Annie Laurie

San Francisco Examiner/April 13, 1890

How Sister Gertrude and Annie Laurie Visited Molokai

Two Days Among the Outcasts

Horrible Scenes Witnessed at the Pest Settlement

Sister Gertrude’s Home at Kahili

An interesting letter from the Examiner’s Special Correspondent—A Stormy Trip from Honolulu to Molokai—What the Afflicted People Look Like and How They Live—The Devoted Sisters Who Care for Them—At the Home of Martyred Father Damien—A Description of the Place at Kahili Where Sister Gertrude Will Spend Her Remaining Days

[“Annie Laurie,” the special correspondent of the Examiner, who accompanied Sister Rose Gertrude to Honolulu, returned yesterday by the steamer Mariposa. Her experiences during a visit to the Molokai Leper Colony are graphically described below.]

It was raining hard the morning we started on our trip to Molokai. Our party consisted of Dr. Kimball, the President of the Board of Health; Dr. Lutz, the specialist who is employed by the Government to make a study of leprosy; Dr. Bradley of the United States ship Mohican; Mr. Potter, the Secretary of the board; Sister Rose Gertrude and your correspondent.

At the last minute Sister Rose decided that she could not see us go witheut her. She was overcome with a desire to see the place which has been her home in fancy for so long, so, theugh she was warned that the journey would be a very arduous one, she decided to go.

I put on my oldest gown, a waterproof and a cap that no amount of wind could dislodge. My kodak and a diminutive handbag were my only luggage. The theught of the cliff which we were to climb made us chary of loading ourselves with unnecessary baggage.

The little steamer which was to take us lay puffing and steaming away at the dock. As soon as we were aboard she started. We tried to stay on deck, as the air in the stuffy little cabin was anything but invigorating, but the wind and rain joined forces, and we were compelled to capitulate and “go below,” there to suffer miserably for eight long hours.

After much consultation the Captain announced that he could land us at the village of Kalaupapa directly. In that case the cliff would not have to be climbed until we left the settlement. This news was hailed with great rejoicing, as the heavy rams had made the cliff almost impassable.

As we neared the island the storm had spent its violence, and it was through a drizzling mist that we caught our first view of the plague-stricken community. Nestled at the base of the precipitous cliffs the little village looked singularly peaceful. The houses are for the most part white, which gives a bright new look to the place that reminds one very forcibly of the prosperous lumbering towns of Michigan and Wisconsin.

The surf was dashing high on the black rocks, but we put off in a small boat and made for the landing. The whistle of the steamer had roused the inhabitants and they came swarming down to the shore from every side. The little boat was skillfully steered between the rocks, pulled up to the lava pier and we landed.

An excited crowd surged around us, and the dock was so packed with people that it was hard to get along.

They held out their hands eagerly and greeted us with the pretty salutation, aloha, which means “love to you.”

A brightly uniformed band was stationed on the rocks, and they struck up a gay strain as we advanced.

The poor wretches seemed delighted to see us, and followed us in a chattering crowd all the way up the path which leads through the village to the house of the Superintendent, Mr. Evans.

I confess I played the coward. I tried my best to screw up my courage, but do what I would I felt strangely faint-hearted. I clung desperately to the arm of the stalwart President of the board and never raised my eyes from the ground. I could not gather the strength of mind to look at the poor creatures who greeted us so cordially. I knew I should shrink from them, and they were welcoming us so gladly that I hadn’t the heart to let them see the repugnance they excited. So I did not see much on our first walk through the infected village. The one thing I did notice was the dozens of dogs that frisked and frolicked before us. The place is alive with them. Their faithful hearts are as devoted to their unhappy masters as if they were owned by kings.

The cozy little home of the Superintendent is at the upper end of the village, and is some distance from the other houses. It has a large yard and is fenced by a high board wall. I confess I drew a breath of relief when we entered the gate and shut out the noisy flock at our heels.

Mrs. Evans met us at the door and we were soon seated in as pretty a little dining-room as one could wish to see. There are three pretty bright-eyed children in the family. That is the reason of the high wall. There was something startlingly incongruous in the sight of these smiling, chubby youngsters, thriving and happy in this land of death and despair.

“I used to cry every day when I first came,” said Mrs. Evans, “but I am used to it now. I never let the children out of my sight for an instant, and they have no more to do with the lepers than if they were in San Francisco. I shall not stay here long, however, it makes me too sad.”

