VAILIMA LETTERS
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS 
 
 BEING CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 ADDRESSED BY 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 TO 
 
 SIDNEY COLVIN 
 
 NOVEMBER, 1890 OCOTBER, 1894 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1906
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY 
 STONE AND KIMBALL
 
 i i i T*5 
 
 ^ 
 
 ?0fc 
 
 CONT^N'TS. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 FACE 
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE n 
 
 LETTER 
 
 I. NOVEMBER, 1890 27 
 
 II. NOVEMBER 25 DECEMBER 2, 1890 57 
 
 III. DECEMBER, 1890 72 
 
 IV. JANUARY 17, 1891 91 
 V. FEBRUARY, 1891 97 
 
 VI. MARCH, 1891 102 
 
 VII. APRIL, 1891 118 
 
 VIII. APRIL 29 MAY 19, 1891 124 
 
 IX. JUNE, 1891 134 
 
 X. SEPTEMBER, 1891 141 
 
 XI. SEPTEMBER 28 OCTOBER 13, 1891 158 
 
 XII. OCTOBER, 1891 169 
 
 XIII. NOVEMBER 25 DECEMBER 7, 1891 181 
 
 XIV. DECEMBER, 1891 JANUARY 3, 1892 194 
 XV. JANUARY 31 FEBRUARY, 1892 217 
 
 XVI. FEBRUARY MARCH 2, 1892 223 
 
 XVII. MARCH 9 MARCH 30, 1892 235 
 XVIII. MAY i MAY 27, 1892 250
 
 The Frontispiece is a portrait of R. L. Steve?ison etched by 
 W. Strang after a photograph by Falk, of Sydney.
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. 
 
 So much of preface seems necessary to 
 this volume as may justify its publication 
 and explain its origin. The writer was for 
 many years my closest friend. It was in 
 the summer of 1873 that a lady, whose 
 gracious influence has helped to shape and 
 encourage more than one distinguished 
 career, first awakened my interest in him 
 and drew us together. He was at that 
 time a lad of twenty-two, with his powers 
 not yet set nor his way of life determined. 
 But to know him was to recognize at once 
 that here was a young genius of whom 
 great things might be expected. A slender, 
 boyish presence, with a graceful, some- 
 what fantastic bearing, and a singular 
 power and attraction in the eyes and smile, 
 were the signs that first impressed you; 
 and the impression was quickly confirmed
 
 12 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 and deepened by the charm of his talk, 
 which was irresistibly sympathetic and 
 inspiring, and not less full of matter than 
 of mirth. I have known no man in whom 
 the poet's heart and imagination were com- 
 bined with such a brilliant strain of humor 
 and such an unsleeping alertness and 
 adroitness of the critical intelligence. 
 But it was only in conversation that he 
 could as yet do himself justice. His 
 earliest efforts in literature were of a very 
 uneven and tentative quality. The reason 
 partly was that in mode of expression and 
 choice of language, not less than in the 
 formation of opinion and the conduct of 
 life, he was impatient, even to excess, of 
 the conventional, the accepted, and the 
 trite. His perceptions and emotions were 
 acute and vivid in the extreme; his judg- 
 ments, whether founded on experience, 
 reading, discussion, or caprice (and a sur- 
 prising amount of all these things had 
 been crowded into his youthful existence) 
 were not less fresh and personal; while to
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. 13 
 
 his ardent fancy the world was a theatre 
 glowing with the lights and bustling with 
 the incidents of romance. To find for all 
 he had to say words of vital aptness and 
 animation to communicate as much as 
 possible of what he has somewhere called 
 "the incommunicable thrill of things" 
 was from the first his endeavor in literature, 
 nay more, it was the main passion of his 
 life. The instrument that should serve his 
 purpose could not be forged in haste, still 
 less could it be adopted at second hand or 
 ready made; and he has himself narrated 
 how long and toilsome was the apprentice- 
 ship he served. 
 
 In those days, then, of Stevenson's 
 youth it was my good fortune to be of use 
 to him, partly by helping to soften paren- 
 tal opposition to his inborn vocation for 
 letters, partly by recommending him to 
 editors (Mr. Hamerton, Sir George Grove, 
 and Mr. Leslie Stephen in succession), 
 and a little even by such technical hints as 
 a classical training and five years' senior-
 
 14 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 ity enabled me to give. It belonged to 
 the richness of his nature to repay in all 
 things much for little, e/caro/jifiot evveaftoi'cov, 
 and from these early relations sprang both 
 the affection, to me inestimable, of which 
 the following correspondence bears evi- 
 dence, and the habit, which it pleased him 
 to maintain after he had become one of the 
 acknowledged masters of English letters, 
 of confiding in and consulting me about 
 his work in progress. It was my business 
 to find fault; to "damn" what I did not 
 like;, a duty which, as will be inferred 
 from the following pages, I was accustomed 
 to discharge somewhat unsparingly. But 
 he was too manly a spirit to desire or to 
 relish flattery, and too true an artist to be 
 content with doing less than his best: he 
 knew, moreover, in what rank of English 
 writers I put him, and for what audience, 
 not of to-day, I would have him labor. 
 Tibi Palinure so, in the last weeks of 
 his life, he proposed to inscribe to me a 
 set of his collected works. Not Palinurus
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. 15 
 
 so much as Polonius may perhaps or so 
 I sometimes suspect have been really 
 the character; but his own amiable view of 
 the matter has to be mentioned in order to 
 account for part of the tenor of the follow- 
 ing correspondence. 
 
 As a letter-writer, Mr. Stevenson was 
 punctilious in business matters (herein 
 putting some violence on his nature), in- 
 defatigable where there was a service to 
 be requited or a kindness done, and to 
 strangers and slight acquaintances ever 
 courteous and attentive. I am not sure, 
 indeed, but that in this capacity it was the 
 outer and not the inner circle of his corre- 
 spondents who, speaking generally, had 
 the best of him. To his intimate friends 
 he wrote charmingly indeed by fits, but 
 often, at least in early days, in a manner 
 not a little trying and tantalizing. With 
 these, his correspondence was apt to be a 
 thing wholly of moods. "Sordid facts," as 
 he called them, were almost never men- 
 tioned : date and place one could never
 
 1 6 VAIL1MA LETTERS. 
 
 infer except from the postmark. He would 
 exclaim over some predicament to the 
 nature of which he gave no clue whatever, 
 or appeal for sympathy in circumstances 
 impossible to conjecture; or, starting in a 
 key of vague poetry and sentiment, would 
 wind up (in a manner characteristic also of 
 his talk) with a rhapsody of hyperbolical 
 slang. Or he would dilate on some new 
 phase of his many maladies with burlesque 
 humor, with complaint never; but what 
 had been the nature of the attack you were 
 left to wonder and guess in vain. During 
 the period of his Odyssey in the South 
 Seas, from August, 1888, until the spring 
 of 1890, the remoteness and inaccessibility 
 of the scenes he visited inevitably inter- 
 rupted all correspondence for months 
 together; and when at long intervals a 
 packet reached us, the facts and circum- 
 stances of his wanderings were to be 
 gathered from the admirable letters of Mrs. 
 Stevenson (who has this feminine accom- 
 plishment in perfection) rather than from
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. I/ 
 
 his own. But when later in the last- 
 mentioned year 1890, he and his family 
 were settled on their newly bought property 
 on the mountain behind Apia, to which he 
 gave the name of Vailima (five rivers), he 
 for the first time, to my infinite gratifica- 
 tion, took to writing me long and regular 
 monthly budgets as full and particular as 
 heart could wish; and this practice he 
 maintained until within a few weeks of his 
 death. 
 
 It is these journal-letters from Samoa, 
 covering with a few intervals the period 
 from November, 1890, to October, 1894, 
 that are printed by themselves in the 
 present volume. They occupy a place, as 
 has been indicated, quite apart in his cor- 
 respondence, and in any general selection 
 from his letters would fill a quite dispro- 
 portionate space. Begun without a thought 
 of publicity, and simply to maintain our 
 intimacy undiminished, so far as might be, 
 by separation, they assumed in the course 
 of two or three years a bulk so consider-
 
 1 8 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 able, and contained so much of the matter 
 of his daily life and thoughts, that it by and 
 by occurred to him, as may be read on page 
 38 of vol. ii., that "some kind of a book" 
 might be extracted out of them after his 
 death. It is this passage which has given 
 me my warrant for their publication, and at 
 the same time has imposed on me no very 
 easy editorial task. In a correspondence 
 so unreserved, the duty of suppression and 
 selection must needs be delicate. Belong- 
 ing to the race of Scott and Dumas, of the 
 romantic narrators and creators, Stevenson 
 belonged no less to that of Montaigne and 
 the literary egotists. The word seems out 
 of place, since of egotism in the sense of 
 vanity or selfishness he was of all men the 
 most devoid; but he was nevertheless a 
 watchful and ever interested observer of 
 the motions of his own mind. He saw 
 himself, as he saw everything else (to 
 borrow the words of Mr. Andrew Lang), 
 with the lucidity of genius, and loved to 
 put himself on terms of confidence with
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. 19 
 
 his readers; but of confidence kept always 
 within fit limits, and permitting no undue 
 intrusion into his private affairs and feel- 
 ings. To maintain the same limits in the 
 editing of an intimate correspondence after 
 his death would have been impossible. I 
 have tried to do my best under the circum- 
 stances ; to suffer no feelings to be hurt 
 that could be spared, and only to lift the 
 veil of family life so far as under the con- 
 ditions was unavoidable. Neither would it 
 have been possible from such a correspond- 
 ence to expunge the record of those triv- 
 ialities which make up the chief part of 
 life, even in surroundings so romantic and 
 unusual as Stevenson in these years had 
 chosen for himself. It belonged to the 
 personal charm of the man that nothing 
 ever seemed commonplace or insignificant 
 in his company; but in correspondence 
 this charm must needs to some extent 
 evaporate. 
 
