitution, 
 they have barely enough to cover their 
 nakedness. They then begin to feel feverish 
 and cough badly, swelling in the face and 
 limbs sets in, and if not speedily attended 
 to the disease generally settles on the 
 lungs, and thus hastens them on ^the road 
 to an early grave. 
 
 'A person afflicted with leprosy who 
 quietly gives himself up to the ravages 
 of the disease, and does not take exercise 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEX AND MOLOKAI 8i 
 
 of any kind, presents a downcast appearance, 
 and threatens soon to become a total wreck. 
 
 ' I remember well that when I arrived 
 here the poor people were without any 
 medicines, with the exception of a few physics 
 and their own native remedies. It was a 
 common sight to see people going around 
 with fearful ulcers, which, for the want of a 
 few rags or a piece of lint and a little salve, 
 were left exposed. Not only were their 
 sores neglected, but any one getting a fever, 
 or any of the numerous ailments that lepers 
 are heir to, was carried off for want of some 
 simple medicine. ... 
 
 ' In the fulfilment of my duties as priest, 
 being in daily contact with the distressed 
 people, I have seen and closely observed 
 the bad effect of forcible separation of the 
 married companions. It gives them an 
 
 G 
 
82 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 oppression of mind which in many instances 
 is more unbearable than the pains and 
 agonies of the disease itself. This uneasi- 
 ness of the mind is in course of time partly for- 
 gotten by those unfortunates only who throw 
 themselves into a reckless and immoral habit 
 of living. Whereas, if married men or women 
 arrive here in company with their lawful 
 mates, they accept at once their fate with 
 resignation, and very soon make themselves 
 at home in their exile. Not only is the 
 contented mind of the leper secured by the 
 company of his wife, but the enjoyment of 
 good nursing and the assistance so much 
 needed in this protracted and loathsome 
 disease. . . . 
 
 ' Previous to my arrival here it was ac- 
 knowledged and spoken of in the public 
 papers as well as in private letters that the 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI Z^, 
 
 greatest want at Kalawao was a spiritual 
 leader. It was owing in a great measure to 
 this want that vice as a general rule existed 
 instead of virtue, and degradation of the 
 lowest type went ahead as a leader of the 
 community. . . . When once the disease 
 prostrated them women and children were 
 often cast out, and had to find some other 
 shelter. Sometimes they were laid behind a 
 stone wall, and left there to die, and at other 
 times a hired hand would carry them to the 
 hospital. 
 
 * As there were so many dying people, my 
 priestly duty towards them often gave me 
 the opportunity to visit them at their domi- 
 ciles, and although my exhortations were 
 especially addressed to the prostrated, often 
 they would fall upon the ears of public 
 sinners, who little by little became con- 
 
84 FATHER DAM JEN chap. 
 
 sclous of the consequences of their wicked 
 Hves, and began to reform, and thus, with 
 the hope in a merciful Saviour, gave up 
 their bad habits. 
 
 ' Kindness to all, charity to the needy, a 
 sympathising hand to the sufferers and the 
 dying, in conjunction with a solid religious 
 instruction to my listeners, have been my con- 
 stant means to introduce moral habits among 
 the lepers. I am happy to say that, assisted 
 by the local administration, my labours here, 
 which seemed to be almost in vain at the 
 beginning, have, thanks to a kind Providence, 
 been greatly crowned with success.' 
 
 The water supply of Molokai was a 
 pleasant subject with Father Damien. When 
 he first arrived the lepers could only obtain 
 water by carrying it from the gulch on their 
 poor shoulders ; they had also to take their 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 85 
 
 clothes to some distance when they required 
 washing, and it was no wonder that they 
 Hved in a very dirty state. 
 
 He was much exercised about the matter, 
 and one day, to his great joy, he was told 
 that at the end of a valley called Waihanau 
 there was a natural reservoir. 
 
 He set out with two white men and some 
 of his boys, and travelled up the valley till 
 he came with delight to a nearly circular 
 basin of most delicious Ice-cold water. Its 
 diameter was seventy-two feet by fifty-five, 
 and not far from the bank they found, on sound- 
 ing, that It was eighteen feet deep. There 
 It lay at the foot of a high cliff, and he was 
 Informed by the natives that there had never 
 been a drought In which this basin had dried 
 up. He did not rest till a supply of water- 
 pipes had been sent them, which he and all 
 
86 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 the able lepers went to work and laid. 
 Henceforth clear sweet water has been 
 available for all who desire to drink, to 
 wash, or to bathe. Lately the water arrange- 
 ments have been perfected under Govern- 
 ment auspices by Mr. Alexander Sproull, who 
 was engaged In this beneficent work while I 
 was at Kalawao, and who was my companion 
 at the guest-house. 
 
 Father Damlen was not hopeless about 
 the discovery of a cure for leprosy. ' But, 
 to my knowledge, It has not yet been found,' 
 he said. ' Perchance, In the near future, 
 through the untiring perseverance of physi- 
 cians, a cure may be found.' When new- 
 comers arrived at Molokal there were 
 plenty of old residents ready to preach 
 to them the terrible axiom, ' Aole kanawai 
 ma keia wahi ' — * In this place there Is no 
 
HI FATHER DAM I EN AND MOLOKAI 87 
 
 law.' With the greatest indignation Father 
 Damlen heard this doctrine proclaimed In 
 pubHc and private, and with the whole force 
 of his being he set himself to combat It. 
 
 Along the base of the cliffs there grows 
 very abundantly a plant which the natives 
 call ' kl ' [Draccsna terminalis), and from 
 the root of which, when cooked and 
 fermented, they make a highly Intoxicat- 
 ing liquid. When Father Damien arrived 
 he found that the practice of distilling this 
 horrible drink was carried on largely. The 
 natives who fell under its influence forgot 
 all decency and ran about nude, acting as 
 if they were stark mad. It was Illegal to 
 distil spirits, and the brave man, having 
 discovered that certain members of the 
 police were in league with the evil-doers, 
 set to work and went round the settlement 
 
88 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 with ' threats and persuasions,' till he had 
 induced the culprits to deliver up the utensils 
 which were employed for that purpose. 
 Some of the most guilty persons were 
 convicted, but they were pardoned on 
 giving a promise that they would never 
 offend again. These reforms were of course 
 very unpopular with evil-doers, and there 
 was fierce opposition to his influence. He 
 learnt what it was to be hated for righteous- 
 ness' sake by the people for whom he was 
 giving his life, and the tide of angry 
 resistance did not entirely turn till it 
 became apparent that the cursed disease 
 had claimed him also for its own. Then 
 his adversaries w^ere ashamed, and became 
 his friends and servants. 
 
 It was after living at the leper settle- 
 ment for about ten years that he began to 
 
Ill FATHER DAM I EN AND MOLOKAI 89 
 
 suspect that he was a leper. The doctors 
 assured him that this was not the case. 
 But he once scalded himself In his foot, and to 
 his horror he felt no pain. Anaesthesia had 
 begun, and soon other fatal signs appeared. 
 One day he asked Dr. Arnim, the great 
 German doctor who was then resident in 
 Molokai, to examine him carefully. 
 
 ' I cannot bear to tell you/ said Dr. 
 Arnim, 'but what you say is true.' 
 
 ' It Is no shock to me,' said Damien, 
 ' for I have long felt sure of it.' 
 
 I may mention here that there are three 
 kinds of leprosy. In one kind the whole 
 body becomes white and of a scaly texture, 
 but the general health is unaffected com- 
 paratively. This is the sort repeatedly men- 
 tioned in the Bible ; in modern times it is 
 somewhat rare. 
 
90 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 In the anaesthetic variety the extremities 
 become insensible to pain, and gradually 
 slough away with sores. The whole body 
 becomes weak and crippled, and an easy 
 prey to dysentery or diarrhoea. The third 
 kind of leprosy is named tubercular, and 
 IS distinguished by swellings and discolour- 
 ations. This is the most painful kind to see. 
 Father Damien suffered (as is often the case) 
 both from the anaesthetic and the tubercular 
 forms of the disease. 
 
 'Whenever I preach to my people,' he 
 said, ' I do not say "my brethren," as you do, 
 but "we lepers." People pity me and think 
 me unfortunate, but I think myself the 
 happiest of missionaries.' 
 
 Henceforth he came under the law of 
 segregation, and journeys to the other parts 
 of the islands were forbidden. But he 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 91 
 
 worked on with the same sturdy, cheerful 
 fortitude, accepting the will of God with 
 gladness, undaunted by the continual 
 reminders of his coming fate which met 
 him in the poor creatures around him. 
 
 ' I would not be cured,' he said to me, 
 * if the price of my cure was that I must 
 leave the island and give up my work.' 
 
 A lady wrote to him, ' You have given 
 up all earthly things to serve God here and 
 to help others, and I believe you must have 
 now joy that nothing can take from you 
 and a great reward hereafter.' — 'Tell her,' 
 he said, with a quiet smile, ' that it is true. 
 I do have that joy now.' 
 
 He was very anxious that I should 
 attend his church services, though, as they 
 were in Hawaiian, I could not understand what 
 was said. English was the language used by 
 
92 FATHER D AMI EN chap. 
 
 educated Hawailans. He pressed me to help 
 in his choir, and was delighted when I sang 
 ' Adeste fideles ' with the boys, and some 
 of the tunes that the ariston played. He 
 had his own private communion in the 
 church on Sunday morning, followed by 
 a general service, at which there were 
 about eighty lepers present. 
 
