Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/70

46 money from their friends and spend it at the store. The Government provides the lepers with clothes and lodging, and gives them sufficient food for their subsistence. Those who can work are encouraged to do so, and all that they produce is bought by the Board of Health and paid for out of the store.

"Then they have two churches—one Catholic and the other Protestant. The latter has a native pastor, and the former a white priest, who has volunteered to seclude himself among these unfortunate people for their religious good. There are three white men and eight Chinese who have been sent here as lepers. It has been charged that the Chinese brought leprosy to the islands, but the doctor says this is not so, the disease having existed here before the Chinese came; and besides, it is quite unlike the malady of that name in China. There it principally attacks the skin, while the Hawaiian form belongs to the blood.

"The location of the settlement is an excellent one, as it is on the windward side of the island, and constantly swept by the pure breezes from the ocean. For those who are unable to move about there are large and well-kept hospitals, where the patients are waited upon by other lepers that have not reached the disabled stage. Access and escape are alike difficult, and everything seems to have been done to make life as comfortable as possible to the unfortunate victims who are sent here."