We were all very tired and we went to bed early. The sudden gusts of wind which eddy furiously between the cliffs and the sea shook the house, and I tried to make myself believe that was the reason I could not sleep.

The morning dawned cold and wet, and we stood out on the veranda in the rain and looked down on the scattering houses.

People were moving about on the porches of the cottages; dogs were barking: there was the usual morning stir in the air. It was hard to realize that there was not one dwelling there that did not shelter the loathsome disease.

The little churches stand out boldly against the sea. There are six of them in all. The ubiquitous follower of Joseph Smith has not been daunted by the dread pestilence. There are two Mormon churches there, two Catholic, one Calvinist and one Episcopal. 1

All the pastors, except the Catholic, are lepers.

Soon after breakfast a sturdy Hawaiian appeared at the gate with a note from the Mother Superior of the Franciscan nuns, whose faithful work has accomplished such wonders for their afflicted wards. She sent to know if we would visit the convent, and we soon set out across the soggy meadow land toward a cluster of buildings on the other side of the village. This is called the “Sisters’ Yard.” In the center stands a roomy cottage, which is inhabited by the nuns.

Mother Marianne, a handsome woman with a resolute face, took us with her on her morning visit to her patients. All around the central house are grouped detached buildings. In these houses live the girls and women of the settlement who have not the protection of a family.

The Sisters care for them in every way; dress their sores, teach them to read, amuse them, and do everything in their power to make the lives of the unhappy victims less horrible.

The first door we entered was that of a dormitory. It was spotlessly clean and neat, but oh, the hopeless misery of it all! In that room were eighteen or twenty girls, not one over sixteen, yet every one bore upon her the hideous stamp of loathsome disease. All phases of it were there—unhappy wretches with bluish, discolored skins and misshapen limbs, and dreadful creatures with staring eyes and faces distorted out of all semblance to humanity. A hideous being stood before us with aged features awry with pain.

“She has not much longer to suffer,” I said; “she must be very old now.”

“She is ten years old,” said Mother Marianne.

The poor creature rose from the strange crooning attitude which seems natural to the Hawaiians and greeted us as we entered. From house to house we went, the doctors examining the miserable victims to see what progress the disease is making. “That is all we can do,” said one of them to me. “There is no cure for it. The only thing is to make them as comfortable as possible.”

In one room there stood a little half-white girl, her fair skin and blonde hair shining strangely bright among the swarthy natives. She was a delicate little creature, but there was no sign of the fatal malady in her sensitive face.

“Her little body is one mass of scars,” said the Mother Superior. “She has a mother and brother and sisters in Honolulu all perfectly well. No one can imagine how she contracted the disease.”

There are ninety-five of these women and children under the care of the sisters. The dormitories and dining-room are as bright as the loving care of the noble sisters can make them. In one room there is a beautiful piano, the gift of Robert Louis Stevenson, who sent it to them on his visit to the islands last June.

There are six of these devoted women there. They came from their convent in Syracuse, N.Y., and have only been at the settlement about a year. Unheralded and unannounced they came. Quietly and unostentatiously they went to work, and the good they have accomplished in the short time they have been there is simply marvelous.

They do not pretend to be happy; they are not upheld by the ecstasy of martyrdom, but their faces are full of a sweet peace, and on their brows gentle Pity sits enthroned. They have a great horror of the disease, but they never hesitate to perform the most trying service which will help to relieve the pain of their unfortunate wards. Strange to say, however, the disease is not always painful.

A bright young fellow, a half-white, told me he did not suffer at all. “The only thing I notice,” he said, “is that I am gradually growing weaker. I have only been here a year, but I find that my strength is going very fast. I have no feeling in my hands, you see,” and he held up two misshapen things that looked like claws, “so I hope that my case is what is called a quick one. I was a printer in Honolulu and was doing very well there when I was stricken. I didn’t feel ill at all, but I began to notice strange white spots on my skin. I couldn’t believe it when the doctor told me I was a leper, but when I found that it was true, I said good-by to my people and camo up here.

“Of course I feel homesick sometimes, even a leper does that, but I know that I could never get such good care anywhere else as I can here. We have everything we want. I believe it is right to keep us here. We have no right to endanger the lives of other people, but it’s a little hard sometimes to feel one’s self a prisoner at twenty-three.”