 He seldom talked of himself except 
 in answer to questions, and he had always 
 about him the simplicity of a great man — 
 * clothed with humility.' He was not a 
 sentimental kind of man, and I was there- 
 fore the more pleased that he gave me a 
 little card of flowers from Jerusalem, and 
 wrote on it, ' To Edward Clifford, from 
 his leper friend, J. Damien.' He also 
 wrote in my Bible the words, ' I was sick, 
 and ye visited me.' He liked looking at 
 
Ill FATHER DAM I EN AND MOLOKAI 93 
 
 the pictures which were in it, especially 
 at the two praying hands of Albert Durer 
 and a picture of Broadlands. I told him 
 all the names of the friends who had 
 given me presents for him, and he asked 
 questions, and was evidently touched and 
 happily surprised that English Protestants 
 should love him. 
 
 I gave him on Christmas Day a copy 
 of Faber's hymns which had been sent 
 him by Lady Grosvenor's three children. 
 He read over the childishly written words 
 on the title-page, ' Blessed are the merciful, 
 for they shall obtain mercy,' and said very 
 sweetly that he should read and value the 
 book. He was notably fond of children, 
 and solicitous about three little girls who 
 had been removed to Honolulu. 
 
 I wished I could have understood the 
 
94 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 sermon he preached on Christmas Day. It 
 was long and animated. In the afternoon he 
 was catechising the boys, and he translated 
 for me some of his questions and some 
 of their answers, chiefly bearing on the 
 Nativity and on the nature of God. 
 
 In speaking to me he used English, v/hich 
 he said was now the language most natural 
 to him. 
 
 It has been generally said in England 
 that he is a Jesuit, but this is not the case. 
 He belongs to the ' Society of the Sacred 
 Heart of Jesus and Mary.' 
 
 He was, of course, desirous that the 
 English friends whose sympathy and affec- 
 tion have helped him should belong to his 
 Church, but I was glad to find in conversa- 
 tion with him that it was no part of his 
 belief that Protestants must be eternally 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 95 
 
 lost. He and Father Conradi talked much 
 to me of the infallible authority of the 
 Church, and I felt that if that one dogma 
 could be swallowed, nothing else need surely 
 be refused. There is something attractive 
 about submission to authority, but it has its 
 disastrous side if the authority be only human. 
 Probably the world would have been spared 
 the shame and horror of the fires of Smith- 
 field and the racks of the Inquisition if the 
 great lay body of temperate men and kindly 
 women had felt that they could form a public 
 opinion against ecclesiastical authority. But 
 they dared not assert themselves, and the 
 ghastliest crimes that have disgraced humanity 
 were perpetrated under the name of religion. 
 The same demon who inspired them has 
 often found a resting-place in Protestant 
 churches, and we remember them not for the 
 
96 FATHER DAMIEN ' chap. 
 
 sake of reproaching after long years the 
 Church which committed them, but rather to 
 point out the danger of investing even the 
 most rehgious leaders of the time with 
 irresponsible power. They were, as a great 
 writer has told us, but 'the legitimate fruit 
 of the superstition that in the eyes of the 
 Maker of the world an error of belief is the 
 greatest of crimes ; that while for all other 
 sins there is forgiveness, a mistake in the 
 intellectual intricacies of speculative opinion 
 will be punished not with the brief agony of 
 a painful death, but with tortures to which 
 there will be no end.' There is something 
 peculiarly repulsive to the English mind in 
 the faults which are developed from the love 
 of priestly power. 
 
 Assent is probably a different thing from 
 conviction, but I tried to explain to Father 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 97 
 
 Damlen that we in England have not the 
 power in us to believe that the Roman 
 Church has made no mistakes in her beliefs, 
 any more than that she has committed no 
 faults in her practice. 
 
 He spoke of the comfort it gave him to 
 know that all his fellow - priests preached 
 precisely the same doctrine that he preached, 
 but I could only reply that we would rather 
 have a growing faith on which fresh light 
 can be cast, and from which old abuses 
 can be detached, than a system of doctrine 
 which has been defined at every point for 
 centuries. We do not regard as a desidera- 
 tum the routine which comes of strict 
 orthodoxy, and we owe much of the force of 
 our spiritual life to the fact that men who 
 have held strongly the primary beliefs as to 
 the difference between right and wrong, the 
 
 H 
 
98 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 goodness and love of the Almighty Father, 
 and His manifestation in Jesus Christ, have 
 freely searched for truth with no haunting 
 fear that they must not differ from other 
 good men who have gone before them. We 
 are content to believe that perfection of 
 creed grows with perfection of practice. 
 
 But, notwithstanding such differences, no 
 sincere man could feel a real barrier in inter- 
 course with one so good as Father Damien, 
 and on his side he always showed a true and 
 wholesome charity while he dealt with views 
 which he considered erroneous. 
 
 We must all rejoice that the Roman 
 Catholic Church produces such saints, and 
 not hesitate to accord them the fellowship, 
 the sympathy, and the hearty honest praise 
 which they deserve. To Father Damien we 
 render more than praise. He has our love. 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 99 
 
 He told me that there had been beautiful 
 Instances of true devotion among the lepers. 
 Roman Catholics were nearly as numerous 
 as Protestants, and both Churches were well 
 filled. He gave me good accounts of the 
 Protestant native minister, who had come to 
 Molokai In charge of his leprous wife. I 
 visited him, but we could only understand 
 each other through an interpreter. The 
 total number of lepers in the settlement was 
 a thousand and thirty. 
 
 Christmas Day was, of course, a feast, 
 and in the evening the lepers had an enter- 
 tainment and acted little scenes in their 
 biggest hall. The arlston played its best 
 between whiles. To English people It 
 would probably have seemed a dreary en- 
 tertainment, but the excitement was great. 
 Belshazzar's feast was a truly wonderful 
 
loo FATHER DAM TEN chap. 
 
 representation, and not much more like Bel- 
 shazzar's feast than like most other scenes. 
 The stage was very dark, and all the lepers 
 seemed to take their turns in walking on and 
 off it. Belshazzar had his face down on the 
 table, buried in his arms, nearly all the time, 
 and it really seemed as if he might be asleep. 
 Nobody did anything particular, and it was 
 difficult to say who was intended for Daniel. 
 I think the queen - mother was a little 
 boy. 
 
 The fathers were on very affectionate, 
 playful terms with the lepers. I found 
 Father Conradi one morning making a list 
 of the boys' names, which I think are worth 
 recording with some others that I got from 
 Mr. Sproull and Dr. Nicholls. It must be 
 remembered that they are boys' names : 
 Jane Peter, Henry Ann, Sit-in-the-cold, 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI loi 
 
 The Rat-eater, The Eyes-of-the-fire, A Fall- 
 from-a-horse, Mrs. Tompkins, The Heaven- 
 has-been-talking, Susan, The Window, The 
 wandering Ghost, The first Nose, The tenth 
 Heaven, The Dead-house, The white Bird, 
 The Bird-of-water, The River-of-truth, The 
 Emetic. 
 
 The following names were found by Dr. 
 Nicholls at Honolulu : Mr. Scissors, Mrs. 
 Oyster, The Fool, The Man who washes 
 his Dimples, The tired Lizard, The Atlantic 
 Ocean, The Stomach, The great Kettle, 
 Poor Pussy, The Pigsty. 
 
 Father Damien would never come Inside 
 the guest-house where I was staying, but sat 
 in the evening on the steps of the verandah 
 and talked on In his cheery, pleasant, simple 
 way. The stars shone over his head, and 
 all the valleys glimmered In golden moon- 
 
I02 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 light. There is often wild weather in 
 Molokai. The cona wind rushes up from 
 the southern coast, and reaches with steady 
 force the heights of the island ; then it seems 
 staggered at finding the ground suddenly 
 come to an end, and descends through the 
 gorges to the leper villages in gusts which, 
 though warm, are so violent that one even- 
 ing our roof was mainly torn off, and the rain 
 came pouring through a dozen fissures. The 
 china-roses by the balcony were ruthlessly 
 withered and torn to pieces, and in a ride 
 from Kalaupapa I was driven in exactly 
 opposite directions within a distance of two 
 hundred yards, while the rain in my face 
 felt more like gravel than water. This 
 weather sometimes lasts for days together, 
 and the wind continues, though the skies 
 may be full of starlight or sunshine. 
 
in FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 103 
 
 Generally the climate is what would uni- 
 versally be described as lovely; but Mr. 
 Sproull told me that the heat and stillness 
 were sometimes so exhausting that every one 
 got 'as limp as a wet collar.' 
 
 The ground at Molokai is strewn with 
 great black blocks of lava, round which grows 
 a tall delicate grass so closely that one has to 
 be careful of pitfalls as one walks. There 
 are not many wild-flowers in the Sandwich 
 Islands. The lilac major convolvulus, a 
 handsome white poppy, the diverse-coloured 
 lantana, and a bright orange-blossom with a 
 milky stem are among the principal. On 
 the hills grow the crimson-blossomed Lehua, 
 and various pretty berries, white, black, 
 purple, yellow, and red — some of them (the 
 ohelo especially) excellent to eat. 
 
 Half-way between the two leper towns 
 
I04 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 rises a lowlsh hill, which is found, on 
 ascending it, to be an extinct volcano with 
 a perfect cup, and at the bottom of the cup 
 a hole 130 feet wide which is said to be 
 unfathomable. It is nearly full of turbid 
 green water. Half skeleton trees grow on 
 its sides, and some big cactuses. The place 
 looks like the scene of some weird fairy 
 tale. 
 