 Such as they remain, then, these letters 
 will be found a varied record, perfectly
 
 20 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 frank and familiar, of the writer's every- 
 day moods, thoughts, and doings during 
 his Samoan exile. They tell, with the 
 zest and often in the language of a man 
 who remained to the last a boy in spirit, 
 of the pleasures and troubles of a planter 
 founding his home in the virgin soil of 
 a tropical island; the pleasures of an in- 
 valid beginning after many years to re- 
 sume habits of outdoor life and exercise; 
 the toils and satisfactions, failures and 
 successes, of a creative artist whose inven- 
 tion was as fertile as his standards were 
 high and his industry unflinching. These 
 divers characters have probably never been 
 so united in any man before. Something 
 also they tell of the inward movements 
 and affections of one of the bravest and 
 tenderest of human hearts. One part of 
 his life, it should be said, which his other 
 letters will fully reveal, finds little expres- 
 sion in these, namely, the relations of cor- 
 dial and ungrudging kindness in which he 
 stood towards the younger generation of
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. 21 
 
 writers at home, including those person- 
 ally unknown to him. Neither do ordinary 
 impressions of travel, impressions of the 
 beauties of the tropics and the capitivating 
 strangeness of the island people and their 
 ways, fill much space in them. These 
 things were no longer new to the writer 
 when the correspondence began; they had 
 been part of the element of his life since 
 the day, near two years before, when his 
 yacht first anchored in the Bay of Nukahiva, 
 and his soul, to quote his own words, 
 "went down with these moorings whence 
 no windlass may extract nor any diver fish 
 it up; and I, and some part of my ship's 
 company, were from that hour the bond- 
 slaves of the isles of Vivien." In their 
 stead we find, what to some readers may be 
 hardly so welcome, the observations of a 
 close student of native life, history, and 
 manners, and some of the perplexities and 
 preoccupations of an island politician. 
 
 The political allusions are seldom in the 
 form of direct statement or narrative. To
 
 22 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 understand them, the reader must bear in 
 mind a few main facts, which I shall state 
 as briefly and plainly as possible. At the 
 date when Stevenson settled in Samoa, the 
 government of the island had lately been 
 settled between the three powers interested, 
 namely, Germany, England, and the United 
 States, at the convention of Berlin. Under 
 this convention, Malietoa Laupepa, who 
 had previously been deposed and de- 
 ported by the Germans in favor of a 
 nominee of their own, was reinstated as 
 king, to the exclusion of his kinsman, the 
 powerful and popular Mataafa, whose titles 
 might be held equally good, and whose 
 abilities were certainly greater, but who 
 was specially obnoxious to the Germans, 
 owing to his resistance to them during the 
 troubles of the previous years. For a time, 
 the two kinsmen, Laupepa and Mataafa, 
 lived on amicable terms; but presently 
 differences arose between them. Mataafa 
 had expected to occupy a position of in- 
 fluence in the government; finding him-
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. 23 
 
 self ignored, he withdrew to a camp a few 
 miles outside the town of Apia, where he 
 lived in semi-royal state as a kind of pas- 
 sive rebel or rival to the recognized king. 
 In the mean time, in the course of the year 
 1891, the two white officials appointed 
 under the Berlin Convention, namely, the 
 Chief Justice, a Swedish gentleman named 
 Cedarkrantz, and the President of the 
 Council, Baron Senfft von Pilsach, had 
 come out to the islands and entered on 
 their duties. In Stevenson's judgment 
 these gentlemen proved quite unequal to 
 their task, an opinion which before long 
 came to be shared and acted on by the 
 Foreign Offices of the three powers under 
 whom they were appointed. Stevenson 
 was no abstracted student or dreamer; the 
 human interests and the human duties 
 lying immediately about him were ever the 
 first in his eyes; and, petty and remote as 
 these island concerns may appear to us, 
 they were for him near and urgent. A 
 man of his eager nature and persuasive
 
 24 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 powers must naturally acquire influence in 
 any community in which he may be thrown, 
 and among the natives in especial by kind- 
 ness, justice, and a sympathetic understand- 
 ing of their ways and characters he soon 
 came to enjoy a singular degree of authority. 
 His unauthorized intervention in public 
 matters may have been of a nature dis- 
 concerting to the official mind, but his 
 purposes were at all times those of a 
 peacemaker. The steady aim of his efforts 
 was to bring about the withdrawal of the 
 two discredited white officials (against 
 whom, it will be seen, he had no personal 
 animus whatever) and to procure a recon- 
 ciliation between Laupepa and Mataafa, 
 so that the latter might exercise the share 
 in the government due to his character, 
 titles, and following. The first part of 
 this policy commended itself after a time to 
 the three powers and their agents, and was 
 carried out; the second not; and his friend 
 Mataafa was by and by attacked by the forces 
 of Laupepa, beaten, and sent into exile.
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. 2$ 
 
 In reading the following pages it must 
 be borne in mind that Mulinuu and Malie, 
 the places respectively of Laupepa's and 
 Mataafa's residence, are also used to 
 signify their respective parties and follow- 
 ings. The reader will have no difficulty 
 in identifying the various personages com- 
 posing the family group whose names occur 
 constantly in the correspondence, namely, 
 the writer's mother, his wife (" Fanny "), his 
 stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne (" Lloyd "), 
 his step-daughter and amanuensis, Mrs. 
 Strong (" Belle "), and her young son 
 ("Austin"). Explanation of any other 
 matters seeming to require it is added in 
 the footnotes. 
 
 S. C. 
 
 August, 1895.
 
 In the Mountain, Apia, Samoa, 
 Monday, November 2d, 1890. 
 
 MY DEAR COLVIX, This is a hard and 1890 
 interesting and beautiful life that we lead 
 now. Our place is in a deep cleft of Vaea 
 Mountain, some six hundred feet above the 
 sea, embowered in forest, which is our 
 strangling enemy, and which we combat 
 with axes and dollars. I went crazy over 
 outdoor work, and had at last to confine 
 myself to the house, or literature must 
 have gone by the board. Nothing is so 
 interesting as weeding, clearing, and path- 
 making; the oversight of laborers becomes 
 a disease; it is quite an effort not to drop 
 into the farmer; and it does make you feel 
 so well. To come down covered with 
 mud and drenched with sweat and rain 
 after some hours in the bush, change, rub 
 down, and take a chair in the veranda, is
 
 28 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 to taste a quiet conscience. And the 
 
 Nov. 
 
 strange thing that I mark is this: If I 
 go out and make sixpence, bossing my 
 labourers and plying the cutlass or the 
 spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I 
 sit in the house and make twenty pounds, 
 idiot conscience wails over my neglect and 
 the day wasted. For near a fortnight I 
 did not go beyond the verandah; then I 
 found my rush of work run out, and went 
 down for the night to Apia; put in Sunday 
 afternoon with our consul, "a nice young 
 man," dined with my friend H. J. Moors in 
 the evening, went to church no less at 
 the white and half -white church I had 
 never been before, and was much inter- 
 ested; the woman I sat next looked a. iu\\- 
 blood native, and it was in the prettiest 
 and readiest English that she sang the 
 hymns; back to Moors', where we yarned 
 of the islands, being both wide wanderers, 
 till bed-time; bed, sleep, breakfast, horse 
 saddled ; round to the mission, to get Mr. 
 Clarke to be my interpreter; over with
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 29 
 
 him to the King's, whom I have not called 1890 
 on since my return; received by that mild 
 old gentleman; have some interesting talk 
 with him about Samoan superstitions and 
 my land the scene of a great battle in 
 his (Malietoa Laupepa's) youth the place 
 which we have cleared the platform of his 
 fort the gulley of the stream full of dead 
 bodies the fight rolled off up Vaea 
 mountain-side; back with Clarke to the 
 Mission; had a bit of lunch and consulted 
 over a queer point of missionary policy 
 just arisen, about our new Town Hall and 
 the balls there too long to go into, but a 
 quaint example of the intricate questions 
 which spring up daily in the missionary 
 path. 1 
 
 1 " In the missionary work which is being done among 
 the Samoans, Mr. Stevenson was especially interested. 
 He was an observant, shrewd, yet ever generous critic 
 of all our religious and educational organisations. His 
 knowledge of native character and life enabled him to 
 understand missionary difficulties, while his genial con- 
 tact with all sorts and conditions of men made him keen 
 to detect deficiencies in men and methods, and apt in 
 useful suggestion." The above is the testimony of the
 
