FRIENDLY VISITS
ABOUT the middle of the year 1880 seven of the youth from Norfolk Island came on a visit to the old home of their parents. Scarcely any communication passed between the two islands, so that the event of their coming was improved in learning all about the state of the island and people they had lately left.
The friends of the young men noticed with surprise that, with but one exception, they were all slaves to the tobacco habit, both chewing and smoking, for not one among the youth of the island practiced the unclean vice. The captain of the whale ship with whom they had come was himself a total abstainer as regarded both tobacco and spirits, but all his endeavors to reform the young men under his command, example and precept notwithstanding, failed to have the desired effect. He was more successful when he attempted a reform among the old men of the island, in one case at least, as the following incident will show.
In a meeting held on Sunday evening the captain addressed himself to the tobacco users, seven in number, and those, five at least, the oldest men in the community. He spoke very strongly against the bad habit to which they were addicted, and its consequent evil results. Some of his hearers were for the moment impressed with his appeals, and two of them almost decided to abandon the vice forever. They respected their would-be reformer enough not to indulge in the practice in his presence. On the following morning, as one of the men was walking along the road with a lighted pipe in his mouth, he espied the captain a few yards ahead of him, waiting to give him a warm morning greeting. Regardless of the consequences, in the fear of being found out, he quickly caught the heated clay pipe from his lips and thrust it into his pocket, which was as quickly burnt through. Though smarting with the pain, he bravely shook hands with the captain and passed on, not daring to betray his pipe, even at the cost of suffering. But it was the last struggle he had with the habit, for from that day it was abandoned, and he was made free, yet “so as by fire.”
It was during this same year, 1880, that an unusual and very peculiar visitation appeared among the community, affecting only the younger members, eleven or twelve young persons in all having been subject to it. The disease, if such it may be called, was temporary insanity, the case that lasted the longest not extending over two years. The first symptom of the attack was a strange hallucination of the mind, the person affected seeing some object which greatly terrified him, or hearing voices calling to him, then gradually losing all recollection of former events, until the mind became an utter blank. One peculiar feature of the disease was a distorted vision, that transformed every object into something different to what it was, as, for instance, a full-grown man or woman appeared as but a child, while a mere baby would assume the full proportions of a man. In almost every case the patient was calm and quiet; the power of speech seemed taken away, while the vacant stare showed that the mind had lost control over itself.
GIRLS IN BATHING COSTUME.
One case was that of a youth who had been shipwrecked, and whose stay was prolonged on the island. This was in 1881. One morning he declared that during the night he saw his mother’s coffin pass above him out of the window, and nothing could persuade him that it was a delusion. A few hours afterwards he became oblivious to everything that was going on around him, and in the very first stage of the disease was entirely deprived of the power of speech. When speech returned after a few days, he employed himself searching from house to house for some fancied friend who was unjustly condemned to prison, and whom he was sparing no effort to release. On one occasion he wandered away during the night to the opposite side of the island, where he was found by a party who went in search, sleeping under an overhanging rock, wrapped up in his scout’s blanket, for at that stage of his derangement he declared that he was Davy Crockett out on an Indian trail. Davy Crockett was only one out of the many different characters whom he personated in the different stages of the disease.
Many and various were the phases that the disease assumed, each patient being acted upon in a different manner. There has never been any satisfactory explanation of the cause that produced it. The case above mentioned as being of longest duration was that of a young girl whose mind became affected in April, 1884, and was restored in the early part of the year 1886. Since that time the peculiar disease has not made its appearance.