 At Kalaupapa there live and work 
 Father Wendolen and three Franciscan 
 sisters. Mother Marianne, the Superior, is 
 a very gentle sweet woman with consider- 
 able organising powers, and a taste for art 
 and beauty which can find little scope in 
 that outcast place. She told me that she 
 would be glad to receive clothes for the 
 children occasionally. They may be sent 
 direct to her or to the care of the Board of 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 105 
 
 Health for the leper settlement at Kalau- 
 papa, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands. The 
 Roman Catholic Church in this village was 
 built partly by Father Damien's own hands. 
 He is good at carpentering and building, and 
 apparently able and ready to work at any- 
 thing as long as it is work. He is specially 
 scrupulous and businesslike about accounts 
 and money matters, and was very anxious 
 that I should see how carefully he had kept 
 his books, and that I should understand that 
 the presents sent him had been dispensed 
 with impartiality among Protestants and 
 Roman Catholics. Besides Father Con- 
 radi he has with him two earnest laymen 
 — Brother Joseph, an American, and Brother 
 James, an Irishman. 
 
 The time for me to leave the leper settle- 
 ment came only too soon. On the last day 
 
io6 FATHER DAMIEN chap- 
 
 of the year a ship came, bringing two hun- 
 dred friends of lepers to spend a few hours 
 at Molokai — a treat generously provided by 
 Mr. Samuel Damon of Honolulu. The sea 
 was so rough that only the men were allowed 
 to land, but the women were taken close to 
 the shore in boats, so that they could see 
 their friends and converse with them. One 
 bold girl leaped on shore In defiance of all 
 rules. The scenes of meeting and parting- 
 were never to be forgotten. When the 
 vessel sailed away all the population seemed 
 to have come out to say farewell, and there 
 was much wailing and waving of handker- 
 chiefs. But what a difference It must make 
 to the sufferers and to their relatives to look 
 forward to such occasional meetings instead 
 of to an unbroken separation ! 
 
 As our ship weighed anchor the sombre 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 107 
 
 purple cliffs were crowned with white clouds. 
 Down their sides leaped the cataracts. The 
 little village, with its three churches and its 
 white cottages, lay at their bases. Father 
 Damien stood with his people on the rocks 
 * till we slowly passed from their sight. The 
 sun was getting low in the heavens, the 
 beams of light were slanting down the 
 mountain sides, and then I saw the last of 
 Molokai in a golden veil of mist. 
 
 #^Jt O/. 42. J&. 
 
 •TV- 'A- W TV- 
 
 #■«. -M, ^i- JA- 
 
 W "TV- W -TV- 
 
 London, May 1889. 
 And now the news of Father Damien's 
 death has come to us. Friends have said 
 to me, ' You must be glad to think that he 
 has passed aw^ay to his reward.' I feel that 
 all that God does is best, and that therefore 
 this is best. But I do not feel glad except 
 
io8 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 from that highest point of view. Looked at 
 with human eyes, it would have seemed to 
 most of us that so useful and happy a life 
 might have been prolonged with great bless- 
 ing to himself and to the suffering ones among 
 whom he worked. 
 
 I think that in the last few weeks he had 
 himself begun to feel the desires for paradise 
 quickening, as the weariness of the flesh grew 
 heavier. 
 
 On the 4th of last January Brother James 
 wrote to me : * . . . Let us all pray that al- 
 though we may not meet again on earth we 
 shall one day be happily united for ever in 
 our heavenly Father's mansions, where the 
 lepers are clean. I cannot express to you, 
 Mr. Clifford, how highly we have appreciated 
 your visit to our poor leper settlement, nor 
 the delight with which the leper boys hailed 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 109 
 
 each time your presence among them. And 
 they will never forget your generous and 
 successful efforts in promoting their enjoy- 
 ment. Especially they are delighted to know 
 that you brought from the uttermost parts of 
 the earth a cure for their leprosy. I some- 
 times offend Father Damien's modesty by 
 telling him he is appearing younger and better 
 looking since using the oil, and really his face 
 and voice have greatly improved. He is 
 having great confidence in its use. He most 
 affectionately thanks your kind inquiry after 
 his health, and wishes you to know that he 
 is improving in every respect. 
 
 ' He is greatly elated over the good news 
 received from Rev. Mr. Chapman, and re- 
 quests that when you write home you will 
 express his unbounded gratitude to that zeal- 
 ous friend of the lepers, and all others asso- 
 
no FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 ciated with him in the good work. The 
 reward will be the prayers of the leper priest 
 and his afflicted flock ascending daily to the 
 throne of mercy for all our benefactors. 
 Wishing you all happiness in this life and the 
 next, I remain yours truly in Christ.' 
 (Father Damien adds a postscript.) 
 * Being very busy, I endorse all what 
 Brother James says. Ati revoir. The Lord 
 bless you. J. Damien.' 
 
 The hopes which this account and my last 
 days at Molokai raised were dashed by a 
 letter from Brother James, written on the 
 2ist of February. He gave a distressing 
 account of Father Damien's bodily condition, 
 but said : ' Nevertheless he is as energetic as 
 ever in bettering the condition of the lepers ; 
 there have been added to our number since 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN A.\D MOLOKAI iii 
 
 you left about a dozen new cases ; all are 
 
 comparatively happy.' 
 
 The postscript to this letter is — 
 
 ' My love and good wishes to good friend 
 
 Edward. I try to make slowly my way of 
 
 the Cross, and hope to be soon on top of my 
 
 Golgotha. — Yours for ever, 
 
 'J. Damien.' 
 My last letter from him Is dated 28th 
 
 February : — 
 
 'Kalawao, 2Zth February 1S89. 
 
 ' My dear Edward Clifford — Your sym- 
 pathising letter of 24th gives me some relief 
 In my rather distressed condition. I try my 
 best to carry without much complaining and 
 in a practical way, for my poor soul's sanctl- 
 ficatlon, the long foreseen miseries of the 
 disease, which, after all, is a providential agent 
 to detach the heart from all earthly affection, 
 
112 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 and prompts much the desire of a Christian 
 soul to be united — the sooner the better — 
 with Him who is her only life. 
 
 ' During your long travelling road home- 
 wards please do not forget the narrow road. 
 We both have to walk carefully, so as to meet 
 together at the home of our common and 
 eternal Father. My kind regards and 
 prayers and good wishes for all sympathising 
 friends. Bon voyage, mon cher ami, et azi 
 revoir au ceil. — Votus tuus, 
 
 'J. Damien.' 
 
 About three weeks after writing this letter 
 he felt sure that his end was near, and on the 
 28th March he took to his bed. 
 
 ' You see my hands,' he said. ' All the 
 wounds are healing and the crust is becoming 
 black. You know that is a sign of death. 
 Look at my eyes too. I have seen so many 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 113 
 
 lepers die that I cannot be mistaken. Death 
 is not far off. 
 
 * I should have liked to see the Bishop 
 again, but le bon Diett is calling me to keep 
 Easter with Himself. God be blessed ! 
 
 ' How good He is to have preserved me 
 long enough to have two priests by my side 
 at my last moments, and also to have the 
 good Sisters of Charity at the Ldprose7ne. 
 That has been my Nunc Dimittis. The 
 work of the lepers is assured, and I am 
 no longer necessary, and so will go up 
 yonder.' 
 
 Father Wendolen said, 'When you are up 
 above, father, you will not forget those you 
 leave orphans behind you ? ' 
 
 ' Oh no ! If I have any credit with God I 
 will intercede for all in the L^proserie' 
 
 ' And will you, like Elijah, leave me your 
 
 I 
 
114 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 mantle, my father, in order that I may have 
 your great heart ? ' 
 
 'Why, what would you do with it?' said 
 the dying martyr ; *it Is full of leprosy.' 
 
 He rallied for a little while after this, 
 and his watchers even had a little hope that 
 his days might be lengthened. Father 
 Conradi, Father Wendolen, and Brother 
 Joseph were much in his company. Brother 
 James was his constant nurse. The Sisters 
 from Kalaupapa visited him often, and it is 
 good to think that the sweet placid face 
 and gentle voice of the Mother were near 
 him in his last days. Everybody admired 
 his wonderful patience. He who had been 
 so ardent, so strong, and so playful, was now 
 powerless on his couch. He lay on the 
 ground on a wretched mattress like the poorest 
 leper. They had the greatest difficulty in 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 115 
 
 getting him to accept a bed. 'And how 
 poorly off he was; he who had spent so much 
 money to reHeve the lepers had so forgotten 
 himself that he had none of the comforts and 
 scarcely the necessaries of life.' Sometimes 
 he suffered intensely ; sometimes he was 
 partly unconscious. The terrible disease had 
 concentrated itself in his mouth and throat. 
 As he lay there in his tiny domicile, with the 
 roar of the sea getting fainter to his poor 
 diseased ears, and the kind face of Brother 
 James becoming gradually indistinct before 
 his failing eyes, did the thought come to him 
 that after all his work was poor, and his life 
 half a failure ? Many whom he had hoped 
 much of had disappointed him. Enemies 
 had lurked near at hand. His motives had 
 been impugned, his character had been 
 assailed. Not much praise had reached him. 
 
ii6 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 The tide of affection and sympathy from 
 England had cheered him, but England was 
 so far off that it seemed almost like sympathy 
 and affection from a star. Churches were 
 built, schools and hospitals were in working 
 order, but there was still much to be done. 
 He was only forty-nine, and he was dying. 
 
 'Well! God's will be done. He knows 
 best. My work, with all its faults and failures, 
 is in His hands, and before Easter I shall see 
 my Saviour.' 
 
