In Passing, I May Mention That Among The Other Afflictions That
Jointly Compelled The Abandonment Of The Voyage, Was One That Is
Variously Called The Healthy Man's Disease, European Leprosy, And
Biblical Leprosy.
Unlike True Leprosy, nothing is known of this
mysterious malady.
No doctor has ever claimed a cure for a case of
it, though spontaneous cures are recorded. It comes, they know not
how. It is, they know not what. It goes, they know not why.
Without the use of drugs, merely by living in the wholesome
California climate, my silvery skin vanished. The only hope the
doctors had held out to me was a spontaneous cure, and such a cure
was mine.
A last word: the test of the voyage. It is easy enough for me or
any man to say that it was enjoyable. But there is a better
witness, the one woman who made it from beginning to end. In
hospital when I broke the news to Charmian that I must go back to
California, the tears welled into her eyes. For two days she was
wrecked and broken by the knowledge that the happy, happy voyage was
abandoned.
GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA,
April 7, 1911
Footnotes:
{1} To point out that we of the Snark are not a crowd of weaklings,
which might be concluded from our divers afflictions, I quote the
following, which I gleaned verbatim from the Eugenie's log and which
may be considered as a sample of Solomon Islands cruising:
Ulava, Thursday, March 12, 1908.
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