The Hawaiian climate is healthy; but Chinese leprosy attacks the natives and the white population, which consists of French, English, Kanakas negroes, Chinamen and ex-convicts. Swarms of mosquitoes find the Sandwich Isles a happy hunting ground for their race, and are one of its drawbacks.
I toured on the island steamer Kilanea to all the various isles, and then stopped near Honolulu with Kooma, who was a Hawaiian. He was an old man, yet straight figured, well tattooed and with intelligent eyes. His high brow denoted intellectual qualities which were usually conspicuous through their absence from the heads of his race. Hawaiians are like all the South Sea Islanders, and have a deeply rooted hatred for work. As they have embraced Christianity, heathen songs have ceased, and now, like caged birds on the polished perches of civilisation, they sit and quote, parrot-like, all that the missionaries teach them.
Kooma at that time had no calling. He was aged, and had reared up a large family, and his athletic sons, who worked on shipping wharves at Honolulu, repaid Kooma for his past kindness. He had several married daughters also. I was not very well off at the time and gladly accepted the old Hawaiian’s offer to let me occupy rooms in his home at a charge that nicely suited the state of my exchequer.
Kooma had known Father Damien[[4]] intimately, that heroic leper priest who had devoted his life to combating heathenism and nursing the lepers on the Isle of Molokai, and had, a year or so before, died of the dreaded disease. So I was fortunately able to hear, directly from him, details of deep interest to me concerning the life and character of the celebrated priest, who had emigrated from Louvain as a missionary to Honolulu, and after a strenuous life of self-sacrifice lay in his grave near his stricken children on the lonely lazaretto isle, Molokai.
[4]. Joseph Damien de Veuster was born at Tremeloo, a small peasant village near Louvain, in 1840; and in peaceful scenes that are now ravaged by the relentless tramp of materialistic battalions he, as a boy, dreamed and fed his imagination and intense genius for helping humanity. He died on 15th April 1889.
It appeared that my friend had known Damien many years before he went to Molokai; had officiated as his servant, and helped the missionary build some of the extemporised churches and homes at Kohala and elsewhere.
Sitting by his side, by the window of his humble homestead, while native children romped under the palms out in the hot sunlight, I talked to Kooma of many things, and hearing that he had known Father Damien I at once plied him with questions. “Was Damien a kind and good man, Kooma?” I asked, and then, with much pride that he was able to give me information concerning such a popular white man, he blew whiffs of tobacco through his thin, wrinkled lips and answered: “I have cut wood and dug hundreds of post-holes for the great white priest, and he no pay me.”
“Did not pay you?” I said, astonished.
“No,” he answered. “I knew that he was poor and had no money, and so I work for no wages.” After many questions and replies which dealt chiefly with the Hawaiian’s own character and importance, I gathered that Kooma had collected firewood for the lonely priest, and had done many services for him, both as a friend and a servant, out of a good heart, for it appeared that Damien was not by any means an austere man or master, but one who worked with those around him in a spirit of good comradeship.
If anyone imposed upon the natives and Damien heard of it, he would hotly resent the imposition, and with flashing eyes shout and fight for their rights as though they were his own children.