“What do you do to amuse yourself?” I asked.

“We play games and read, and I help keep the books. You wouldn’t think I was a leper unless you saw my hands, would you?” he asked eagerly. The wistful light in his eyes made me hasten to answer, “No, no,” though the strange bluish pallor of his face betrayed too well his fatal malady.

This boy seems to feel the misery of his case deeply, but most of the lepers do not. The Hawaiians are all easy-going, pleasure-loving people, with little thought for the future, and they seem affected with a strange apathy in regard to the horrible sickness which is such a scourge in their beautiful country. They are not at all afraid of it. They will hide a leper from physicians, live with him, eat from the same dish with him, without the slightest fear. They do not seem at all repulsed by the most disgusting forms of the disease.

The lepers at Molokai are as happy to all outward appearances as the healthiest people that exist. They fall in love and marry in the most everyday manner in the world, and a christening is a matter of frequent occurrence there. We saw dozens of round-limbed babies borne in the arms of mothers whose every feature bore evidence of their horrible affliction.

It is a vexed question whether or not leprosy is hereditary, though most doctors are firmly convinced that it is.

There is no possible way of deciding the question. The disease is so long in developing that there is no certainty as to contraction whatever.

Although it has been the study of savants for acres, no wise doctor has ever been able to “pluck the heart out of its mystery.”

“The more I see of it, the less I know of it,” said a prominent physician who has made it a life study. “Sometimes it looks as if it were purely a matter of heredity. Again, it seems as if contagion were the only means of contracting it. The truth is, the only thing I have learned in all these years, is that I don’t know anything about it.”

The facts which come to light at Molokai are strangely puzzling. I saw a man there who came to the village with his wife. She was a leper, but he was perfectly sound. They lived together for several years, and she died of the disease. Soon after he married again another leprous woman. That was ten years ago. She is dying now, but he is as well as ever. There are other cases. there, who believe that they contracted leprosy by one touch of a diseased person.

There are in the settlement 230 kokoas or sound persons, who have come as helpers to their afflicted relatives and friends. So far from dreading the leprosy, some of them actually court the living death, preferring a life of idleness and disease to one of industry and health. They fare much better there than they would outside, and they are content to live amid the loathsome pestilence in luxurious ease, as it seems to them. At every examination day some of kokoas are pronounced lepers. They have caught the disease. They do not bewail their fate. On the contrary, many of them rejoice greatly. They are glad that they are now in no danger of being forced back into the bustling world to earn their own living. They have lived so long in the tainted atmosphere that they regard health an affliction which makes it necessary for a man to work.

It is a place where the beggar may ride whenever he chooses to exert himself enough to catch a steed, for there are no loss than 800 horses in the settlement, all at the disposal of the lepers.

Instead of raw fish and poi they are furnished with four pounds of solid food a day. In place of a miserable grass hut they can lodge like kings under a whole roof. Why should they leave the land of Sweet-do-nothingness for a workaday world?

So there they live, eating, drinking and making merry, marrying and giving in marriage, with apparently no thought of the hideous grave that yawns before them.

They deck themselves in gay colors and wreath their horrible, tottering forms in bright garlands. The vanity which is one the most prominent features of the Hawaiian never dies. I saw an old woman, who reminded me of the picture of Death, grinning under the coquettish cap of a masquerade dress. She wore a brilliant gown flashing yellow; a wreath of peacock feathers adorned her shoulders, and peering from under the gaudy figured kerchief was a face to give one shuddering dreams. The horrible mockery of it all never seems to strike them. They live so near to death that the grim old Tyrant has lost his terrors for them, and one of the priests told me he had often seen a chattering group sitting and eating poi on the coffin of an old friend, without a thought of the festering mass within.

There are two villages in the settlement. The road between them leads along the base of the Pali, and is dotted all along with the houses of the lepers. Seen from the little rise of ground between the two villages, Kolawao is the most beautiful, peaceful, idyllic sort of place one could imagine.

It is surrounded on the one side by the grandeur of the eternal hills and on the other by the changeful seas.

Stretching away from the town are deep ravines full of clustering vines, and echoing to the music of leaping waterfalls. As we drove along toward the village I noticed a pretty cottage set in a yard gay with tropical plants. The porch was a mass of bright roses, and at the side was a tiny vegetable garden.