 The breathing grew more laboured, the 
 leprous eyes were clouded, the once stalwart 
 frame was fast becoming rigid. The sound 
 of the passing bell was heard, and the wail of 
 the wretched lepers pierced the air. . . . 
 The last flickering breath was breathed, and 
 the soul of Joseph Damien de Veuster arose 
 like a lark to God. 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 117 
 
 Surely his power on earth now is greater 
 than it ever was while he lived among us ! 
 As Christ's power was greater when He was 
 nailed powerless to the Cross by hands and feet 
 than when He went about to heal and bless, 
 and greater still when He rose to heavenly 
 places, so it is with His true servants. 
 
 I think that Father Damien is now receiv- 
 ing ten cities as a reward for his careful and 
 diligent use of the ' pound ' which he thirty 
 years ago consecrated to God when he pre- 
 sented his body a living sacrifice holy and 
 acceptable for His service. His life and death 
 have power to touch thousands of souls whom 
 he never heard of, power too to make a great 
 nation rise to free an empire from the plague 
 which slew him. What a reward ! 
 
 Brother James wrote me as follows three 
 days after his death : — 
 
ii8 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 * With heart-felt sorrow I announce to 
 you the death of our friend Father Damien, 
 who departed this Hfe 15th April, having 
 been confined to his bed for twenty -one 
 days, during which time he often suffered 
 intensely, the disease having concentrated 
 itself in his mouth and throat, thus ending 
 a martyrdom of sixteen years. 
 
 * I enjoyed the happy privilege of being 
 his sick-nurse, and I was with him night and 
 day until he breathed forth his soul to God 
 in my arms. A happier death I never saw. 
 He was constantly united to God by incessant 
 prayer and suffering ; he often told me he 
 was so happy at the hope that he would 
 celebrate the cominof Easter in heaven. 
 Yourself and Mr. Chapman were always in 
 his thoughts, as his most devoted friends. 
 A remarkable change in his countenance 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 119 
 
 took place before his death, that of the 
 total disappearance of the tubercles with 
 which his face was covered. We have laid 
 him to rest under his puhalla-tree, almost at 
 the door of my little cottage, where I will act 
 as guardian of the dear remains until I too 
 shall end my course.' 
 
 Damien is now called to join that mystical 
 body of Christ which is the ' blessed company 
 of all faithful people,' and I think it will 
 surprise him little when among them he meets 
 men and women of other Christian bodies 
 than that to which he belonged, who have 
 given their lives, as he has done, to the 
 leprous, the foul, and the evil. All were 
 filled with the same divine life ; all were in- 
 spired with the love and the faith of God ; all 
 are counted worthy to walk in robes of white. 
 Differences of creed separate us pitifully 
 
I20 FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 here, but some day we shall perhaps find that 
 the Church's dictum, ' Quod semper, quod 
 ubique, quod ab omnibus,' is true in a deeper 
 and broader sense than that in which she has 
 generally used it, and that a great family is 
 ours of too long unrecognised brothers and 
 sisters. 
 
 Surely the bond of union which all kinds 
 of men and women have felt with Father 
 Damien ought to make us realise how much 
 there is of our religion that does not depend 
 on minor differences of creed. When we 
 remember, too, how little of our Bible the 
 Old Testament saints possessed, we must 
 admit that much of the essence of religion 
 is not exclusively drawn from the Bible, 
 though in consideration for our dulness it is 
 set forth in its pages. 
 
 St. Paul tells us how adequate for salvation 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 121 
 
 was the law written in the heart by nature, 
 and nowadays, when so much that is traditional 
 is shaken, and when men are so ready to take 
 refuge from right doing in scepticism, it is 
 time to ask whether beliefs that seem to un- 
 believers arbitrary beliefs are the only im- 
 portant and inspiring part of Christianity, and 
 whether the law by which they will finally 
 be judged is obligatory, for the reason that it 
 is as natural a part of them as their eyes, their 
 ears, and their breathing. Is there not a 
 universal truth (' Quod semper, quod ubique, 
 quod ab omnibus ') which is the heritage of 
 all humanity ? And if that truth is neglected 
 or abandoned, is it not from wilful blindness 
 rather than from unwilling scepticism ? Are 
 there not some * things which cannot be 
 shaken'? Is there not 'a kingdom which 
 cannot be moved ' ? 
 
122 FATHER DAM IE N chap. 
 
 If we grant this let it be remembered that 
 by doing so we give up no part of our own 
 faith, and that the Hfe of obedience to our 
 risen Lord is to be Hved with greater rather 
 than less carefulness. But we have gained 
 vital touch with many who come from the 
 east and the west, from the north and the 
 south, and who have hitherto been regarded 
 by us too much as strangers and foreigners. 
 And we have won a power of invitation to 
 many whom we had hitherto looked at in 
 silence. 
 
 Father Damien was a strict and con- 
 scientious Roman Catholic, and doubtless 
 assented to all the dogmas of his Church. 
 But all who share the common Christ life 
 feel a sense of brotherhood with him, even if 
 they do not think that the Roman Church is 
 infallible, or that its miracles are all authentic. 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 123 
 
 And this brotherhood depends surely on 
 truths that are universal, on faithfulness to 
 the great eternal difference between right 
 and wrong, on belief in God as the Spirit 
 who is our Almighty Father — invisible, 
 timeless, omnipresent, triumphant — as the 
 One who truly is Love, Light, and Life, 
 and who has manifested Himself to us in 
 Christ for our salvation. 
 
 Let us develop this thought a little 
 further while the lessons of Father Damien's 
 life are fresh In our hearts and minds. 
 
 All that is admirable is surely a mani- 
 festation of God, and therefore in loving 
 good we love God or what is of God. Peace 
 and rest come to all faithful hearts when they 
 fearlessly recognise and worship God as per- 
 fect goodness, when they have at last learnt 
 that ' whatsoever things are true, honest, just, 
 
124 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 pure, lovely, and of good report, '/W/ mean 
 God. The best hopes and the best thoughts 
 are always the truest and the most divine. 
 God's children discard only evil things from 
 their thought of Him, and they even do not 
 complain that He has allowed evil to exist. 
 For while they hate it and fight it they yet 
 know that the work of its destruction is the 
 very means by which they attain to God's 
 thought of them. Without pain and evil 
 and conflict it would surely have been 
 impossible for the highest virtues to have 
 been called into existence. 
 
 Is it a part of this universal truth that 
 Christ is the Son of God — that Christ is our 
 Saviour? Is it reasonable to believe that 
 the invisible Spirit should become visible, 
 that God, who is responsible for material 
 things, should manifest Himself as material? 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 125 
 
 I think it is both natural and reasonable 
 to believe it. And I believe that many 
 doubt it only because they associate false 
 beliefs with this truth. God is our Father 
 and Creator, and as such He must meet 
 every claim that the child and the creature 
 have on Him. But He is a Spirit, and we 
 are miaterial. How then can He manage 
 to be reached and touched by us ? 
 
 I heard it well said once by Hannah 
 Whitall Smith that if a man desired to make 
 a reform in an ant-hill it would be of no use 
 for him to stand and harangue the ants. 
 He would have to give it up unless he could 
 pass into the body of an ant and become 
 one of them. Then he could make himself 
 understood and effect his purpose. 
 
 This is what God has done for us by 
 His incarnation in Christ, and in a lesser 
 
126 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 degree by His manifestation in all good men 
 and women, and in all nature. 
 
 This is what the old world religions have 
 strained after, for men have always considered 
 that the God who made them would surely 
 want to be seen and known by them. 
 Krishna, Osiris, Zeus, Buddha are all proofs 
 of the naturalness of the idea of incarnation. 
 So it was not strange that when the fulness 
 of the time was come God became manifest 
 in the flesh, and showed Himself to us more 
 clearly than He had ever done before. 
 
 More than this. He not only showed 
 Himself, but He made it possible for us so 
 to receive Him that in union with the Son 
 of God we should become one with Himself 
 in a more perfect way than our creation 
 involved. 
 
 Forgiveness, access, sonship, and absolute 
 
in FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 127 
 
 union are given to us ; we are called to be 
 *the fulness of Him Who filleth all in all.' 
 No wonder at the enthusiasm of those who, 
 having received Christ, rejoice in Him as 
 God manifest in the flesh, the image of the 
 invisible God, as the One who opens to 
 them such an experience. 
 
 Doubtless, the time will come when we 
 shall see more clearly than we do now how 
 from the beginning Christ was In the world, 
 though the world knew Him not. Wherever 
 God has manifested Himself to men, and 
 wherever they have reached Him, in whom 
 they live and move and have their being, it 
 has been by Christ, though for centuries the 
 name of Jesus was not known. 
 
 This identification of God with humanity 
 by Christ is surely a natural and probable 
 thing for our faithful Creator to effect. In 
 
128 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 Christ God is afflicted in all our afflictions, 
 He suffers pain and death with us. And 
 thereby He rights us till we reach His own 
 perfect desire for us. 
 
 As I sailed to Molokai I learnt something 
 of this truth from the sea. I often leaned 
 over the ship's side and looked at it gleaming 
 in sapphire and emerald, and then turning to 
 whitest, loveliest foam as the keel cleft it. 
 
 I saw how all the filth and garbage of the 
 ship were flung into it, and how it received 
 them and absorbed them and yet remained 
 pure. All the refuse of rejected food was 
 poured into it ; all the dirty water and foul- 
 ness of that ship and of all ships ; all the 
 dead bodies of its sea-monsters had found 
 their tomb in it, and all the dead bodies 
 of all drowned men and women. Yet it was 
 sweet and clean and clear. Into it the 
 
Ill FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 129 
 
 deadliest poison might be poured, and yet 
 none would fear to bathe in it or drink of 
 it the next minute. 
 