 30 VAILLMA LETTERS. 
 
 ^890 Then off up the hill; Jack very fresh, 
 the sun (close on noon) staring hot, the 
 breeze very strong and pleasant; the in- 
 effable green country all round gorgeous 
 little birds (I think they are humming- 
 birds, but they say not) skirmishing in the 
 wayside flowers. About a quarter way up 
 I met a native coming down with the trunk 
 of a cocoa palm across his shoulder; his 
 brown breast glittering with sweat and oil : 
 "Talofa " "Talofa, alii You see that 
 white man? He speak for you." "White 
 man he gone up here? " " loe (Yes) " 
 " Tofa, alii " " Tofa, soifua ! " I put on 
 Jack up the steep path, till he is all as 
 white as shaving stick Brown's euxesis, 
 wish I had some past Tanugamanono, a 
 bush village see into the houses as I 
 pass they are open sheds scattered on a 
 green see the brown folk sitting there, 
 
 Mr. Clarke here mentioned (Rev. W. E. Clarke of the 
 London Missionary Society). This gentleman was from 
 the first one of the most valued friends of Mr. Stevenson 
 and his family in Samoa, and when the end came, read 
 the funeral service beside his grave on Mount Vaea.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 31 
 
 suckling kids, sleeping on their stiff '890 
 wooden pillows then on through the wood 
 path and here I find the mysterious white 
 man (poor devil!) with his twenty years' 
 certificate of good behaviour as a book- 
 keeper, frozen out by the strikes in the 
 colonies, come up here on a chance, no 
 work to be found, big hotel bill, no ship 
 to leave in and come up to beg twenty 
 dollars because he heard I was a Scotch- 
 man, offering to leave his portmanteau in 
 pledge. Settle this, and on again; and 
 here my house comes in view, and a war 
 whoop fetches my wife and Henry (or 
 Simele), our Samoan boy, on the front 
 balcony; and I am home again, and only 
 sorry that I shall have to go down again to 
 Apia this day week. I could, and would, 
 dwell here unmoved, but there are things 
 to be attended to. 
 
 Never say I don't give you details and 
 news. That is a picture of a letter. 
 
 I have been hard at work since I came; 
 three chapters of The Wrecker, and since
 
 32 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 that, eight of the South Sea book, and 
 
 Nov. 
 
 along and about and in between, a hatful of 
 verses. Some day I '11 send the verse to 
 you, and you '11 say if any of it is any 
 good. I have got in a better vein with the 
 South Sea book, as I think you will see; 
 I think these chapters will do for the 
 volume without much change. Those that 
 I did in the Janet Nicoll, under the most 
 ungodly circumstances, I fear will want a 
 lot of suppling and lightening, but I hope 
 to have your remarks in a month or two 
 upon that point. It seems a long while 
 since I have heard from you. I do hope 
 you are well. I am wonderful, but tired 
 from so much work; 'tis really immense 
 what I have done; in the South Sea book 
 I have fifty pages copied fair, some of 
 which has been four times, and all twice 
 written ; certainly fifty pages of solid scriv- 
 ing inside a fortnight, but I was at it by 
 seven A. M. till lunch, and from two till 
 four or five every day ; between whiles, 
 verse and blowing on the flageolet; never
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 33 
 
 outside. If you could see this place! but l8 9 
 
 Nov 
 
 I don't want any one to see it till my 
 clearing is done, and my house built. It 
 will be a home for angels. 
 
 So far I wrote after my bit of dinner, 
 some cold meat and bananas, on arrival. 
 Then out to see where Henry and seme of 
 the men were clearing the garden; for it 
 was plain there was to be no work to-day 
 indoors, and I must set in consequence to 
 farmering. I stuck a good while on the 
 way up, for the path there is largely my 
 own handiwork, and there were a lot of 
 sprouts and saplings and stcnes to te 
 removed. Then I reached our clearing 
 just where the streams join in one; it had 
 a fine autumn smell of burning, the smoke 
 blew in the woods, and the boys were 
 pretty merry and busy. Now I had a 
 private design: 
 
 The Vaita'e I had explored pretty far 
 up; not yet the other stream, the Vaituliga 
 (g = nasal n, as ng in sing); and up that, 
 with my wood knife, I set off alone. It is
 
 34 
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 here quite dry; it went through endless 
 woods; about as broad as a Devonshire 
 lane, here and there crossed by fallen 
 trees; huge trees overhead in the sun, 
 dripping lianas and tufted with orchids, 
 tree ferns, ferns depending with air roots 
 from the steep banks, great arums I had 
 
 not skill enough to say if any of them were 
 the edible kind, one of our staples here! 
 hundreds of bananas another staple 
 and alas! I had skill enough to know all 
 of these for the bad kind that bears no 
 fruit. My Henry moralised over this the
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 35 
 
 other day; how hard it was that the bad 1890 
 banana flourished wild, and the good must 
 be weeded and tended ; and I had not the 
 heart to tell him how fortunate they were 
 here, and how hungry were other lands by 
 comparison. The ascent of this lovely 
 lane of my dry stream filled me with 
 delight. I could not but be reminded of 
 old Mayne Reid, as I have been more than 
 once since I came to the tropics; and I 
 thought, if Reid had been still living, I 
 would have written to tell him that, for 
 me, it had come true; and I thought, 
 forbye, that, if the great powers go on as 
 they are going, and the Chief Justice 
 delays, it would come truer still; and the 
 war-conch will sound in the hills, and n:y 
 home will be enclosed in camps, before the 
 year is ended. And all at once mark 
 you, how Mayne Reid is on the spot a 
 strange thing happened. I saw a liana 
 stretch across the bed of the brook about 
 breast-high, swung up my knife to sever it, 
 and behold, it was a wire! On either
 
 36 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 hand it plunged into thick bush; to- 
 morrow I shall see where it goes and get a 
 guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I 
 know no more than there it is. A little 
 higher the brook began to trickle, then to 
 fill. At last, as I meant to do some work 
 upon the homeward trail, it was time to 
 turn. I did not return by the stream ; 
 knife in hand, as long as my endurance 
 lasted, I was to cut a path in the congested 
 bush. 
 
 At first it went ill with me ; I got badly 
 stung as high as the elbows by the stinging 
 plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana 
 a rotten trunk giving way under my 
 feet; it was deplorable bad business. And 
 an axe if I dared swing one would 
 have been more to the purpose than my 
 cutlass. Of a sudden things began to go 
 strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing 
 out again; my body began to wonder, 
 then my mind; I raised my eyes and 
 looked ahead; and, by George, I was no 
 longer pioneering, I had struck an old
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 37 
 
 track overgrown, and was restoring an old l8 9<3 
 
 Nov. 
 
 path. So I laboured till I was in such a 
 state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs 
 could scarce have found a name for it. 
 Thereon desisted; returned to the stream; 
 made my way down that stony track to the 
 garden, where the smoke was still hanging 
 and the sun was still in the high tree-tops, 
 and so home. Here, fondly supposing my 
 long day was over, I rubbed down; exqui- 
 site agony; water spreads the poison of 
 these weeds; I got it all over my hands, 
 on my chest, in my eyes, and presently, 
 while eating an orange, a la Raratonga, 
 burned my lip and eye with orange juice. 
 Now, all day, our three small pigs had 
 been adrift, to the mortal peril of our 
 corn, lettuce, onions, etc., and as I stood 
 smarting on the back verandah, behold the 
 three piglings issuing from the wood just 
 opposite. Instantly I got together as 
 many boys as I could three, and got the 
 pigs penned against the rampart of the sty, 
 till the others joined; whereupon we
 
 38 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 formed a cordon, closed, captured the 
 deserters, and dropped them, squeaking 
 amain, into their strengthened barracks 
 where, please God, they may now stay ! 
 
 Perhaps you may suppose the day now 
 over; you are not the head of a plantation, 
 my juvenile friend. Politics succeeded : 
 Henry got adrift in his English, Bene was 
 too cowardly to tell me what he was after : 
 result, I have lost seven good labourers, 
 and had to sit down and write to you to 
 keep my temper. Let me sketch my lads. 
 
 Henry Henry has gone down to town 
 or I could not be writing to you this 
 were the hour of his English lesson else, 
 when he learns what he calls " long exples- 
 sions " or "your chief's language" for the 
 matter of an hour and a half Henry is a 
 chiefling from Savaii; I once loathed, I 
 now like and pending fresh discoveries 
 
 have a kind of respect for Henry. He 
 does good work for us; goes among the 
 labourers, bossing and watching; helps 
 Fanny; is civil, kindly, thoughtful; O si
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 39 
 
 sic semper! But will he be "his sometime '90 
 
 ISov. 
 
 self throughout the year " ? Anyway, he 
 has deserved of us, and he must disappoint 
 me sharply ere I give him up. Bene or 
 Peni Ben, in plain English is supposed 
 to be my ganger; the Lord love him ! God 
 made a truckling coward, there is his full 
 history. He cannot tell me what he wants; 
 he dares not tell me what is wrong; he 
 dares not transmit my orders or translate 
 my censures. And with all this, honest, 
 sober, industrious, miserably smiling over 
 the miserable issue of his own unmanliness. 
 