“Whose house is that?” I asked of Mother Marianne.

“It is the cottage of an Englishman who lives there quite alone,” she replied. “He is a man of wealth and refinement who contracted leprosy some years ago, it is thought through a servant. He kept his dreadful secret and went abroad to consult physicians there. When he found his case was hopeless he came straight to Molokai, not even stopping in Honolulu to say good-by to his wife and children. His wife begged to see him once more, but he was firm. His sons are devotedly attached to him, but he is morbidly sensitive and will not hear of their coming to see him. He grows all his own vegetables and cultivates his garden himself, though he is very weak.”

There are only nine white men in the settlement, and they form a sort of colony by themselves.

Their houses are nearly all close together.

We stopped at the door of a tiny cottage.

“This is one of our saddest cases,” said the Reverend Mother.

“A young man of twenty-six or twenty-seven; he suffers terribly, and we hope every day to hear that he has entered into rest,” but he is very patient under it all. I must go in and see him for a moment; will you come?”

On a little white bed in the corner by the open window lay a skeleton figure. The skin was drawn tightly over the bones and one side of the face was entirely gone. It was hard to believe that only a few years ago that horrible wreck had been alive with the leaping blood of vigorous manhood.

The southern wind blew in from the sea and stirred the veils of the kneeling sisters. As their sweet prayer was ended the dying man tried to raise his head. “God bless you, sister,” he gasped, brokenly.

I could bear no more, and went away, leaving him alone with the ministering angels whose gentle voices brought him peace and comfort.

I strolled down the path to the churchyard, where Father Damien lies. There is no monument to mark his resting-place. Only a tall pandanus tree casts its waving shadow over the grave. The church which he built has been enlarged, but the original building has been left intact.

Father Conrady, the resident priest, took me to the room where the martyr priest died. A plain little room it is, with only a rough bed, a table and a few shelves for books.

The stairs leading to the room are worn by the tread of many feet. It was here that he listened to the sighs of his afflicted people.

As I came down I heard a soft footfall beside me and something rubbed against my feet.

“That is Father Damien s cat,” said Father Conrady. “I feed it, but it seems to like staying here best.”

As we left the porch I heard the confused sound of many voices. We were nearing the dining-room of the boys’ school. They had heard that strangers were visiting the islands and they were full of eager curiosity to see us. We went into the dining-room, but the sickening odor overpowered me and I came outside.

They had nearly finished their meal, however, and soon came pouring out to stare at us with great pathetic eyes.

Nearly one hundred boys of all ages from five to eighteen. They were a sight to wring the heart. In the very heyday and springtime of youth they bore upon them the stamp of the great destroyer.

It was pathetic enough in all conscience look at them, but when they struck up a sweet refrain in the weird minor of the native music it was heartbreaking. They were singing something about the goodness of heaven and the beauty of the green hills. Their voices rang out sweet and clear, and it was dreadful to think that the best wish one could make for them was that their music might soon be hushed forever.

They are well cared for, however, for the Hawaiian Government is prodigally generous with its unfortunate wards.

In a lonely house close to the beach lives Brother Joseph. He it is who dresses the wounds of the lepers, and supplies the sufferers with cooling ointments to allay the fever which consumes them.

Brother Joseph is an American who served as a Sergeant all through the war. He was greatly interested in Father Damien, anud when he heard that he was stricken with leprosy he came to help him. He learned from the priest how to care for the physical wants of the lepers, and he has a little dispensary where he is kept busy all day.

He is a layman and wears the blue jeans of a working man, but the people whose lives he has blessed have called him by the affectionate name of “Brother Joseph.” Though he belongs to no religious order, he is a devoted Catholic. It is said that he was once a man of reckless and dissipated life, and that he vowed to take this method of expiating his sins.

He is a bright, intelligent man, with shining eyes full of enthusiasm.

He takes great interest in the affairs of the outside world, and is deeply interested in all American enterprises. He, unlike the priests, lives with the lepers, eats with them, and seems rather to court the disease than to avoid it. It is rumored that he is beginning to show signs of the malady, but I saw no evidences of it, though I noticed that he did not offer his hand as did the others.

“The days are not long enough for me,” he said. “I cannot do half I want to.”

