visited the lazaretto, Damien was already in his resting grave.
But such information as I have, I gathered on the spot in
conversation with those who knew him well and long: some indeed
who revered his memory; but others who had sparred and wrangled
with him, who beheld him with no halo, who perhaps regarded him
with small respect, and through whose unprepared and scarcely
partial communications the plain, human features of the man shone
on me convincingly. These gave me what knowledge I possess; and I
learnt it in that scene where it could be most completely and
sensitively understood--Kalawao, which you have never visited,
about which you have never so much as endeavoured to inform
yourself; for, brief as your letter is, you have found the means to
stumble into that confession. 'LESS THAN ONE-HALF of the island,'
you say, 'is devoted to the lepers.' Molokai--'Molokai ahina,' the
'grey,' lofty, and most desolate island--along all its northern
side plunges a front of precipice into a sea of unusual profundity.
This range of cliff is, from east to west, the true end and
frontier of the island. Only in one spot there projects into the
ocean a certain triangular and rugged down, grassy, stony, windy,
and rising in the midst into a hill with a dead crater: the whole
bearing to the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same relation
as a bracket to a wall. With this hint you will now be able to
pick out the leper station on a map; you will be able to judge how
much of Molokai is thus cut off between the surf and precipice,
whether less than a half, or less than a quarter, or a fifth, or a
tenth--or, say, a twentieth; and the next time you burst into print
you will be in a position to share with us the issue of your
calculations.

I imagine you to be one of those persons who talk with cheerfulness