 Paul a German cook and steward 
 
 a glutton of work a splendid fellow; 
 drawbacks, three: (i) no cook; (2) an in- 
 veterate bungler; a man with twenty 
 thumbs, continually falling in the dishes, 
 throwing out the dinner, preserving the 
 garbage; (3) a dr , well, don't let us say 
 that but we dare n't let him go to town, 
 and he poor, good soul is afraid to be 
 let go. Lafaele (Raphael), a strong, dull, 
 deprecatory man ; splendid with an axe, if
 
 40 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 watched; the better for a rowing, when he 
 calls me "Papa" in the most wheedling 
 tones; desperately afraid of ghosts, so that 
 he dare not walk alone up in the banana 
 patch see map. The rest are changing 
 labourers; and to-night, owing to the mis- 
 erable cowardice of Peni, who did not 
 venture to tell me what the men wanted 
 and which was no more than fair all are 
 gone and my weeding in the article of 
 being finished! Pity the sorrows of a 
 planter. 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, and be jowned to you, 
 The Planter, R. L. S. 
 
 Ttiesday, yd. 
 
 I begin to see the whole scheme of 
 letter-writing; you sit down every day and 
 pour out an equable stream of twaddle. 
 
 This morning all my fears were fled, and 
 all the trouble had fallen to the lot of Peni 
 himself, who deserved it; my field was full 
 of weeders; and I am again able to justify 
 the ways of God. All morning I worked
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 41 
 
 at the South Seas, and finished the chapter 1890 
 
 Nov. 
 I had stuck upon on Saturday. Fanny, 
 
 awfully hove-to with rheumatics and inju- 
 ries received upon the field of sport and 
 glory, chasing pi-gs, was unable to go up 
 and down stairs, so she sat upon the back 
 verandah, and my work was chequered by 
 her cries. " Paul, you take a spade to do 
 that dig a hole first. If you do that, 
 you'll cut your foot off! Here, you boy, 
 what you do there? You no get work? 
 You go find Simele; he give you work. 
 Peni, you tell this boy he go find Simele; 
 suppose Simele no give him work, you tell 
 him go 'way. I no want him here. That 
 boy no good." Peni (from the distance in 
 reassuring tones), " All right, sir ! " Fanny 
 (after a long pause), "Peni, you tell that 
 boy go find Simele! I no want him stand 
 here all day. I no pay that boy. I see 
 him all day. He no do nothing." 
 Luncheon, beef, soda-scones, fried bananas, 
 pineapple in claret, coffee. Try to write 
 a poem ; no go. Play the flageolet. Then
 
 42 VAILTMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 sneakingly off to farmering and pioneering. 
 
 Nov 
 
 Four gangs at work on our place; a lively 
 scene; axes crashing and smoke blowing; 
 all the knives are out. But I rob the 
 garden party of one without a stock, and 
 you should see my hand cut to ribbons. 
 Now I want to do my path up the Vaituliga 
 single-handed, and I want it to burst on 
 the public complete. Hence, with devilish 
 ingenuity, I begin it at different places; 
 so that if you stumble on one section, you 
 may not even then suspect the fulness of 
 my labours. Accordingly, I started in a 
 new place, below the wire, and hoping to 
 work up to it. It was perhaps lucky I had 
 so bad a cutlass, and my smarting hand bid 
 me stay before I had got up to the wire, but 
 just in season, so that I was only the better 
 of my activity, not dead beat as yesterday. 
 
 A strange business it was, and infinitely 
 solitary; away above, the sun was in the 
 high tree-tops; the lianas noosed and 
 sought to hang me; the saplings struggled, 
 and came up with that sob of death that
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 43 
 
 one gets to know so well ; great, soft, sappy l8 9o 
 
 Nov. 
 
 trees fell at a lick of the cutlass, little tough 
 switches laughed at and dared my best 
 endeavour. Soon, toiling down in that pit 
 of verdure, I heard blows on the far side, 
 and then laughter. I confess a chill settled 
 on my heart. Being so dead alone, in a 
 place where by rights none should be 
 beyond me, I was aware, upon interroga- 
 tion, if those blows had drawn nearer, I 
 should (of course quite unaffectedly) have 
 executed a strategic movement to the rear; 
 and only the other day I was lamenting my 
 insensibility to superstition ! Am I begin- 
 ning to be sucked in? Shall I become 
 a midnight twitterer like my neighbours? 
 At times I thought the blows were echoes; 
 at times I thought the laughter was from . 
 birds. For our birds are strangely human 
 in their calls. Vaea mountain about sun- 
 down sometimes rings with shrill cries, 
 like the hails of merry, scattered children. 
 As a matter of fact, I believe stealthy 
 wood-cutters from Tanucramanono were
 
 44 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 above me in the wood and answerable for 
 the blows; as for the laughter, a woman 
 and two children had come and asked 
 Fanny's leave to go up shrimp-fishing in 
 the burn ; beyond doubt, it was these I 
 heard. Just at the right time I returned; 
 to wash down, change, and begin this 
 snatch of letter before dinner was ready, 
 and to finish it afterwards, before Henry 
 has yet put in an appearance for his lesson 
 in "long explessions. " 
 
 Dinner: stewed beef and potatoes, baked 
 bananas, new loaf-bread hot from the oven, 
 pineapple in claret. These are great 
 days; we have been low in the past; but 
 now are we as belly-gods, enjoying all 
 things. 
 
 Wednesday. (Hist. Vailima resumed.') 
 
 A gorgeous evening of after-glow in the 
 great tree-tops and behind the mountain, 
 and full moon over the lowlands and the 
 sea, inaugurated a night of horrid cold. 
 To you effete denizens of the so-called
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 45 
 
 temperate zone, it had seemed nothing; * 8 9o 
 neither of us could sleep; we were up 
 seeking extra coverings, I know not at 
 what hour it was as bright as day. The 
 moon right over Vaea near due west, the 
 birds strangely silent, and the wood of 
 the house tingling with cold; I believe it 
 must have been 60 ! Consequence ; Fanny 
 has a headache and is wretched, and I 
 could do no work. (I am trying all round 
 for a place to hold my pen ; you will hear 
 why later on; this to explain penmanship.) 
 I wrote two pages, very bad, no movement, 
 no life or interest ; then I wrote a business 
 letter; then took to tootling on the flageolet, 
 till glory should call me farmering. 
 
 I took up at the fit time Lafaele and 
 Mauga Manga, accent on the first, is a 
 mountain, I don't know what Mauga means 
 mind what I told you of the value of 
 g to the garden, and set them digging, 
 then turned my attention to the path. I 
 could not go into my bush path for two 
 reasons: ist, sore hands; 2nd, had on my
 
 46 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 189 trousers and good shoes. Lucky it was. 
 Right in the wild lime hedge which cuts 
 athwart us just homeward of the garden, I 
 found a great bed of kuikui sensitive 
 plant our deadliest enemy. A fool 
 brought it to this island in a pot, and used 
 to lecture and sentimentalise over the 
 tender thing. The tender thing has now 
 taken charge of this island, and men fight 
 it, with torn hands, for bread and life. A 
 singular, insidious thing, shrinking and 
 biting like a weasel; clutching by its roots 
 as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought 
 him, I bettered some verses in my poem, 
 the Woodman; 1 the only thought I gave 
 to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, 
 there was but a small patch of it, and 
 when I was done I attacked the wild lime, 
 and had a hand-to-hand skirmish with its 
 spines and elastic suckers. All this time, 
 close by, in the cleared space of the garden, 
 Lafaele and Mauga were digging. Sud- 
 denly quoth Lafaele, "Somebody he sing 
 
 1 Published in the New Review, January, 1895.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 47 
 
 out." "Somebody he sing out? All l8 9 
 
 Nov. 
 
 right. I go." And I went and found 
 they had been whistling and "singing out " 
 for long, but the fold of the hill and the 
 uncleared bush shuts in the garden so that 
 no one heard, and I was late for dinner, 
 and Fanny's headache was cross; and when 
 the meal was over, we had to cut up a 
 pineapple which was going bad, to make 
 jelly of; and the next time you have a 
 handful of broken blood-blisters, apply 
 pineapple juice, and you will give me news 
 of it, and I request a specimen of your 
 hand of write five minutes after the 
 historic moment when I tackled this 
 history. My day so far. 
 
 Fanny was to have rested. Blessed Paul 
 began making a duck-house; she let him 
 be; the duck-house fell down, and she had 
 to set her hand to it. He was then to 
 make a drinking-place for the pigs ; she let 
 him be again he made a stair by which 
 the pigs will probably escape this evening, 
 and she was near weeping. Impossible to
 
 48 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 blame the indefatigable fellow; energy is 
 
 Nov. 
 
 too rare and good-will too noble a thing to 
 discourage; but it 's trying when she wants 
 a rest. Then she had to cook the dinner; 
 then, of course like a fool and a woman 
 must wait dinner for me, and make a 
 flurry of herself. Her day so far. Cetera 
 adJninc desunt. 
 
 Friday / think. 
 