 So it is with the Christ of God. Though 
 in His divine love He has identified Himself 
 with all wretched sinners, yet He remains 
 spotlessly holy. Though He has borne all 
 the sin of the world, yet it is as nothing. 
 All evil is nullified as it touches Him, and 
 the poor souls w^ho brought it stand pure 
 and clean in Him. 
 
 No statement is too strong for the Bible 
 to make as to this identification of the Lord 
 with man. And we shall find that the 
 depths of our own hearts testify to the same 
 truth. 
 
 To one the deepest doctrines seem 
 
 So naturally true, 
 That when he learns the lesson first 
 
 He scarcely thinks them new. 
 
 K 
 
I30 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 Perhaps the acceptance of the great 
 principles of our faith may not be so difficult 
 as is sometimes supposed, even for those 
 who, unlike ourselves, are tormented with 
 doubts as to the truth of some of the facts 
 which the Bible records. 
 
 They are facts, but if they were only 
 divine thoughts would they be less true ? 
 Is the story of the Prodigal Son less real 
 because it probably did not actually happen ? 
 Should a man refuse to live by the rule of 
 the Bible because it cannot be mathematically 
 proved that it records nothing but literal 
 occurrences ? Are not thoughts the realities 
 of facts ? Is not faith the substance of things 
 hoped for ? Does not everything from a 
 statue to a shoe -buckle exist first as the 
 thought of the creator and then become 
 visible ? Its transitory existence in matter 
 
in FATHER DAMIEN AND MOLOKAI 131 
 
 depends only on Its real existence in thought. 
 And is not the divine thought in a miracle 
 told to us in the Bible a real and inspiring 
 part of it ? The actual facts were transitory, 
 the thought is eternal, and is the part that 
 moves us. 
 
 The Christian who lives his life by the 
 power of His risen Lord has better proof of 
 his faith than Paley's evidences can give him. 
 Christ has promised that if a man do His 
 works he shall know of the doctrine. Let 
 him then live nobly and divinely, and 
 allow no scepticism to paralyse his work. 
 The greatest religious truth is the truth 
 which ' cannot be shaken,' and the king- 
 dom of God Is ' the kingdom which cannot 
 be moved.' Let him go happily to the 
 work of life with the faith and the hope 
 of God, with the indwelling life of 
 
132 FATHER DAMIEN chap, in 
 
 Christ, and with the charity which never 
 faileth. 
 
 And so, blessed by the lessons of his 
 life and death, we bid farewell to Father 
 Damien. 
 
 All that is mortal of him lies In the little 
 graveyard by the blue sea, where one by one 
 his beloved flock have been laid. The long 
 sad wail of the lepers has been heard day 
 after day for their friend, and many hearts 
 are sore. 
 
 The strong, active figure and the cheery 
 voice are no longer to be found at Molokai. 
 God's will be done. 
 
 Fear no more the heat of the sun, 
 
 Nor the furious winter rages, 
 Thou thy worldly task hast done, 
 
 Home art gone and ta'en thy wages. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE LAKE OF FIRE 
 
 The volcano of Kllauea is so connected with 
 the former religion of the Sandwich Islands, 
 and Is, moreover, so Interesting a phenomenon, 
 that a short account of it must find place In 
 this little book. 
 
 After my return from Molokai I started 
 from Honolulu as soon as possible for the 
 Island of Hawaii, and In about thirty - six 
 hours I found myself landed on its coast, at 
 the little village of Punaluu, where I was 
 hospitably received at the Inn by Mr. and 
 Mrs. Lee. It was Saturday night, and the 
 
134 FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 comforts of a bedroom were very welcome 
 after a somewhat stormy voyage. Next 
 morning I rose refreshed to spend a very 
 quiet and happy Sunday. 
 
 The time for the little native service at the 
 church was half-past ten. Bells began ring- 
 ing, but I delayed, thinking that, as I could 
 not understand the language, it would be best 
 to go only for the last part of the service. 
 So I set out about eleven. When I got to 
 church I was the only person there — so 
 leisurely and late are the Hawaiians. By 
 and by came in some tall, giggling school- 
 girls, then three women with a baby, then 
 three men and the minister. At last we were 
 nineteen, and the service proceeded. 
 
 The women look just pleasant, good- 
 natured creations, handsome, large, fat, with 
 a ready smile ; they have beautiful curving 
 
IV THE LAKE OF FIRE 135 
 
 mouths, but cheap, unfinished eyes. They 
 lolled freely, and did not feign more attention 
 to the service than they felt. (This was, as 
 it were, only a small country out-station. In 
 Honolulu I found a large attendance of 
 natives at church, and a keen interest and 
 devout behaviour.) The manners of both 
 men and women are simple and fine, and the 
 dress of the women is picturesque — a long 
 flowing robe made like a dressing-gown. It 
 looks best in black, but I met a tall beautiful 
 girl at Kilauea who wore a dark blue gown, 
 and pink roses in her coils of black hair. 
 Her face was of the Rossetti type, her 
 manners were frank, dignified, and charming, 
 and she sang and danced even before break- 
 fast. The Hawaiians are all passionately 
 fond of flowers, and I saw old women of 
 ninety with large wreaths of blue blossoms 
 
136 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 and green leaves above their withered 
 faces. 
 
 These islanders take no thought for to- 
 morrow and very little for to-day. 'Why 
 should we bother ? What does it matter ? ' 
 Mr. Sproull told me that a Hawaiian did not 
 much mind even having something deducted 
 from his pay when he shirked his work ; for 
 he felt no poorer when threatened with the 
 deduction, and when pay-day came he got 
 a good bit of money at any rate and felt rich. 
 There is, however, one thing which a native 
 does hate, and that is to be laughed at. 
 
 Their ways are very unlike ours. For 
 instance, a white man wishes to buy a horse, 
 but its owner entirely refuses to sell it till a 
 day comes when he wants some money, 
 perhaps for his child's birthday feast. Then 
 he accepts the price offered, and it is agreed 
 
IV THE LAKE OF FIRE 137 
 
 that he Is to brino^ the horse in a week and 
 be paid. But in two days the native comes 
 back and says he cannot sell it, because his 
 mother-in-law cried and did not want it to go. 
 At a later stage he again agrees to sell, but 
 after all the white man does not get the horse, 
 for when the seller reaches home another 
 buyer comes in and offers to pay down half 
 the price that had been promised, and the 
 money is taken and the horse is gone away 
 with its new owner. And it is no use to 
 grumble. 
 
 Nearly all the natives make speeches, but 
 with little matter In them, and full of negatives. 
 ' What do I say of Queen Pikiliki ? That 
 she is a tall woman, with red hair and tusks ? 
 No. Do I say that she has only one leg ? 
 No.' And so on Indefinitely. With all 
 their weaknesses, however, I think that Ha- 
 
138 FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 wailans are the most charming natives I 
 ever saw. 
 
 On Monday morning I rode up to Kilauea. 
 All down the mountain side lie coils of hard- 
 ened lava, sometimes grown over with 
 vegetation and sometimes with enormous 
 cracks and rents. Two years ago there was 
 a terrific earthquake in this place, and the 
 lava flowed down to the sea in a river. My 
 host, Mr. Lee, told me that his house rocked 
 like a rocking-chair, and that everything was 
 upset. The ground seemed hollow, and a 
 hissing and whizzing kept going on under- 
 neath. There were twenty-five shocks in 
 two hours, and they continued all through the 
 night at intervals. 
 
 Three lady visitors, who had the day 
 before been elated with their unusually 
 brilliant experiences at the volcano, were 
 
IV 777^ LAKE OF FIRE 139 
 
 now In abject terror, and sat screaming on 
 the balcony-steps in their night-gowns for 
 two whole hours. They even refused coffee. 
 No lives were lost, however. The sea made 
 a harmless bed for the lava. 
 
 It is a long, slow ride up the mountain, 
 but when one reaches the highest elevation 
 the view is sufficiently surprising. The 
 traveller finds himself on a curious green 
 plain, from which many tufts of white smoke 
 are rising. It looks as If wxeds were being 
 burned — but no, it is the steam coming out 
 of cracks in the ground, and when he goes 
 up to the place he finds It both hot and wet, 
 and crowds of lucky ferns grow there as 
 thickly as possible. In the middle of this 
 plain is sunk the crater of Kilauea, a mon- 
 strous cup, of which the bottom is a waste 
 of lava, and the sides are precipices about 
 
I40 FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 nine miles in circumference. In its centre 
 is a small black burning mountain with several 
 peaks, from which volumes of white smoke 
 continually ascend. Nearly at the foot of 
 this mountain the lake of fire is situated. By 
 night the smoke is illuminated, and about a 
 dozen fiery furnaces are seen. 
 
 On one side of the crater there is a zigzag 
 path down the precipice, which is clothed 
 with tropical vegetation. The ferns and 
 mosses are beautiful, and everywhere grow 
 the scarlet and yellow ohelo berries, which 
 are in season each month of the year, and 
 which taste something like whortle-berries. 
 They were held sacred to the goddess 
 Pele. 
 
