"KALAWAO, MOLOKAI, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS,
"_January 1, 188--_.
"DEAR MOTHER,--I entreat you not to let the sight of this strange
handwriting, instead of one that must be so familiar, fill you with
too much alarm. I hasten to assure you that before my letter closes
you will understand why Sister Dolorosa has not written herself.
"Since the hour when the vessel sailed from the American port, bearing
to us that young life as a consecrated helper in our work among these
suffering outcasts of the human race, I know that your thoughts and
prayers have followed her with unceasing anxiety; so that first I
should give you tidings that the vessel reached Honolulu in safety. I
should tell you also that she had a prosperous voyage, and that she is
now happy--far happier than when she left you. I know, likewise, that
your imagination has constantly hovered about this island, and that
you have pictured it to yourself as the gloomiest of all spots in the
universe of God; so that in the next place I should try to remove this
impression by giving you some description of the island itself, which
has now become her unchanging home.
"The island of Molokai, then, on which the leper settlement has been
located by the Government, is long, and shaped much like the leaf of
the willow-tree. The Sandwich Islands, as you well know, are a group
of volcanoes out of which the fires have for the most part long since
died. Molokai, therefore, is really but a mountain of cooled lava,
half of which perhaps is beneath the level of the sea. The two leper
villages are actually situated in the cup of an ancient crater. The
island is very low along the southern coast, and slopes gradually to
its greatest altitude on the northern ridge, from which the descent to
the sea is in places all but perpendicular. It is between the bases
of these northern cliffs and the sea that the villages are built.
In the rear of them is a long succession of towering precipices and
wild ravines, that are solemn and terrible to behold; and in front of
them there is a coast line so rough with pointed rocks that as the
waves rush in upon them spray is often thrown to the height of fifty
or a hundred feet. It is this that makes the landing at times so
dangerous; and at other times, when a storm has burst, so fatal. So
that shipwrecks are not unknown, dear Mother, and sometimes add to the
sadness of life in this place.
"But from this description you would get only a mistaken idea of the
aspect of the island. It is sunny and full of tropical loveliness.
The lapse of centuries has in places covered the lava with exquisite
verdure. Soft breezes blow here, about the dark cliffs hang purple
atmospheres, and above them drift pink and white clouds. Sometimes the
whole island is veiled in golden mist. Beautiful streams fall down
its green precipices into the sea, and the sea itself is of the most
brilliant blue. In its depths are growths of pure white corals, which
are the homes of fishes of gorgeous colors.
"If I should speak no longer of the island, but of the people, I could
perhaps do something further still to dissipate the dread with which
you and other strangers must regard us. The inhabitants are a simple,
generous, happy race; and there are many spots in this world--many
in Europe and Asia, perhaps some in your own land--where the scenes
of suffering and death are more poignant and appalling. The lepers
live for the most part in decent white cottages. Many are the happy
faces that are seen among them; so that, strange as it may seem,
healthy people would sometimes come here to live if the laws did not
forbid. So much has Christianity done that one may now be buried in
consecrated ground.
"If all this appears worldly and frivolous, dear Mother, forgive me!
If I have chosen to withhold from you news of her, of whom alone I
know you are thinking, it is because I have wished to give you as
bright a picture as possible. Perhaps you will thus become the better
prepared for what is to follow.
"So that before I go further, I shall pause again to describe to you
one spot which is the loveliest on the island. About a mile and a
half from the village of Kalawao there is a rocky point which is used
as an irregular landing-place when the sea is wild. Just beyond this
point there is an inward curve of the coast, making an inlet of the
sea; and from the water's edge there slopes backward into the bosom
of the island a deep ravine. Down this ravine there falls and winds a
gleaming white cataract, and here the tropical vegetation grows most
beautiful. The trees are wreathed with moist creepers; the edges and
crevices of the lava blocks are fringed with ferns and moss. Here the
wild ginger blooms and the crimson lehua. Here grow trees of orange
and palm and punhala groves. Here one sees the rare honey-bird with
its plumage of scarlet velvet, the golden plover, and the beautiful
white bos'un-bird, wheeling about the black cliff heights. The spot is
as beautiful as a scene in some fairy tale. When storms roll in from
the sea the surf flows far back into this ravine, and sometimes--after
the waters have subsided--a piece of wreckage from the ocean is left
behind.
"Forgive me once more, O dear Mother! if again I seem to you so idle
and unmeaning in my words. But I have found it almost impossible to go
on; and, besides, I think you will thank me, after you have read my
letter through, for telling you first of this place.
"From the day of our first learning that there was a young spirit
among you who had elected, for Christ's sake, to come here and labor
with us, we had counted the days till she should arrive. The news
had spread throughout the leper settlement. Father Damien had made
it known to the lepers in Kalawao, Father Wendolen had likewise told
it among the lepers in Kalapaupa, and the Protestant ministers spoke
of it to their flocks. Thus her name had already become familiar to
hundreds of them, and many a prayer had been offered up for her safety.
