Forty-two died between April 1 and August 13 of the present year.

The proportion of women to men is smaller than I thought; and there are about fifty leper children, between the ages of six and thirteen.

Lepers are sterile, and no children have been born at the asylum.
So great has been the energy and the vigilance of the Board of Health and its physician, Dr.Trousseau, that there are not now probably fifty lepers at large on all the islands, and these are persons who have been hidden away in the mountains by their relatives.

In fact if there was ever any risk to foreign visitors from leprosy, this is now reduced to the minimum; and as the disease is not caused by the climate, and can be got, as the widest experience and the best authorities agree, only by intimate contact, united with peculiar predisposition of the blood, there is not the least ground for any foreign visitor to dread it.
When a leper is sent to Molokai, the Government provides him a house, and he receives, if an adult, three pounds of paiai or unmixed poi, per day, and three pounds of salt salmon, or five pounds of fresh beef, per week.
Beef is generally preferred.
They are allowed and encouraged to cultivate land, and their products are bought by the Health Board; but the disease quickly attacks the feet and hands, and disables the sufferers from labor.
There are two churches in the settlement, one Protestant, with a native pastor, and one Catholic, with a white priest, a young Frenchman, who has had the courage to devote himself to his co-religionists.
There is a store, kept by the Board of Health, the articles in which are sold for cost and expenses.

The people receive a good deal of money from their relatives at home, which they spend in this store.