Hawaii - James Michener [330]
THE ISLAND of Molokai, to which the caged lepers were heading, was one of the most strangely beautiful islands in the Hawaiian group. It lay in the blue Pacific like a huge left-handed gauntlet, the open wristlet facing westward toward the island of Oahu, the cupped fingers pointing eastward toward Maui. The southern portion of Molokai consisted of rolling meadowland, often with gray and parched grasses, for rainfall was slight, while the northern portion was indented by some of the most spectacular cliffs in the islands. For mile after mile these towering structures rose from the crashing surf, sometimes reaching more than three thousand feet into the air, their faces sheer rock, their flanks marked by dozens upon dozens of shimmering waterfalls. These cliffs formed, at their bases, delectable valleys that probed inland half a mile to end in soaring walls of granite, but narrow and restricted though they were, these valleys were perhaps the finest in Hawaii. Upon the cliffs white goats ranged, so that a boat coasting the north shore of Molokai passed constantly beneath magnificent cliffs, trembling waterfalls and the antics of a thousand goats. Sailors, when the days were idle, would discharge guns aimlessly at the cliffs to make the goats scamper up walls of rock that no man could have negotiated. Thus, the uninhabitable north coast of Molokai was completely cut off from the gentle meadows of the south coast, where some two thousand normal islanders lived.
Jutting out from the isolated yet magnificent northern coast stood the thumb of the gauntlet, a small, verdant peninsula that had been formed millions of years later than the main island, for when the initial volcanoes that accounted for Molokai had long since died away, an afterthought-eruption occurred offshore. It did not rise from a major volcano, nor did it build a major island; it was content merely to add a peninsula of lovely proportions, from whose grassy shores one could look west and east toward the towering cliffs. It was a majestic spot, a poem of nature, and from the earliest memories of Hawaiian history, fortunate fishermen had lived here, building themselves a good community and calling it Kalawao.
Then in 1865, the year in which the Kees left China, the Hawaiian government tardily faced up to the fact that in the strange new disease called mai Pake it faced an epidemic of the most virulent sort. It was ironic that leprosy should have been named the Chinese sickness, for the scourge neither came from China nor did it especially affect the Chinese, but some kind of quarantine was necessary, and the heavenly peninsula of Kalawao was nominated to be the lazaretto. It was generally known that leprosy was contagious but no one knew of a cure; so in frenzied eagerness to take some kind of action, the government's medical advisers said: "At least we can isolate the afflicted." In desperation the lepers were hunted down; the Hawaiians living at Kalawao were exiled forever from their peninsula; and the Kilauea started its dismal voyages to the lazaretto. In the previous history of the world no such hellish spot had ever stood in such heavenly surroundings.
On the first day of November, 1870, the ferry Kilauea stood off the eastern edge of the peninsula, dropped anchor some hundred yards from the cliff-lined shore and rolled with the surf beneath the leaping goats. The captain ordered one section of the deck railing removed, and sailors began shoving into the sea huge casks of salt beef, cured salmon and dehydrated poi. When the cargo was thus thrown into the waves, lepers from Kalawao swam out to the ship and started guiding the stores to shore, for the colony had no pier at which supplies could be landed in an orderly way.
Now from the front of the ship cattle were led aft, and amidst great bellowing were shoved into the ocean where swimming lepers leaped upon their backs and guided them to shore. Occasionally a frightened cow would toss her rider and head for the open