 At the bottom of the precipice the vegeta- 
 tion ceases suddenly, and the most absolutely 
 abandoned place is reached. What looked 
 
IV THE LAKE OF FIRE 141 
 
 a flat plain from the top is now discovered 
 to be a wilderness of dark lava, all solid, but 
 in every conceivable form of mud wave and 
 mud flow ; often it is twisted into coils 
 exactly like rope, and there are regions where 
 it seems as if some intelligence had been at 
 work to shape it into tens of thousands of 
 huge crocodiles and serpents and antediluvian 
 beasts. These wonders must be seen to be 
 believed in. They often look positively 
 wicked. In some parts the sulphur has its 
 way, and the lava erections are bright lemon 
 colour. One place is like a ruined tower, 
 with a red-hot oven half-way up it, and a 
 perpetual squilching and hissing and fizzing 
 going on. Generally the lava is blackish 
 gray in colour ; sometimes it is iridescent, 
 sometimes it has a sheen, like satin, and 
 glitters brightly in the sun. 
 
142 FATHER DAM 1 EN chap. 
 
 A great deal of it is as hard as stone, but 
 sometimes it is brittle, and is spread out in 
 thin folds like drapery. Under a man's 
 weight it breaks with a scrunch, and down 
 he goes — perhaps for five inches, perhaps for 
 five feet. It is best to follow closely in the 
 guide's footsteps. There are three miles to 
 be walked over before one reaches the 
 mountain. The lava is often rent with wide, 
 deep cracks, and in some places I found that 
 it was red-hot only eight inches below the 
 sole of my foot. Sometimes the crust has 
 heaved and broken ; under it is a hollow, 
 and then more lava underneath. The ground 
 is often almost burning hot. Somehow it is 
 not as horrible as one would expect — the sun 
 is so brilliant, the air is so good, and the 
 guide is so cool. 
 
 At last the traveller begins to ascend the 
 
IV ' THE LAKE OF FIRE 143 
 
 Spur of the mountain, a very big dreadful 
 crack has to be jumped across, and almost 
 immediately afterwards he looks down, and 
 just below him he sees close at hand the 
 lake of fire. And if he is not frightened and 
 silly he climbs down and stands at its edge, 
 shading his face and eyes from the burning 
 heat, and near enough to dip his long alpen- 
 stock into the lava. The lake is about 100 
 yards in diameter. Its rim rises about ten 
 feet from the ground, and sometimes the 
 boiling lava surges up till it overflows. But 
 the best effects are when the inside wall 
 shows itself for about twelve feet, for then the 
 lava dashes up round it in waves, and con- 
 tinually undermines it with red-hot grottoes 
 till it topples in with a crash. These waves 
 of lava are not unlike the waves of the sea, 
 only their colour is the colour of coral or of 
 
144 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 blood, and their spray is red instead of white. 
 Above them there is often a beautiful lilac or 
 violet effect, and this violet atmosphere of 
 the lake of fire is one of the loveliest things 
 about it. 
 
 The lava is as liquid as thick soup, and 
 of a bluish gray colour, with occasional 
 greenish tints. It keeps simmering and 
 heaving, and then it breaks in all directions 
 into most lovely vermilion cracks, changing 
 " into violet and then into dead gray. All the 
 time a roaring sound goes on like the roaring 
 of the sea. Wherever the slightly cooling 
 crust cracks it is red-hot. 
 
 And now, as one watches, a scarlet foun- 
 tain begins to play in the middle of the lake. 
 At first it is about two feet high, with golden 
 spray, then it gets wilder and larger and 
 more tumultuous, tossing itself up into the 
 
IV THE LAKE OF FIRE 145 
 
 air with a beautiful sportiveness — great twist- 
 ings of fiery liquid spring into the air, like 
 serpents and griffins. It is terrible. It is 
 splendid. It is exquisite. And it is almost 
 indescribable. I visited the volcano six 
 times, and generally saw some of these 
 fire fountains, and the roaring, tossing 
 waves at the edge of the volcano never 
 ceased. 
 
 Sometimes a thin blue flame breaks 
 through the cracks or roars up through a 
 chimney at the side. All around the lake is 
 a deposit of ' Pele's hair,' a dun-coloured 
 glassy thread that is always ready to stick 
 into one's hand, with numberless little 
 points. In some places it lies so thick 
 that it looks like a blanket of disagreeable 
 tawny fur. 
 
 It is necessary to look out for a sudden 
 
 L 
 
146 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 change of wind at Kilauea. I had almost 
 to run one day to escape being stifled with 
 fumes of sulphur, and I picked up a lovely 
 scarlet honeybird which had rashly flown 
 that way and met a sulphurous death. 
 
 My last view of the volcano was at night, 
 when its red colour changed to the yellow of 
 a daffodil. Enormous waves and fountains 
 of fire were then playing and flinging up 
 wreaths of spray, which fell almost at my 
 feet and lay like red-hot snakes till they 
 cooled into pitchiness. 
 
 While I was there the sky at evening was 
 generally very green, and peculiarly lovely 
 in contrast with the orange of the fire. The 
 calm, nearly level outline of the distant 
 mountain (Mona Loa) and the young tender 
 moon made a delightful relief from the fiery 
 terrors in front of me. 
 
IV THE LAKE OF FIRE 147 
 
 I left Kilauea feeling that I had seen one 
 of the most wonderful sights that the world 
 contains, and I had learnt the lesson that 
 even a lake of fire can be beautiful. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OUR NEXT DUTY 
 
 It is earnestly to be desired that legislation 
 as to leprosy In India should be the practical 
 outcome of the sympathy called forth by 
 Father Damlen's life and death. There can 
 be no doubt that public opinion on the 
 question Is very different now from what It 
 was a few years ago. 
 
 Nevertheless, from observations made 
 during my six months' tour in India, I am 
 convinced that public opinion concerning it is 
 still far from what It ought to be. We are 
 only half-awake to a great evil and a great 
 
CHAP. V OUR NEXT DUTY 149 
 
 shame. And unless we are speedily roused 
 to active measures It would not be rash to 
 prophesy that, Instead of having It brought 
 before us as it has recently been brought 
 before the medical faculty of Paris, It will be 
 brought home to us as it has been brought 
 home to the people of Natal and Queensland. 
 In both these places the invasion of leprosy 
 has driven the inhabitants. In self-defence, to 
 summon public meetings and call upon the 
 authorities to act at once and Isolate the 
 infected. 
 
 It is natural but rather sad that people 
 should be resigned to the fact of 250,000 
 of our fellow -subjects dying of leprosy, but 
 tremendously agitated when they find that 
 there is an Idea that the mutton chop they 
 have bought In the meat-market may have 
 been handled by a leper. 
 
I50 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 It is not now necessary for me to refer to 
 the special horrors of the disease, or to dis- 
 cuss the question of its heredity or contagious- 
 ness or infectiousness. Enough has already 
 been said for public information on these 
 points. It is now generally known that the 
 children and descendants of lepers frequently 
 become lepers either by way of inheritance 
 or by direct infection from their parents. It 
 is also undeniable that healthy persons — ■ 
 natives and even Europeans, who are beyond 
 the suspicion of hereditary taint — if they 
 continually associate with lepers, are liable to 
 contract the disease, either by involuntary 
 inoculation or by other means. The case of 
 Father Damien is fresh in our minds, and he 
 told me that he had noted many other cases 
 of persons who had come in perfect health to 
 Molokai,and who, after residing there for some 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 151 
 
 time, had become lepers. I saw In the prison 
 at Honolulu a man named Keanu who had 
 committed a murder, and who had consented 
 to be inoculated from a leper by Dr. Arnim 
 five years ago, in consideration of his death- 
 sentence being commuted. He was a 
 strong, healthy man, with no hereditary 
 taint, and he has now become a confirmed 
 leper. 
 
 Surely the Government need not delay 
 action till it has been decided exactly how 
 leprosy is propagated. Is it not enough to 
 know that in some way it is communicated 
 by its victims to the outside world .^ My 
 own belief Is that heredity, contagion (under 
 certain conditions), inhalation, and inocula- 
 tion are all four means of its spreading. But 
 whether or not this be so, the fact Is undeni- 
 able that it does spread wherever there Is 
 
152 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 no segregation, and that It decreases and 
 finally comes to an end (as in our own 
 country) where segregation is carefully 
 practised. 
 
 My object now is to tell briefly what I 
 saw and heard last year in India, and to pro- 
 pose a simple remedy. My route lay by 
 Ceylon and Madras to Calcutta, and thence 
 to the districts of Nuddeah Zillah and San- 
 thalia, where I visited about thirty villages, 
 proceeding thence to the leper-stricken city 
 of Ranigunj, with its attendant villages, Mejia 
 and Kushti. 
 
 Then I went to the leading cities in the 
 North-west Provinces, and afterwards to the 
 Punjaub and Cashmere, visiting Bombay on 
 my way home, and making the acquaintance 
 there of Dr. Vandyke Carter, the great 
 authority on leprosy. During this tour I 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 153 
 
 found lepers In almost every town and village 
 on my route, even though my stay In the 
 place might be only of a few hours' 
 duration. 
 
 The official report gives 135,000 as the 
 existing number of lepers In India, but there 
 can be little doubt that they already exceed 
 250,000, and that their numbers are steadily 
 growing. Nor can this growth be wondered 
 at, for however the disease is propagated it 
 has every opportunity of increasing. 
 
 I saw most ghastly lepers begging In the 
 streets and in the balconies of houses. I 
 met them at railway stations and In places of 
 public resort. In one small bazaar a friend 
 of mine told me he had just counted twelve. 
 I even heard of one who was employed by 
 an English baker in the making of bread. 
 
 Mr. Gilford of Tarantarn informs me that 
 
154 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 a leper Is the cook in one of the railway 
 restaurants in the Punjaub, and that he wears 
 a glove to conceal the fact when serving his 
 customers. 
 
