At each end, squatted or lying prone
on their respective mats or mattresses, were the yet breathing
corpses of lepers in the last stages of various forms of the
disease, who glanced inquisitively at us for a moment out of their
ghoul-like eyes--those who were not already beyond seeing--and then
withdrew within their dreadful selves. Was there ever a more
pitiful sight?
"In one room we saw a sight that will ever remain fixed indelibly on
the tablets of memory. A little blue-eyed, flaxen haired child,
apparently three or four years old, a half-caste, that looked up at
us with an expression of timorous longing to be caressed and loved;
but alas, in its glassy eyes and transparent cheeks were the
unmistakable signs of the curse--the sin of the parents visited upon
the child!
"In another room was one--a mass of rotting flesh, with but little
semblance of humanity remaining--who was dying, and whose breath
came hurried and obstructed. A few hours at most, and his troubles
would be over, and his happy release arrive. There had been
fourteen deaths in the settlement during the previous fortnight. On
the day of our visit there were fifty-eight inmates of the
hospital."
Though the lifting of the veil of mystery which hangs over the death
valley of Molokai discloses some of the most woeful features of the
curse, it is a relief to know the worst, and that the poor leprous
outcasts in their "living grave" are not outside the pale of
humanity and a judicious philanthropy.
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