On our way back to Kalaupapa we stopped to see the people who had come to be examined by the board to see if they were lepers. Women sat on the steps of the consultation room, crooning to babies, who laughed and crowed as gaily as though the very pall of death were not hanging over them. Men stood at the gate, waiting stolidly to hear the decision about their wives, and fathers lounged about in no apparent anxiety to hear the fate of their doomed children.

The bunch of delicate ferns in my hand seemed suddenly withered. I dropped them as if they had stung me, and turned away, sick at heart.

We were at the settlement two days and three nights, and the more I saw of it the greater was my admiration of the management of the whole affair.

No people on earth could be better cared for than are these unfortunates. For a wild, careless people, like these islanders, the sense of imprisonment is doubly hard to endure, it is true. Many of them repine at their confinement, but it is a matter of stern necessity.

The scenes when the lepers leave their homes, and are torn away from their families, never to see them again, are said to be heartrending.

Much has been written upon this phase of the affair, and of course there are many cases where deep and poignant anguish is felt, but in most cases the grief is that of a child, boisterous and heartfelt at the time, but shallow and short-lived.

Wives who utter the most bitter lamentations at the parting with husbands and children may be seen two or three months later happily mated with one of her own afflicted kind, and apparently forgetting all about the husband of her youth.

Among the crowd of lepers outside the wall was a huge heavy-set man, with a brutal face, which would have been forbidding even without the repulsive distortion of leprosy.

It was the convict Keanu, who was given the choice of inoculation or execution. He chose the first alternative, and now he is a leper among lepers.

The frightful creatures kept crowding around the carriage and trying to shake hands with us. The doctors warned me not to touch them upon any account hut I did not need any such admonition. I gently, but firmly persisted in looking very intently the other way whenever I beheld an outstretched palm. There is absolutely no danger except by actual contact, yet I could not shake off the impression of a brooding pestilence in the air all the time I was there.

We went to the top of a lovely hill to see the extinct crater, and a beautiful view we had there. The crater was green with verdure of all kinds, and we climbed about looking at the strange plants which grew along the edge. I was delighted to discover a most romantic cave in the side of a cliff. I at once started to explore it, when I was stopped by a warning cry.

It was a leper’s cave!

As for the men, they are hardly established at the settlement before they begin billing and cooing with all the ardor of a Romeo.

The gentle Sisters labor patiently to instill their religion into these poor souls and it is no wonder that so many of them are Catholics. The noble self-sacrifice and generous devotion of these wondrous women are a living example to their patients. It is a significant fact and one which Protestants find it hard to explain, that all the voluntary exiles who offer up their lives upon the altar of self-sacrifice in this dreadful place are Catholics—no Protestant minister or missionary has yet ventured to live among this plague-stricken people. The good that is done by the gentle Sisters can never be told. They will go down to quiet graves all unsung and uneulogized. The world they have foresworn knows but little of their lives and they are content that it should be so.

On Saturday morning we left the Settlement and started to climb the Pali. Every time I looked at that perpendicular wall my heart sank, but we started out a brave cavalcade with men and dogs and horses, but it soon grew too steep to ride and we took to our feet, or rather to our hands and knees and sticks and everything else we could clutch.

The rains had made the red clay which covers the rocks into a slippery paste, and it was up this smooth, slippery, sliding mass that we pulled and scrambled and tugged.

The sturdy native guides put Sister Rose and me between two poles and simply pulled us along.

We stopped to rest every few minutes and then went on. I didn’t let myself think of the sea that crawled beneath us or of the slippery rocks that were our only protection from the waves, but just scrambled doggedly on in a stupid sort of obstinate way until at last we reached the top.

The view which burst upon us there was a revelation.

Far below the clouds that surrounded us lay the leper settlement, looking like a toy village at the base of the cliff.

Oh, the glad sense of exultant liberty that rushed upon me when I realized that we were out of the dreadful place at last!

I buried my hot hands in the wet grass and took deep breaths of rapturous relief. It was such a delight to breathe the pure, untainted air once more!

Such joyous freedom to know that we could touch anything we pleased without drawing back with a shudder of horrid fear.

Sister Rose sat gazing down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. She sighed as we rose to go away, but I was very happy to know that we were taking her away with us. As we turned to go down the other side of the mountain I thanked heaven I should never see the place again.

Do I say never? I am wrong. I fear I shall revisit it often and often in my dreams.

ANNIE LAURIE