 I have been too tired to add to this 
 chronicle, which will at any rate give you 
 some guess of our employment. All goes 
 well; the kuikui (think of this mispro- 
 nunciation having actually infected me to 
 the extent of misspelling! tuitui is the 
 word by rights) the tuitui is all out of 
 the paddock a fenced park between the 
 house and boundary; Peni's men start to- 
 day on the road; the garden is part burned, 
 part dug; and Henry, at the head of a 
 troop of underpaid assistants, is hard at 
 work clearing. The part clearing you will 
 see from the mao; from the house run
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 49 
 
 down to the stream side, up the stream 1890 
 nearly as high as the garden; then back to 
 the star which I have just added to the 
 map. 
 
 My long, silent contests in the forest 
 have had a strange effect on me. The 
 unconcealed vitality of these vegetables, 
 their exuberant number and strength, the 
 attempts I can use no other word of 
 lianas to enwrap and capture the intruder, 
 the awful silence, the knowledge that all 
 my efforts are only like the performance of 
 an actor, the thing of a moment, and the 
 wood will silently and swiftly heal them 
 up with fresh effervescence; the cunning 
 sense of the tuitui, suffering itself to be 
 touched with wind-swayed grasses and not 
 minding but let the grass be moved by a 
 man, and it shuts up; the whole silent 
 battle, murder, and slow death of the con- 
 tending forest; weigh upon the imagina- 
 tion. My poem the Woodman stands ; but 
 I have taken refuge in a new story, which 
 just shot through me like a bullet in one
 
 50 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 of my moments of awe, alone in that tragic 
 
 Nov. 
 
 jungle : 
 
 The High Woods of Ulufanua. 1 
 
 1. A South Sea Bridal. 
 
 2. Under the Ban. 
 
 3. Savao and Faavao. 
 
 4. Cries in the High Wood. 
 
 5. Rumour full of Tongues. 
 
 6. The Hour of Peril. 
 
 7. The Day of Vengeance. 
 
 It is very strange, very extravagant, I 
 dare say; but it 's varied, and picturesque, 
 and has a pretty love affair, and ends well. 
 Ulufanua is a lovely Samoan word, ulu = 
 grove ; fanua = land ; grove-land " the 
 tops of the high trees." Savao, " sacred to 
 the wood," and Faavao, "wood- ways," are 
 the names of two of the characters, Ulufanua 
 the name of the supposed island. 
 
 I am very tired, and rest off to-day from 
 all but letters. Fanny is quite done up; 
 
 1 Afterwards changed into The Beach of Falesd (see 
 below, Letters vm. x. xi.). .
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 51 
 
 she could not sleep last night, something J T 8 9o 
 it seemed like asthma I trust not. I 
 suppose Lloyd will be about, so you can 
 give him the benefit of this long scrawl. 1 
 Never say that I can't write a letter, say 
 that I don't. Yours ever, my dearest 
 fellow, R. L. S. 
 
 Later on Friday. 
 
 The guid wife had bread to bake, and 
 she baked it in a pan, O ! But between 
 whiles she was down with me weeding 
 sensitive in the paddock. The men have 
 but now passed over it ; I was round in 
 that very place to see the weeding was 
 done thoroughly, and already the reptile 
 springs behind our heels. Tuitui is a 
 truly strange beast, and gives food for 
 thought. I am nearly sure I cannot yet 
 be quite, I mean to experiment, when I am 
 less on the hot chase of the beast that, 
 even at the instant he shrivels up his 
 
 1 Mr. Lloyd Osbourne was at this time absent from his 
 family on a visit to England.
 
 $2 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 leaves, he strikes his prickles downward 
 so as to catch the uprooting finger; instinc- 
 tive, say the gabies; but so is man's 
 impulse to strike out. One thing that 
 takes and holds me is to see the strange 
 variation in the propagation of alarm among 
 these rooted beasts ; at times it spreads to 
 a radius (I speak by the guess of the eye) 
 of five or six inches; at times only one 
 individual plant appears frightened at a 
 time. We tried how long it took one to 
 recover; 't is a sanguine creature; it is all 
 abroad again before (I guess again) two 
 minutes. It is odd how difficult in this 
 world it is to be armed. The double 
 armour of this plant betrays it. In a thick 
 tuft, where the leaves disappear, I thrust 
 in my hand, and the bite of the thorns 
 betrays the topmost stem. In the open 
 again, and when I hesitate if it be clover, 
 a touch on the leaves, and its fine sense 
 and retractile action betrays its identity at 
 once. Yet it has one gift incomparable. 
 Rome had virtue and knowledge; Rome
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 53 
 
 perished. The sensitive plant has indi- l8 9 
 
 Nov. 
 gestible seeds so they say and it will 
 
 flourish for ever. I give my advice thus to 
 a young plant have a strong root, a weak 
 stem, and an indigestible seed; so you will 
 outlast the eternal city, and your progeny 
 will clothe mountains, and the irascible 
 planter will blaspheme in vain. The weak 
 point of tuitui is that its stem is strong. 
 
 Supplementary Page. 
 
 Here beginneth the third lesson, which 
 is not from the planter but from a less 
 estimable character, the writer of books. 
 
 I want you to understand about this 
 South Sea book. 1 The job is immense; 
 I stagger under material. I have seen the 
 first big tacJie. It was necessary to see the 
 
 1 77/i? South Seas : a Record of Three Cruises . such was 
 to be the title of the projected book, which was to narrate 
 the experiences of the author and his family on their recent 
 Pacific voyages, first in the yacht Casco, and afterwards in 
 the traders Equator and. Janet A'icoll. His friends looked 
 forward to it with the hope that it would surpass his early 
 books of travels by all the difference between the beautv 
 and strangeness of the tropic islands and the homeliness 
 of the banks of Sambre and Oise or the desolation of the 
 Cevennes. But the material, perhaps from its too great
 
 54 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 o smaller ones; the letters were at my hand 
 
 Nov. 
 
 for the purpose, but I was not going to 
 lose this experience; and instead of writing 
 mere letters, have poured out a lot of stuff 
 for the book. How this works and fits, 
 time is to show. But I believe, in time, 
 I shall get the whole thing in form. Now, 
 up to date, that is all my design, and I beg 
 to warn you till we have the whole (or 
 much) of the stuff together, you can hardly 
 judge and I can hardly judge. Such a 
 mass of stuff is to be handled, if possible, 
 without repetition so much foreign 
 matter to be introduced if possible with 
 perspicuity and as much as can be, a 
 spirit of narrative to be preserved. You 
 will find that come stronger as I proceed, 
 and get the explanations worked through. 
 
 richness and novelty, perhaps from the author's desire to 
 impart solid information instead of mere impressions, 
 proved intractable in his hands ; and the work never got 
 beyond a number of chapters in the form of letters, written 
 with much less than his usual felicity, which were published 
 in full in the New York Sun and, in part only, in Black 
 and White. See below for further reference to the labour 
 which this undertaking cost him and to his disappointment 
 with the result.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 55 
 
 Problems of style are (as yet) dirt under my l8 9 
 feet; my problem is architectural, creative 
 to get this stuff jointed and moving. If 
 I can do that, I will trouble you for style; 
 anybody might write it, and it would be 
 splendid ; well-engineered, the masses right, 
 the blooming thing travelling twig? 
 
 This I wanted you to understand, for 
 lots of the stuff sent home is, I imagine, 
 rot and slovenly rot and some of it 
 pompous rot; and I want you to understand 
 it 's a lay -in. 
 
 Soon, if the tide of poeshie continues, 
 I '11 send you a whole lot to damn. You 
 never said thank-you for the handsome 
 tribute addressed to you from Apemama; 1 
 such is the gratitude of the world to the 
 God-sent poick. Well, well: "Vex not 
 thou the poick's mind, With thy coriaceous 
 ingratitude, The P. will be to your faults 
 more than a little blind, And yours is a 
 far from handsome attitude." Having thus 
 dropped into poetry in a spirit of friencl- 
 
 1 The lines beginning " I heard the pulse of the besieg- 
 ing sea," printed Longman's Magazine, January, 1895.
 
 56 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 ship, I have the honour to subscribe my- 
 Nov. .1 ,. 
 self, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient humble servant, 
 
 SILAS WEGG. 
 
 I suppose by this you will have seen the 
 lad and his feet will have been in the 
 Monument and his eyes beheld the face 
 of George. 1 Well! 
 
 There is much eloquence in a well ! 
 I am, Sir 
 Yours 
 
 The Epigrammatist 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 \ 
 \/ 
 
 FINIS EXPLICIT 
 
 1 " The Monument " was his name for my house at the 
 British Museum, and George is my old faithful servant, 
 George Went; born 1819, died 1893.
 
 II 
 
 Vailima, Tuesday, November 2^/1, 1890. 
 