"Once a week there comes to Molokai from Honolulu a little steamer
called _Mokolii_. When it reached here last Saturday morning it
brought the news that just before it sailed from Honolulu the vessel
bearing Sister Dolorosa had come into port. She had been taken in
charge by the Sisters until the _Mokolii_ should return and make the
next trip. I should add that the steamer leaves at about five o'clock
in the afternoon, and that it usually reaches here at about dawn of
the following morning in ordinary weather.
"And now, dear Mother, I beseech you to lay my letter aside! Do not
read further now. Lay it aside, and do not take it up again until you
have sought in prayer the consolation of our divine religion for the
sorrows of our lives.
"I shall believe that you have done this, and that, as you now go on
with the reading of my letter, you have gained the fortitude to hear
what I have scarcely the power to write. Heaven knows that in my poor
way I have sought to prepare you!
"As it was expected that the steamer would reach the island about dawn
on Saturday morning, as usual, it had been arranged that many of us
should be at the landing-place to give her welcome. But about midnight
one of the terrific storms which visit this region suddenly descended,
enveloping the heavens, that had been full of the light of the stars,
in impenetrable darkness. We were sleepless with apprehension that
the vessel would be driven upon the rocks--such was the direction of
the storm--long before it could come opposite the villages: and a
few hours before day Father Damien, accompanied by Father Conradi,
Brother James, and Brother Joseph, went down to the coast. Through
the remaining hours of the night they watched and waited, now at one
point, and now at another, knowing that the vessel could never land in
such a storm. As the dawn broke they followed up the coast until they
came opposite that rocky point of which I have already spoken as being
an irregular landing-place.
"Here they were met by two or three men who were drenched with the
sea, and just starting towards the villages, and from them they
learned that, an hour or two before, the steamer had been driven upon
the hidden rocks of the point. It had been feared that it would soon
be sunk or dashed to pieces, and as quickly as possible a boat had
been put off, in which were the leper girls that were being brought
from Honolulu. There was little hope that it would ever reach the
shore, but it was the last chance of life. In this boat, dear Mother,
Sister Dolorosa also was placed. Immediately afterwards a second boat
was put off, containing the others that were on board.
"Of the fate of the first boat they had learned nothing. Their own had
been almost immediately capsized, and, so far as they knew, they were
the sole survivors. The Hawaiians are the most expert of swimmers,
being almost native to the sea; and since the distance was short, and
only these survived, you will realize how little chance there was for
any other.
"During the early hours of the morning, which broke dark and
inexpressibly sad for us, a few bodies were found washed ashore, among
them those of two leper girls of Honolulu. But our search for her long
proved unavailing. At length Father Damien suggested that we follow
up the ravine which I have described, and it was thither that he and
Brother Joseph and I accordingly went. Father Damien thought it well
that I should go with them.
"It was far inland, dear Mother, that at last we found her. She lay
out-stretched on a bare, black rock of lava, which sloped upward from
the sea. Her naked white feet rested on the green moss that fringed
its lower edge, and her head was sheltered from the burning sun by
branches of ferns. Almost over her eyes--the lids of which were stiff
with the salt of the ocean--there hung a spray of white poppies. It
was as though nature would be kind to her in death.
"At the sight of her face, so young, and having in it the purity and
the peace of Heaven, we knelt down around her without a word, and for
a while we could do nothing but weep. Surely nothing so spotless was
ever washed ashore on this polluted island! If I sinned, I pray to be
forgiven; but I found a strange joy in thinking that the corruption
of this terrible disease had never been laid upon her. Heaven had
accepted in advance her faithful spirit, and had spared her the long
years of bodily suffering.
"At Father Damien's direction Brother Joseph returned to the village
for a bier and for four lepers who should be strong enough to bear it.
When they came we laid her on it, and bore her back to the village,
where Mother Marianne took the body in charge and prepared it for
burial.
"How shall I describe her funeral? The lepers were her pall-bearers.
The news of the shipwreck had quickly spread throughout the
settlement, and these simple, generous people yield themselves so
readily to the emotion of the hour. When the time arrived, it seemed
that all who could walk had come to follow her to the church-yard. It
was a moving sight--the long, wavering train of that death-stricken
throng, whose sufferings had so touched the pity of our Lord when he
was on earth, and the desolation of whose fate she had come to lessen.
There were the young and the old alike, Protestants and Catholics
without distinction, children with their faces so strangely aged
with ravages of the leprosy, those advanced in years with theirs so
mutilated and marred. Others, upon whom the leprosy had made such
advances that they were too weak to walk, sat in their cottage doors
and lifted their husky voices in singing that wailing native hymn in
which they bemoan their hopeless fate. Some of the women, after a
fashion of their own, wore large wreaths of blue blossoms and green
leaves about their withered faces.
"And it was thus that we lepers--I say we lepers because I am one of
them, since I cannot expect long to escape the disease--it was thus
that we lepers followed her to the graveyard in the rock by the blue
sea, where Father Damien with his own hands had helped to dig her
grave. And there, dear Mother, all that is mortal of her now rests.
But we know that ere this she has heard the words: 'I was sick and ye
visited me.'
"Mother Marianne would herself have written, but she was called away
to the Leproserie.
"SISTER AGATHA."