 It is, moreover, estimated that all the 
 copper money in India has passed through 
 the hands of lepers. I found in Bombay a 
 man whose hands were covered with leprosy 
 engaged in the railway service as a ticket- 
 collector. Who can estimate the danger to 
 the English and native community of many 
 hundreds of railway tickets daily passing 
 through this man's hands ? An English 
 lady In the same city had, just before my 
 arrival, fallen a victim to the disease, to her 
 extreme horror. 
 
 Lepers, with their revolting miseries fully 
 exposed, associate freely with the com- 
 munity. They marry when they choose ; they 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 155 
 
 love a roving life, and thus continually become 
 fresh centres for propagating the disease. 
 
 I was assured by Mr. MacGuIre, the 
 superintendent of the Leper Asylum In Cal- 
 cutta, that he could testify, from often-re- 
 peated observations, that In the congrega- 
 tions of poor people who assemble at the 
 funeral feasts of the wealthy natives, one 
 person in three was a leper. By the same 
 authority I was told that the asylum was 
 generally overcrowded, and that the police 
 do not hesitate to bring in cabs lepers who 
 are in a dying state, and for whom It Is 
 necessary to turn out some less imminent cases. 
 
 Indeed the evil is so widespread that — as 
 Lord Dufferin said to me — one might almost 
 as readily undertake to rid India of its snakes 
 as of Its leprosy. Moreover, the absence of 
 Indian public opinion on such matters, and 
 
156 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 the constitutional callousness of the native 
 mind, increase the difficulty in a way that 
 English readers can scarcely estimate. So 
 careless of danger does fatalism make men 
 to this evil that, in the great leper hospital 
 at Tarantarn, the authorities — as I was as- 
 sured by an official there — have to hunt out 
 relatives of the deceased, who have come in 
 pretending that they are leprous, and who 
 are actually willing to become Infected for 
 the sake of acquiring board, lodging, and the 
 power of living an idle life. The Indian 
 desires above all things to be a man of 
 money, and what the leper at Tarantarn 
 likes Is to save two out of the three rupees 
 allowed him monthly, and either to hide 
 them In the ground, put them out at interest, 
 or Invest them in jewelry for his wife. One 
 man had thus acquired 600 rupees — at the 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 157 
 
 cost of most wretched diet, and consequent 
 increase of the disease. 
 
 The following extract is from the report 
 in the Bombay Gazette of the 6th April 1889 
 of a meeting of the Bombay Municipal Cor- 
 poration held on the previous Thursday. I 
 have suppressed some of the painful details, 
 and I feel that only the importance of the 
 subject could justify the introduction of what 
 I have left. I am thankful to say that an 
 important committee (with the Prince of 
 Wales as President) has just been formed, 
 of which one object is to inquire into the 
 question of leprosy in India. Much interest- 
 ing information may also be got by applying 
 to Mr. Wellesley Bailey, of 17 Glengyle 
 Terrace, Edinburgh, who is the excellent 
 Secretary of a Mission to Lepers Society. 
 
 'An important debate took place on a 
 
158 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 notice of motion by Mr. T. B. Kirkham, 
 calling attention to the defective regulation 
 of persons affected with leprosy in Bombay, 
 and requesting the Municipal Commissioner 
 to report what additional powers, if any, were 
 required by the Health Department to enable 
 it to deal effectively with the evil. 
 
 ' Mr. Kirkham said that a few weeks ago, 
 in the discharge of his official duties, he had 
 occasion to visit the Elphinstone High School 
 and the St. Xavier's College, both large 
 educational institutions, and he found to his 
 astonishment that for some months a colony 
 of lepers had taken up their abode on the 
 flagstones surrounding the large Nacoda 
 Tank, which lay between the two institutions, 
 and that the authorities of these two institu- 
 tions, notwithstanding their appeals to the 
 police and to the Health Department, found 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 159 
 
 themselves practically unable to dislodge the 
 people from these places. The Rev. Dr. 
 Meyer, the Principal of the St. Xavler's 
 College, took him round and pointed out to 
 him these people on the borders of the tank, 
 performing their ablutions in the middle of 
 the day, and he saw them with his own eyes 
 dressing their terrible sores with stones lying 
 about them, and then flinging away those 
 stones, to be picked up or trodden upon by 
 any one. Dr. Meyer told him that he had 
 seen these unfortunate people with his own 
 eyes rubbing their leprous sores on the iron 
 railings surrounding the Elphinstone High 
 School, and had seen boys let loose from 
 the school a few minutes afterwards sitting on 
 these very railings, occasionally, it might be, 
 with bare feet. Being asked what the police 
 had done in the matter, Dr. Meyer replied 
 
i6o FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 that, with every desire to assist, the police 
 had been unable practically to do anything, 
 and that a day or two after these men were 
 dislodged from their abode, they again came 
 back to the place. In reply to a representa- 
 tion of the Principal of the Elphinstone 
 School, Dr. Weir, the Health Officer, said 
 that he sympathised with him, but regretted 
 there was nothing in the Municipal Act that 
 empowered him to interfere in the matter. 
 That was a most extraordinary letter to 
 emanate from the Health Department of a 
 great city to a public official in charge of 
 thousands of boys, informing him that the 
 department was utterly powerless to interfere 
 in the matter. He thought it his duty to 
 ask whether it was safe and proper that these 
 people should be allowed to go about and do 
 what they pleased within a few yards of some 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY i6i 
 
 two thousand young men. It might be called 
 the artificial propagation of leprosy. He was 
 sure the Corporation would not deem It a 
 satisfactory settlement of the question even 
 If these poor people, w^hen driven away from 
 the Esplanade, were simply to take refuge In 
 some less known parts of the towm. 
 
 ' Dr. Arnott said that the subject of leprosy 
 had attracted the attention of the profession 
 for a very long time. If there was any 
 authority on the disease who deserved respect- 
 ful attention that was Dr. Vandyke Carter, 
 and he had over and over again urged the 
 pressing necessity of providing suitable 
 asylums for lepers, and taking measures to 
 prevent their being a danger to the com- 
 munity. Some refuge must be provided for 
 them. At present the only places where 
 they could live were a small dhuramshala at 
 
 M 
 
1 62 FATHER DAM I EN chap. 
 
 Byculla, a small ward at the Sir Jamsetjee 
 Hospital, and the asylum at Trombay. With 
 these exceptions there was in Bombay no 
 place, no refuge, no asylum, where these poor 
 creatures might go and might be cared for. 
 
 ' Mr. Dosabhoy Framjee said he had very 
 often seen lepers sitting in front of the 
 Girgaum Police Court in company with other 
 healthy people. The worst of it was that 
 lepers went to places where articles of food 
 were sold, and sometimes they stood there 
 for hours, and would not go away until alms 
 were given them. 
 
 * Mr. Bomanjee Pestonjee Master said that 
 from what he could gather from the remarks 
 of the much respected councillor, Mr. Kirk- 
 ham, even the police had no power to deal 
 with the evil, and their only resource was to 
 request Government, through their President, 
 
y OUR NEXT DUTY 163 
 
 to enact a measure by which these people 
 could be segregated, the Corporation paying 
 for the building of an asylum and for its 
 maintenance. 
 
 *Dr. Blaney said that every year he gave 
 as Coroner orders for disposing of the dead 
 bodies of ten, twelve, or fifteen lepers. He 
 did not hold a regular inquest on them, but 
 always made his inquiries, and he found that 
 some of them had died on the road-side, 
 sometimes in front of the Elphinstone 
 College, and sometimes at one or other of 
 the wells on the Esplanade. Some of them 
 drowned themselves in these wells, tired of 
 life. 
 
 ' He said he did not think there was a 
 single well on the Esplanade in which a leper 
 was not drowned. All over Bombay, in dark 
 corners, in gullies, where rats and bandicoots 
 
i64 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 had taken their abode, these lepers were 
 hiding themselves, thrown out by their 
 families, to pine away neglected and for- 
 lorn. Lepers were to be seen in all parts of 
 the city, and not at the Elphinstone School 
 and the St. Xavier's College alone.' 
 
 I should be the last to advise the bringing 
 so painful a matter before the public if there 
 were not a remedy. But I believe there is 
 one, and it is simple, if only the indifference 
 of public opinion can be overcome. For 
 whatever is done must be begun in England, 
 and officially begun ; then it will be worked 
 out in India, and there can be little doubt 
 that large sums of money would be given by 
 rich native gentlemen as soon as they felt 
 the pressure of Government's authority and 
 approval. 
 
 And the most speedy and practical way in 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 165 
 
 which this result could be effected seems to 
 me to be this : — 
 
 That the Supreme Government should 
 enact : i. That (local self-government having 
 become the rule) each district should have 
 a leper asylum in its district town (where 
 already two medical officers — a European 
 and a native — reside In the district hospital), 
 and that the cost of the maintenance of the 
 lepers should be met by their municipalities 
 and district boards, assisted perhaps by 
 private benevolence. It would be no great 
 hardship that each village should thus be 
 called upon to support In an asylum the 
 lepers who already subsist on Its alms. 2. 
 That any leprous person being found with- 
 out any ostensible means of support should 
 be taken by the police to the nearest civil 
 surgeon for examination, and that the police 
 
i66' FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 should then have power, with the surgeon's 
 certificate, to bring him before a magistrate, 
 who should be empowered to confine him in 
 the nearest asylum, to be detained there till 
 further order of the court. (At present 
 lepers go in and out of hospitals just when 
 they choose.) 
 
 Such an Act is already in force with 
 regard to lunatics, and the case of lepers is 
 far more pressing. 
 
