In no
stage do they attempt a cure; the complaint being held incurable.
Speaking of the Fa-Fa reminds me of a poor fellow, a sailor, whom I
afterward saw at Roorootoo, a lone island, some two days' sail from
Tahiti.
The island is very small, and its inhabitants nearly extinct. We sent
a boat off to see whether any yams were to be had, as, formerly, the
yams of Roorootoo were as famous among the islands round about, as
Sicily oranges in the Mediterranean. Going ashore, to my surprise, I
was accosted, near a little shanty of a church, by a white man, who
limped forth from a wretched hut. His hair and beard were unshorn,
his face deadly pale and haggard, and one limb swelled with the Fa-Fa
to an incredible bigness. This was the first instance of a foreigner
suffering from it that I had ever seen, or heard of; and the
spectacle shocked me accordingly.
He had been there for years. From the first symptoms, he could not
believe his complaint to be what it really was, and trusted it would
soon disappear. But when it became plain that his only chance for
recovery was a speedy change of climate, no ship would receive him as
a sailor: to think of being taken as a passenger was idle. This
speaks little for the humanity of sea captains; but the truth is that
those in the Pacific have little enough of the virtue; and, nowadays,
when so many charitable appeals are made to them, they have become
callous.
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