Ragsdale, might have remained among their
fellows almost without suspicion, surrendered themselves in a way
which reflects much credit upon them. Mr. Park, the Marshal, and
Mr. Wilder, of the Board of Health, went round the islands
repeatedly in the Kilauea, and performed the painful duty of
collecting the victims, with true sympathy and kindness. The woe of
those who were taken, the dismal wailings of those who were left,
and the agonised partings, when friends and relatives clung to the
swollen limbs and kissed the glistering bloated faces of those who
were exiled from them for ever, I shall never forget.
There were no individual distinctions made among the sufferers.
Queen Emma's cousin, a man of property, and Mr. Ragsdale, the most
influential lawyer among the half-whites, shared the same doom as
poor Upa, the volcano guide, and stricken Chinamen and labourers
from the plantations. Before the search slackened, between three
and four hundred men, women, and children were gathered out from
among their families, and placed on Molokai.
Between 1866 and April 1874, eleven hundred and forty-five lepers,
five hundred and sixty of whom were sent from Kahili in the spring
of 1872, have arrived on Molokai, of which number four hundred and
forty-two have died, the majority of the deaths having occurred
since the beginning of Lunalilo's reign, when the work of
segregation was undertaken in earnest.
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