 MY DEAR COLVJN, I wanted to go out 1890 
 bright and early to go on with my survey. 
 You never heard of that. The world has 
 turned, and much water run under bridges, 
 since I stopped my diary. I have written 
 six more chapters of the book, all good I 
 potently believe, and given up, as a decep- 
 tion of the devil's, the High Woods. I 
 have been once down to Apia, to a huge 
 native feast at Seumanutafa's, the chief of 
 Apia. There was a vast mass of food, 
 crowds of people, the police charging 
 among them with whips, the whole in high 
 good humour on both sides; infinite noise; 
 and a historic event Mr. Clarke, the 
 missionary, and his wife, assisted at a 
 native dance. On my return from this 
 function, I found work had stopped; no 
 more South Seas in my belly. Well,
 
 58 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 Henry had cleared a great deal of our bush 
 v ' on a contract, and it ought to be measured. 
 I set myself to the task with a tape-line; 
 it seemed a dreary business; then I bor- 
 rowed a prismatic compass, and tackled the 
 task afresh. I have no books; I had not 
 touched an instrument nor given a thought 
 to the business since the year of grace 
 1871; you can imagine with what interest 
 I sat down yesterday afternoon to reduce 
 my observations; five triangles I had taken; 
 all five came right, to my ineffable joy. 
 Our dinner the lowest we have ever been 
 consisted of one avocado pear between 
 Fanny and me, a ship's biscuit for the 
 guidman, white bread for the Missis, and 
 red wine for the twa. No salt horse, even, 
 in all Vailima ! After dinner Henry came, 
 and I began to teach him decimals; you 
 would n't think I knew them myself after 
 so long desuetude ! 
 
 I could not but wonder how Henry 
 stands his evenings here; the Polynesian 
 loves gaiety I feed him with decimals,
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 59 
 
 the mariner's compass, derivations, gram- 
 mar, and the like; delecting myself, after 
 the manner of my race, moult tristement. 
 I suck my paws; I live for my dexterities 
 and by my accomplishments; even my 
 clumsinesses are my joy my woodcuts, 
 my stumbling on the pipe, this surveying 
 even and even weeding sensitive; any- 
 thing to do with the mind, with the eye, 
 with the hand with a part of me ; diver- 
 sion flows in these ways for the dreary 
 man. But gaiety is what these children 
 want; to sit in a crowd, tell stories and 
 pass jests, to hear one another laugh and 
 scamper with the girls. It 's good fun, 
 too, I believe, but not for R. L. S., cetat. 
 40. Which I am now past forty, Custodian, 
 and not one penny the worse that I can 
 see; as amusable as ever; to be on board 
 ship is reward enough for me; give me the 
 wages of going on in a schooner ! Only, 
 if ever I were gay, which I misremember, 
 I am gay no more. And here is poor 
 Henry passing his evenings on my intel-
 
 60 . VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 lectual husks, which the professors masti- 
 cated; keeping the accounts of the estate 
 
 all wrong I have no doubt I keep no 
 check, beyond a very rough one; marching 
 in with a cloudy brow, and the day-book 
 under his arm; tackling decimals, coming 
 with cases of conscience how would an 
 English chief behave in such a case? etc. ; 
 and, I am bound to say, on any glimmer of 
 a jest, lapsing into native hilarity as a 
 tree straightens itself after the wind is by. 
 The other night I remembered my old 
 friend I believe yours also Scholas- 
 tikos, and administered the crow and the 
 anchor they were quite fresh to Samoan 
 ears (this implies a very early severance) 
 
 and I thought the anchor would have 
 made away with my Simele altogether. 
 
 Fanny's time, in this interval, has been 
 largely occupied in contending publicly 
 with wild swine. We have a black sow; 
 we call her Jack Sheppard ; impossible to 
 confine her impossible also for her to be 
 confined ! To my sure knowledge she has
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 6 1 
 
 been in an interesting condition for longer 1890 
 than any other sow in story; else she had 
 long died the death ; as soon as she is 
 brought to bed, she shall count her days. 
 I suppose that sow has cost us in days' 
 labour from thirty to fifty dollars; as many 
 as eight boys (at a dollar a day) have been 
 twelve hours in chase of her. Now it is 
 supposed that Fanny has outwitted her; 
 she grins behind broad planks in what was 
 once the cook-house. She is a wild pig; 
 far handsomer than any tame; and when 
 she found the cook-house was too much for 
 her methods of evasion, she lay down on 
 the floor and refused food and drink for a 
 whole Sunday. On Monday morning, she 
 relapsed, and now eats and drinks like a 
 little man. I am reminded of an incident. 
 Two Sundays ago, the sad word was 
 brought that the sow was out again; this 
 time she had carried another in her flight. 
 Moors and I and Fanny were strolling up 
 to the garden, and there by the waterside 
 we saw the black sow, looking guilty. If
 
 62 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 seemed to me beyond words; but Fanny's 
 cri du cceur was delicious: "G-r-r!" she 
 cried ; " nobody loves you ! " 
 
 I would I could tell you the moving 
 story of our cart and cart-horses ; the latter 
 are dapple-grey, about sixteen hands, and 
 of enormous substance; the former was a 
 kind of red and green shandry-dan with 
 a driving bench; plainly unfit to carry 
 lumber or to face our road. (Remember 
 that the last third of my road, about a 
 mile, is all made out of a bridle-track by 
 my boys and my dollars.) It was sup- 
 posed a white man had been found an 
 ex-German artilleryman to drive this 
 last ; he proved incapable and drunken ; 
 the gallant Henry, who had never driven 
 before, and knew nothing about horses 
 except the rats and weeds that flourish on 
 the islands volunteered ; Moors accepted, 
 proposing to follow and supervise: de- 
 spatched his work and started after. No 
 cart ! he hurried on up the road no cart. 
 Transfer the scene to Vailima, where on a
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS 63 
 
 sudden to Fanny and me, the cart appears, l8 9 
 apparently at a hard gallop, some two 
 hours before it was expected; Henry radi- 
 antly ruling chaos from the bench. It 
 stopped : it was long before we had time to 
 remark that the axle was twisted like the 
 letter L. Our first care was the horses. 
 There they stood, black with sweat, the 
 sweat raining from them literally raining 
 their heads down, their feet apart and 
 blood running thick from the nostrils of 
 the mare. We got out Fanny's under- 
 clothes could n't find anything else but 
 our blankets to rub them clown, and in 
 about half an hour we had the blessed 
 satisfaction to see one after the other take 
 a bite or two of grass. But it was a 
 toucher; a little more and these steeds 
 would have been foundered. 
 
 Monday, ^ist? November. 
 
 Near a week elapsed, and no journal. 
 On Monday afternoon, Moors rode up and 
 I rode down with him, dined, and went
 
 64 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 over in the evening to the American Con 
 
 Nov. 
 
 sulate; present, Consul- General Sewall, 
 Lieut. Parker and Mrs. Parker, Lafarge 
 the American decorator, Adams an Ameri- 
 can historian; we talked late, and it was 
 arranged I was to write up for Fanny, and 
 we should both dine on the morrow. 
 
 On the Friday, I was all forenoon in the 
 Mission House, lunched at the German 
 Consulate, went on board the Sperber 
 (German war ship) in the afternoon, called 
 on my lawyer on my way out to American 
 Consulate, and talked till dinner time with 
 Adams, whom I am supplying with intro- 
 ductions and information for Tahiti and 
 the Marquesas. Fanny arrived a wreck, 
 and had to lie down. The moon rose, one 
 day past full, and we dined in the veranda, 
 a good dinner on the whole; talk with 
 Lafarge about art and the lovely dreams of 
 art students. 1 Remark by Adams, which 
 
 1 Mr. John Lafarge of New York, one of the most 
 original and refined of living artists, whose record of his 
 holiday in the South Seas, in the shape of a series of
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 65 
 
 took me briskly home to the Monument 1890 
 
 Nov. 
 "I only liked one young woman and 
 
 that was Mrs. Procter." 1 Henry James 
 would like that. Back by moonlight in 
 the consulate boat Fanny being too tired 
 to walk to Moors's. Saturday, I left 
 Fanny to rest, and was off early to the 
 Mission, where the politics are thrilling 
 just now. The native pastors (to every 
 one's surprise) have moved of themselves 
 in the matter of the native dances, desir- 
 ing the restrictions to be removed, or 
 rather to be made dependent on the char- 
 acter of the dance. Clarke, who had feared 
 censure and all kinds of trouble, is, of 
 
 water-color sketches of the scenery and people (with a 
 catalogue full of interesting notes and observations) has 
 been one of the features of the Champ de Mars Salon this 
 year, and will, it maybe hoped, be exhibited in London by 
 the time these pages are published. 
 
