CHAPTER VII.
THE LEPER ASYLUM ON MOLOKAI.
So much has been said and written of late about the disease called leprosy and its ravages in the Sandwich Islands that I had the curiosity to visit the asylum for lepers at Molokai, where now very nearly all the people suffering from this disease have been collected, under a law which directs this seclusion.
The steamer _Kilauea_ left Honolulu one evening at half-past five o'clock, and dropped several of us about two o'clock at night into a whale-boat near a point on the lee side of Molokai.

Here we were landed, and presently mounted horses and rode seven or eight miles to the house of a German, Mr.Meyer, who is the superintendent of the leper settlement, and also, I believe, of a cattle farm which belongs to the heirs of the late king.
Mr.Meyer has lived on Molokai since 1853.

He is married to a Hawaiian, and has a large family of sons and daughters who have been carefully and excellently brought up, I was told.

Mrs.Meyer, who presided at breakfast, is one of those tall and grandly proportioned women whom you meet among the native population not infrequently, who enable you to realize how it was that in the old times the women exercised great influence in Hawaiian politics.

She seemed born to command, and yet her benevolent countenance and friendly smile of welcome showed that she would probably rule gently.
From Mr.Meyer's we rode some miles again, until at last we dismounted at the top or edge of the great precipice, at the foot of which, two thousand feet below, lies the plain of Kalawao, occupied by the lepers.