A Leper Island which is to be a Spa

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 123, 27 May 1933, Page 18

A Leper Island which is to be a Spa

Memories strange and grim are among the afflicted. Tins surgeon did aroused by the news that Eobben not live long after he discovered the island, the South African leper, lunatic, £oUnd * WTOIVOI and convict settlement, is to bo abau- j u lh( , o | d days a boat rO wed by condoned. Stories as weird as any from yiets wou iti come out to the littlo Devil's Island or Molokai are told of steamer that brought the mails —and Eobben Island in tho old days—stories tne tragic human cargo for the island, of mutinies and dramatic escapes, Rebellious native chiefs were often human nobility, shipwrecks, and drown- cx ii c fl there. One of them, Makanna ings. the Left Handed, made himself a frail Eobben Island, star-shaped and ra j t an d paddled away on a, dark night fringed by dangerous reefs, lies across towards the distant mainland shore. He the Table Bay entrance from Cape was drowned in the surf. Other prisonTown. Many ships, including the fine Rrs tried to swim away, and some were mail steamer Tantallon Castle, have dro^-ned and some seized by the sharks, found their graves in the cold Atlantic the real guardians of the island, surf off the island shore. The writer Treasure ships—galleons of the Dutch has flown over the island, sailed there ;^ as t India Company, and modern in small craft, walked among the lepers, learners carrying gold —have been lost and chatted with them. And on Eobben o fl> Robben Island. Many old coins Island there are talcs told that seldom have been found by children playing drift across to Cape Town, the busy city !imO ng the rock pools at low tide, seven miles across the bay, says the Thirty years ago a ship with a large "Kew York Times." consignment of coloured beads was lost There was, for example, the story of on the north coast of the island. To the ship, laden with liquor, which ran this clay a north-west gale sends the onto the island and broke up. Then brightly-coloured pieces of glass on to the cargo began to com 6 ashore. The the beach. eager lepers struggled out into tho surf One more Grand Guignol scene. The to drag barrels of rum and cases of nativo lepers, resenting their state of champagne on to the beach. The lepers imprisonment far from friends and had grievances, fancied and real, and relatives, plotted a terrible revenge on as they drank they remembered. One the government which kept them on the after another they set fire to the hovels island. It was announced that a comin which they lived, dancing round the mission of officials and doctors was comflames. i n g to the settlement. The lepers As a contrast there is the story of planned to pass on their disease to the Father Engleheart who—like Father visitors. Mercifully the plot was disDamien, the martyr of Molokai in the covered, and evidence was taken with Pacific —worked among the lepers for the lepers carefully guarded, many years and made a friend of every For many years now the patients have one. It takes a man of strong nerve to been well-fed and well-housed. But it do that; leprosy is not pretty. For- has been realised that the foggy winter tunately, Father Engleheart never con- climate of tho island is unhealthful, and traeted the disease. the lepers are to be removed to a new There was a surgeon on tho island hospital settlement near Pretoria, long ago, however, who caught leprosy Eobben Island, the traditional home of \vhile operating on a patient. Leprosy tragedy, will then become a pleasure is only slightly contagious; but tho risk resort—the Coney Island of South is always there for those who live Africa.