 1 Mrs. B. W. Procter, the step-daughter of Basil Mon- 
 tagu and widow of Barry Cornwall. The death of this 
 spirited veteran in 1888 snapped away one of the last links 
 with the days and memories of Keats and Coleridge. A 
 shrewd and not too indulgent judge of character she took 
 R. L. S. into warm favour at first sight, and never spoke 
 of or inquired after him but with unwonted tenderness. 
 VOL. i. 5
 
 66 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 course, rejoicing greatly. A characteristic 
 feature: the argument of the pastors was 
 handed in in the form of a fictitious narra- 
 tive of the voyage of one Mr. Pye, an Eng- 
 lish traveller, and his conversation with a 
 chief; there are touches of satire in this 
 educational romance. Mr. Pye, for in- 
 stance, admits that he knows nothing about 
 the Bible. At the Mission I was sought 
 out by Henry in a devil of an agitation ; 
 he has been made the victim of a forgery 
 
 a crime hitherto unknown in Samoa. I 
 had to go to Folau, the chief judge here, 
 in the matter. Folau had never heard of 
 the offence, and begged to know what was 
 the punishment ; there may be lively times 
 in forgery ahead. It seems the sort of 
 crime to tickle a Polynesian. After lunch 
 
 you can see what a busy three days I am 
 describing we set off to ride home. My 
 Jack was full of the devil of corn and too 
 much grass, and no work. I had to ride 
 ahead and leave Fanny behind. He is a 
 most gallant little rascal is my Jack, and
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 67 
 
 takes the whole way as hard as the rider 
 pleases. Single incident: half-way up, I 
 find my boys upon the road and stop and 
 talk with Henry in his character of ganger, 
 as long as Jack will suffer me. Fanny 
 drones in after; we make a show of eating 
 or I do she goes to bed about half-past 
 six! I write some verses, read Irving's 
 Washington, and follow about half-past 
 eight. O, one thing more I did, in a pro- 
 phetic spirit. I had made sure Fanny was 
 not fit to be left alone, and wrote before 
 turning in a letter to Chalmers, telling him 
 I could not meet him in Auckland at this 
 time. By eleven at night, Fanny got me 
 wakened she had tried twice in vain 
 and I found her very bad. Thence till 
 three, we laboured with mustard poultices, 
 laudanum, soda and ginger Heavens ! 
 wasn't it cold; the land breeze was as cold 
 as a river ; the moon was glorious in the pad- 
 dock, and the great boughs and the black 
 shadows of our trees were inconceivable. 
 But it was a poor time.
 
 68 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 Sunday morning found Fanny, of course, 
 a complete wreck, and myself not very 
 brilliant. Paul had to go to Vailele re 
 cocoa-nuts; it was doubtful if he could be 
 back by dinner; never mind, said I, I '11 
 take dinner when you return. Off set 
 Paul. I did an hour's work, and then 
 tackled the house work. I did it beautiful : 
 the house was a picture, it resplended of 
 propriety. Presently Mr. Moors's Andrew 
 rode up; I heard the doctor was at the 
 Forest House and sent a note to him ; and 
 when he came, I heard my wife telling him 
 she had been in bed all day, and that was 
 why the house was so dirty ! Was it grate- 
 ful? Was it politic? Was it TRUE? 
 Enough! In the interval, up marched 
 little L. S., one of my neighbours, all in 
 his Sunday white linens; made a fine 
 salute, and demanded the key of the kitchen 
 in German and English. And he cooked 
 dinner for us, like a little man, and had it 
 on the table and the coffee ready by the 
 hour. Paul had arranged me this surprise.
 
 VAILIM4 LETTERS. 69 
 
 Some time later, Paul returned himself with '890 
 a fresh surprise on hand; he was almost 
 sober; nothing but a hazy eye distinguished 
 him from Paul of the week days : vivat ! 
 
 On the evening I cannot dwell. All the 
 horses got out of the paddock, went across, 
 and smashed my neighbour's garden into a 
 big hole. How little the amateur con- 
 ceives a farmer's troubles. I went out at 
 once with a lantern, staked up a gap in the 
 hedge, was kicked at by a chestnut mare, 
 who straightway took to the bush ; and 
 came back. A little after, they had found 
 another gap, and the crowd were all abroad 
 again. What has happened to our own 
 garden nobody yet knows. 
 
 Fanny had a fair night, and we are 
 both tolerable this morning, only the yoke 
 of correspondence lies on me heavy. I 
 beg you will let this go on to my mother. 
 I got such a good start in your letter, that 
 I kept on at it, and I have neither time 
 nor energy for more. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 R. L. S.
 
 70 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 Something new. 
 
 1890 I was called from my letters by the voice 
 
 Nov ' of Mr. , who had just come up with a 
 
 load of wood, roaring, "Henry! Henry! 
 Bring six boys ! " I saw there was some- 
 thing wrong, and ran out. The cart, half 
 unloaded, had upset with the mare in the 
 shafts; she was all cramped together and 
 all tangled up in harness and cargo, the off 
 
 shaft pushing her over, Mr. holding 
 
 her up by main strength, and right along- 
 side of her where she must fall if she 
 went down a deadly stick of a tree like 
 a lance. I could not but admire the 
 wisdom and faith of this great brute; I 
 never saw the riding-horse that would not 
 have lost its life in such a situation ; but 
 the cart-elephant patiently waited and was 
 saved. It was a stirring three minutes, I 
 can tell you. 
 
 I forgot in talking of Saturday to tell 
 of one incident which will particularly 
 interest my mother. I met Dr. D. from 
 Savaii, and had an age-long talk about
 
 VAILLMA LETTERS. 71 
 
 Edinburgh folk; it \vas very pleasant. He 
 has been studying in Edinburgh, along 
 with his son; a pretty relation. He told 
 me he knew nobody but college people: "I 
 was altogether a student," he said with 
 glee. He seems full of cheerfulness and 
 thick-set energy. I feel as if I could put 
 him in a novel with effect; and ten to one, 
 if I know more of him, the image will be 
 only blurred. 
 
 Tuesday, Dec. 2nd. 
 
 I should have told you yesterday that all 
 my boys were got up for their work in 
 moustaches and side-whiskers of some sort 
 of blacking I suppose wood-ash. It was 
 a sight of joy to see them return at night, 
 axe on shoulder, feigning to march like 
 soldiers, a choragus with a loud voice 
 singing out, "March step! March 
 step!" in imperfect recollection of some 
 drill. 
 
 Fanny seems much revived. 
 
 R. L. S.
 
 Ill 
 
 Monday, tiuenty-somethingth of 
 December, 1890. 
 
 1890 MY DEAR COLVIN, I do not say my 
 Jack is anything extraordinary; he is only 
 an island horse; and the profane might 
 call him a Punch; and his face is like a 
 donkey's; and natives have ridden him, 
 and he has no mouth in consequence, and 
 occasionally shies. But his merits are 
 equally surprising; and I don't think I 
 should ever have known Jack's merits if I 
 had not been riding up of late on moonless 
 nights. Jack is a bit of a dandy; he loves 
 to misbehave in a gallant manner, above 
 all on Apia Street, and when I stop to 
 spsak to people, they say (Dr. Stuebel the 
 German consul said about three days ago), 
 " Oh, what a wild horse ! it cannot be safe to 
 ride him. " Such a remark is Jack's reward, 
 and represents his ideal of fame. Now
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 73 
 
 when I start out of Apia on a dark night, l8 9 
 you should see my changed horse; at a 
 fast steady walk, with his head down, and 
 sometimes his nose to the ground when 
 he wants to do that he asks for his head 
 with a little eloquent polite movement 
 indescribable he climbs the long ascent 
 and threads the darkest of the wood. The 
 first night I came it was starry; and it was 
 singular to see the starlight drip down into 
 the crypt of the wood, and shine in the 
 open end of the road, as bright as moon- 
 light at home; but the crypt itself was 
 proof, blackness lived in it. The next 
 night it was raining. We left the lights 
 of Apia and passed into limbo. Jack 
 finds a way for himself, but he does not 
 calculate for my height above the saddle; 
 and I am directed forward, all braced up 
 for a crouch and holding my switch upright 
 in front of me. It is curiously interesting. 
 In the forest, the dead wood is phospho- 
 rescent; soni2 nights the whole ground is 
 strewn with it, so that it seems like a
 
 74 VAIL1MA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 grating over a pale hell; doubtless this is 
 one of the things that feed the night fears 
 of the natives ; and I am free to confess 
 that in a night of trackless darkness where 
 all else is void, these pallid ignes suppositi 
 have a fantastic appearance, rather bogey 
 even. One night, when it was very dark, 
 a man had put out a little lantern by the 
 wayside to show the entrance to his ground. 
 I saw the light, as I thought, far ahead, 
 and supposed it was a pedestrian coming to 
 meet me; I was quite taken by surprise 
 when it struck in my face and passed 
 behind me. Jack saw it, and he was ap- 
 palled; do you think he thought of shy- 
 ing? No, sir, not in the dark; in the 
 dark Jack knows he is on duty; and he 
 went past that lantern steady and swift ; 
 only, as he went, he groaned and shud- 
 dered. For about 2500 of Jack's steps we 
 only pass one house that where the 
 lantern was; and about 1500 of these are 
 in the darkness of the pit. But new the 
 moon is on tap again, and the roads lighted.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 75 
 
 I have been exploring up the Vaituliga; 
 see your map. It comes down a wonderful 
 fine glen; at least 200 feet of cliffs on 
 
 either hand, winding like a corkscrew, 
 great forest trees filling it. At the top
 
 76 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 there ought to be a fine double fall; but 
 the stream evades it by a fault and passes 
 underground. Above the fall it runs (at 
 this season) full and very gaily in a shallow 
 valley, some hundred yards before the head 
 of the glen. Its course is seen full of 
 grasses, like a flooded meadow; that is the 
 sink ! beyond the grave of the grasses, the 
 bed lies dry. Near this upper part there 
 is a great show of ruinous pig-walls; a 
 village must have stood near by. 
 
