The place chosen for the centralization and
segregation of leprosy is a most singular plain of about 20,000
acres, hemmed in between the sea and a precipice 2000 feet high,
passable only where a zigzag bridle track swings over its face, so
narrow and difficult that it has been found impossible to get cattle
down over it, so that the leper settlement below has depended for
its supplies of fresh meat upon vessels. The settlement is
accessible also by a very difficult landing at Kalaupapa on the
windward side of Molokai.
Three miles inland from Kalaupapa is the leper village of Kalawao,
which may safely be pronounced one of the most horrible spots on all
the earth; a home of hideous disease and slow coming death, with
which science in despair has ceased to grapple; a community of
doomed beings, socially dead, "whose only business is to perish;"
wifeless husbands, husbandless wives, children without parents, and
parents without children; men and women who have "no more a portion
for ever in anything that is done under the sun," condemned to watch
the repulsive steps by which each of their doomed fellows passes
down to a loathsome death, knowing that by the same they too must
pass.
A small stone church near the landing, and another at Kalawao, tell
of the extraordinary devotion of a Catholic priest, who, with every
prospect of advancement in his Church, and with youth, culture, and
refinement to hold him back from the sacrifice, is in this hideous
valley, a self exiled man, for Christ's sake.
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