 The Act would only touch vagrant beg- 
 ging lepers, but It is they who are the 
 greatest danger to the community ; and if 
 this much -needed and coj7iparatively inex- 
 pensive reform could be effected, others 
 would doubtless follow, and in an appreci- 
 able time our Indian Empire might be rid 
 of the terrible scourge of leprosy. 
 
 From our own land (which had formerly 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 167 
 
 250 leper hospitals) it has been banished 
 by careful segregation and wise sanitary 
 measures. In Norway the Government, 
 with a revenue of about a million, has not 
 hesitated to legislate to such good purpose 
 that in thirty years the number of home 
 cases of leprosy has decreased 75 per cent. 
 In every place where segregation has been 
 enforced the plague has been stayed. 
 
 The present moment is the time for every 
 man and woman who feels our responsibility 
 towards India and towards humanity at large 
 to push this matter by all the influence and 
 all the money they can command. 
 
 The Prince of Wales's fine speech at the 
 first meeting of the Committee of the * Father 
 Damien' Memorial Fund at Marlborough 
 House will have been read by thousands, 
 but I cannot do better than subjoin a 
 
1 68 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 portion of it after the prospectus of the 
 Society. 
 
 %\)t ' fatlj^r Bantim' iJlm0naI futttr. 
 
 The death of Father Damien, completing 
 his noble sacrifice of himself for his brother- 
 men, has suggested the thought that the 
 sympathy of the United Kingdom ought to 
 find expression in a substantial memorial of 
 his work. Such a memorial may most fitly 
 take the form of — 
 
 1. A monument to Father Damien on the spot at 
 
 Molokai where his remains are interred. 
 (Moved by Mr. Edward Clifford and 
 seconded by the Duke of Westminster.) 
 
 2. The construction of a leper ward in London, 
 
 probably in connection with some London 
 hospital or school, to be called the Father 
 Damien Ward ;^ and the endowment of a travel- 
 
 1 It seems possible that the first part of this resohition will be 
 carried out in the spirit rather than in the letter, by arrangement 
 of some kind being made for the due care and treatment of any 
 lepers in Great Britain. 
 
OUR NEXT DUTY 169 
 
 ling studentship or studentships to encourage 
 the study of leprosy. (Moved by Sir James 
 Paget and seconded by Mr. J. Hutchinson.) 
 
 A full and complete inquiry into the question of 
 leprosy in India, one of the chief seats of the 
 disease, where there are about 250,000 lepers, 
 and no adequate means of dealing with the evil. 
 In accordance with the recommendation recently 
 put forth by the Royal College of Physicians it 
 will probably be necessary to send out a Com- 
 mission to India, in order to discover the steps 
 that should be taken to alleviate, and if possible 
 to eradicate, the disease. (Moved by Sir W. 
 GuYER Hunter and seconded by Cardinal 
 Manning.) 
 
 President of the Committee. 
 H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES. 
 
 Committee. 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 The Duke of Norfolk, K.G. 
 
 The Duke of Westminster, K.G. 
 
 The Marquis of Hartington. 
 
 The Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, G. C.S.I. 
 
 The Earl of Derby, K.G. 
 
 The Earl of Carnarvon. 
 
 The Earl of Rosebery. 
 
 General Viscount Wolseley, G.C.B. 
 
 Lord Randolph S. Churchill, M.P. 
 
I70 FATHER DAMIEN chap. 
 
 Baron Ferdinand Rothschild, M.P. 
 
 The Bishop of London. 
 
 Dr. Vaughan, Bishop of Salford. 
 
 The Hon. G. Curzon, M.P. 
 
 The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. 
 
 The Right Hon. The Lord Mayor. 
 
 The Right Hon. John Morley, M.P. 
 
 General Sir J. Lintorn Simmons, G.C.B. 
 
 Col. Sir Edward Bradford, K. C.S.I. 
 
 Sir Alfred Lyall, K.C.B. 
 
 Cardinal Manning. 
 
 Sir William Mackinnon, Bart. 
 
 Sir a. Borthvvick, M.P. 
 
 Sir R. Temple, G.C.S.L, M.P. 
 
 Sir George Stokes, Bart., M.P. 
 
 Sir Joseph Fayrer, K.C.S.L 
 
 Sir William Jenner, Bart., K.C.B. 
 
 Sir James Paget, Bart. 
 
 R. Thorne Thorne, M.D. 
 
 Sir W. Guyer Hunter, K.C.M.G., M.P. 
 
 Sir W. MacCormac. 
 
 Sir Charles U. Aitchison, K.C.S.L 
 
 Jonathan Hutchinson, Esq. 
 
 Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. 
 
 Principal Fairbairn. 
 
 W. S. Lilly, Esq. 
 
 A. Walter, Esq. 
 
 E. Lawson, Esq. 
 
 Frank Harris, Esq. 
 
 E. Clifford, Esq. 
 
 Ho7iorary Secretaries. 
 
 Frank Harris, Esq. | Rev. Hugh Chapman. 
 
 ROBSON Roose, M.D. 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 171 
 
 The Prince of Wales, in opening the pro- 
 ceedings, said : ' The heroic Hfe and death of 
 Father Damien has not only roused the 
 sympathy of the United Kingdom, but it has 
 gone deeper — it has brought home to us that 
 the circumstances of our vast Indian and 
 Colonial Empire oblige us, in a measure at 
 least, to follow his example ; and this not for 
 foreigners and strangers, but for our own 
 fellow -subjects. India with its 250,000 
 lepers, and our Colonies with their unnum- 
 bered but increasing victims to a loathsome 
 disease, that has hitherto baffled medical 
 skill, have a far stronger claim on our aid 
 than the poor natives of the Hawaiian 
 Islands could ever have had on the young 
 Belgian priest who has given his life for 
 them. To mark our debt to him, as well as 
 our sympathy with his noble self-sacrifice, I 
 
172 FATHER DAM JEN chap. 
 
 have to propose to this Committee a memorial 
 scheme that embraces a threefold object. . . . 
 * There can, I think, be no question what- 
 ever as to the advisability of the second 
 proposal contained in this part of the scheme. 
 I mean a special endowment to promote the 
 study of leprosy, which should take the form 
 of travelling studentships, and thereby render 
 the metropolis the centre from which to pro- 
 mote the scientific study and investigation of 
 this insidious disease. Let me here remind 
 the Committee that leprosy has shown itself, 
 and seems to be spreading, in our South 
 African and Australian Colonies, while in 
 some of our Colonial possessions its ravages 
 are almost unchecked. This leads me 
 naturally to the third part of this memorial 
 scheme — a full and complete inquiry into the 
 question of leprosy in India. Since the well- 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 173 
 
 known report of the Royal College of 
 Physicians of 1867, drawn up after extensive 
 inquiry carried out under the Duke of 
 Newcastle, at the instigation of the Governor 
 of the Windward Islands, there has been no 
 similar general report following a special 
 inquiry embracing the leprous countries of 
 the world. But the immediate result of this 
 report of 1867 was a decision of the Govern- 
 ment enjoining the repeal of all legislative 
 enactments in the Empire for the compulsory 
 segregation of lepers. And it must be 
 remembered that whilst leprosy has been and 
 is steadily Increasing, probably in India, and 
 certainly In our Colonies, it has steadily 
 decreased since 1867 in Norway from -over 
 2000 to less than 700 cases, and this decrease 
 is attributed by specialists to the Government 
 measures for isolation which have been there 
 
174 FATHER DA MIEN chap. 
 
 put in force. These measures Include com- 
 pulsory segregation, and have been adopted 
 at a cost of ;^20,ooo a year, although the 
 leper population of Norway now under 
 treatment numbers, as I have said, barely 
 700 souls. How far segregation should enter 
 into any scheme that may hereafter be adopted 
 to cope with leprosy in the British Empire, 
 it is not for me to say now. But this I may 
 say, the need for renewed Investigation Into 
 the whole question of leprosy and its conta- 
 giousness has become so pressing, owing to 
 professional and other representations as to 
 the Increase and communicablllty of the 
 disease received from all parts of the world, 
 that the Leprosy Committee of the Royal 
 College of Physicians in their recently Issued 
 report to the college have urged In the 
 strongest manner possible that the " Govern- 
 
V OUR NEXT DUTY 175 
 
 ment should institute a full and careful 
 scientific investigation of a question which In 
 the Interests of humanity calls for immediate 
 attention." It has been thought that private 
 philanthropy should undertake this mission ; 
 nor do I doubt that if this Committee puts its 
 hand to the work the objects set forth In the 
 report from which I have read will perhaps 
 be more speedily and thoroughly attained 
 than if they were entrusted to already over- 
 burdened Government officials ' (cheers). 
 
 When Father Damlen consecrated his 
 life to Christ and burled himself in the leper 
 settlement of Kalawao he little thought that 
 the echoes of his self-sacrifice would not only 
 be the bugle call to quicken the divine life 
 in thousands of souls who lived under grayer 
 clouds than the rich skies of Molokai hold, 
 but that they would rouse an Empire to rid its 
 
176 FATHER DAMIEN chap, v 
 
 neglected myriads of the terrible plague 
 which has last laid him to rest under his 
 palm-tree. But so it Is. No one can 
 measure the results of the simplest action 
 performed with a single eye from love to 
 God and man. 
 
 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
 Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 
 
 O love, they die in yon rich sky. 
 
 They faint on hill or field or river : 
 Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
 And grow for ever and for ever. 
 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying ; 
 And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Frinied by R. S: R. Clark, Edinburgh 
 
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