 To walk from our house to Wreck Hill 
 (when the path is buried in fallen trees) 
 takes one about half an hour, I think; to 
 return not more than twenty minutes; I 
 dare say fifteen. Hence I should guess it 
 was three-quarters of a mile. I had meant 
 to join on my explorations passing eastward 
 by the sink; but, Lord ! how it rains. 
 
 (Later.} 
 
 I went out this morning with a pocket 
 compass and walked in a varying direction, 
 perhaps on an average S. by W., 1754 
 paces. Then I struck into the bush, N.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 77 
 
 \V. by N., hoping to strike the Vaituliga l8 9> 
 above the falls. Now I have it plotted out 
 I see I should have gone W. or even W 
 by S. ; but it is not easy to guess. For 
 600 weary paces I struggled through the 
 bush, and then came on the stream below 
 the gorge, where it was comparatively easy 
 to get down to it. In the place where I 
 struck it, it made cascades about a little 
 isle, and was running about N.E., 20 to 
 30 feet wide, as deep as to my knee, and 
 piercing cold. I tried to follow it down, 
 and keep the run of its direction and my 
 paces; but when I was wading to the 
 knees and the waist in mud, poison brush, 
 and rotted wood, bound hand and foot in 
 lianas, shovelled unceremoniously off the 
 one shore and driven to try my luck upon 
 the other I saw I should have hard 
 enough work to get my body down, if my 
 mind rested. It was a damnable walk; 
 certainly not half a mile as the crow flies, 
 but a real bucketer for hardship. Once I 
 had to pass the stream where it flowed
 
 78 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 between banks about three feet high. To 
 get the easier down, I swung myself by a 
 wild-cocoanut (so called, it bears bunches 
 of scarlet nutlets) which grew upon the 
 brink. As I so swung, I received a crack 
 on the head that knocked me all abroad. 
 Impossible to guess what tree had taken a 
 shy at me. So many towered above, one 
 over the other, and the missile, whatever 
 it was, dropped in the stream and was gone 
 before I had recovered my wits. (I scarce 
 know what I write, so hideous a Niagara of 
 rain roars, shouts, and demonizes on the 
 iron roof it is pitch dark too the lamp 
 lit at 5 !) It was a blessed thing when I 
 struck my own road ; and I got home, neat 
 for lunch time, one of the most wonder- 
 ful mud statues ever witnessed. In the 
 afternoon I tried again, going up the 
 other path by the garden, but was early 
 drowned out ; came home, plotted out what 
 I had done, and then wrote this truck to 
 you. 
 
 Fanny has been quite ill with ear-ache.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 79 
 
 She won't go, 1 hating the sea at this wild 189 
 season; I don't like to leave her; so it 
 drones on, steamer after steamer, and I 
 guess it '11 end by no one going at all. 
 She is in a dreadful misfortune at this 
 hour; a case of kerosene having burst in 
 the kitchen. A little while ago it was the 
 carpenter's horse that trod in a nest of 
 fourteen eggs, and made an omelette of 
 our hopes. The farmer's lot is not a 
 happy one. And it looks like some real 
 uncompromising bad weather too. I wish 
 Fanny's ear were well. Think of parties 
 in Monuments ! think of me in Skerryvore, 
 and now of this. It don't look like a part 
 of the same universe to me. Work is quite 
 laid aside; I have worked myself right 
 out. 
 
 Christmas Eve. 
 
 Yesterday, who could write? My wife 
 near crazy with ear-ache ; the rain descend- 
 ing in white crystal rods and playing hell's 
 tattoo, like a tutti of battering rams, on 
 
 1 On a projected expedition to Sydney.
 
 80 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 our sheet-iron roof; the wind passing high 
 overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or 
 striking us full, so that all the huge trees 
 in the paddock cried aloud, and wrung 
 their hands, and brandished their vast 
 arms. The horses stood in the shed like 
 things stupid. The sea and the flagship 
 lying on the jaws of the bay vanished in 
 sheer rain. All day it lasted; I locked up 
 my papers in the iron box, in case it was a 
 hurricane, and the house might go. We 
 went to bed with mighty uncertain feel- 
 ings; far more than on shipboard, where 
 you have only drowning ahead whereas 
 here you have a smash of beams, a shower 
 of sheet-iron, and a blind race in the dark 
 and through a whirlwind for the shelter of 
 an unfinished stable and my wife with 
 ear-ache! Well, well, this morning, we 
 had word from Apia; a hurricane was 
 looked for, the ships were to leave the bay 
 by 10 A. M. ; it is now 3.30, and the flag- 
 ship is still a fixture, and the wind round 
 in the blessed east, so I suppose the danger
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 8 I 
 
 is over. But heaven is still laden; the 1890 
 day dim, with frequent rattling bucketfuls 
 of rain; and just this moment (as I write) 
 a squall went overhead, scarce striking us, 
 with that singular, solemn noise of its 
 passage, which is to me dreadful. I have 
 always feared the sound of wind beyond 
 everything. In my hell it would always 
 blow a gale. 
 
 I have been all day correcting proofs, 
 and making out a new plan for our house. 
 The other was too dear to be built now, 
 and it was a hard task to make a smaller 
 house that would suffice for the present, 
 and not be a mere waste of money in the 
 future. I believe I have succeeded; I 
 have taken care of my study anyway. 
 
 Two favours I want to ask of you. 
 First, I wish you to get " Pioneering in 
 New Guinea," by Jo Chalmers. It 's a 
 missionary book, and has less pretensions 
 to be literature than Spurgeon's sermons. 
 Yet I think even through that, you will 
 see some of the traits of the hero that 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 wr ote it; a man that took me fairly by 
 storm for the most attractive, simple, 
 brave, and interesting man in the whole 
 Pacific. He is away now to go up the Fly 
 River; a desperate venture, it is thought; 
 he is quite a Livingstone card. 
 
 Second, try and keep yourself free next 
 winter; and if my means can be stretched 
 so far, I '11 come to Egypt and we '11 meet 
 at Shepheard's Hotel, and you '11 put me 
 in my place, which I stand in need of badly 
 by this time. Lord, what bully times ! I 
 suppose I '11 come per British Asia, or 
 whatever you call it, and avoid all cold, 
 and might be in Egypt about November as 
 ever was eleven months from now or 
 rather less. But do not let us count our 
 chickens. 
 
 Last night three piglings were stolen 
 from one of our pig-pens. The great 
 Lafaele appeared to my wife uneasy, so 
 she engaged him in conversation on the 
 subject, and played upon him the following 
 engaging trick. You advance your two
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 83 
 
 forefingers towards the sitter's eyes; he 
 closes them, whereupon you substitute (on 
 his eyelids) the fore and middle fingers of 
 the left hand; and with your right (which 
 he supposes engaged) you tap him on the 
 head and back. When you let him open 
 his eyes, he sees you withdrawing the two 
 forefingers. "What that?" asked Lafaele. 
 " My devil," says Fanny. " I wake urn, my 
 devil. All right now. He go catch the 
 man that catch my pig. " About an hour 
 afterwards, Lafaele came for further par- 
 ticulars. "Oh, all right," my wife says. 
 "By and by, that man he sleep, devil go 
 sleep same place. By and by, that man 
 plenty sick. I no care. What for he take 
 my pig?" Lafaele cares plenty; I don't 
 think he is the man, though he may be; 
 but he knows him, and most likely will eat 
 some of that pig to-night. He will not 
 eat with relish.
 
 84 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 Saturday, 2"]th. 
 
 1890 It cleared up suddenly after dinner, and 
 my wife and I saddled up and off to Apia, 
 whence we did not return till yesterday 
 morning. Christmas Day I wish you could 
 have seen our party at table. H. J. Moors 
 at one end with my wife, I at the other 
 with Mrs. M. between us two native 
 women, Carruthers the lawyer, Moors 's 
 two shop-boys Walters and A. M. the 
 quadroon and the guests of the evening, 
 Shirley Baker, the defamed and much- 
 accused man of Tonga, and his son, with 
 the artificial joint to his arm where the 
 assassins shot him in shooting at his 
 father. Baker's appearance is not unlike 
 John Bull on a cartoon; he is highly 
 interesting to speak to, as I had expected ; 
 I found he and I had many common in- 
 terests, and were engaged in puzzling over 
 many of the same difficulties. After dinner 
 it was quite pretty to see our Christmas 
 party, it was so easily pleased and prettily 
 behaved. In the morning I should say I
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 85 
 
 had been to lunch at the German consulate, 
 where I had as usual a very pleasant time. 
 I shall miss Dr. Stuebel 1 much when he 
 leaves, and when Adams and Lafarge go 
 also, it will be a great blow. I am getting 
 spoiled with all this good society. 
 
 On Friday morning, I had to be at my 
 house affairs before seven; and they kept 
 me in Apia till past ten, disputing, and 
 consulting about brick and stone and native 
 and hydraulic lime, and cement and sand, 
 and all sorts of otiose details about the 
 chimney just what I fled from in my 
 father's office twenty years ago; I should 
 have made a languid engineer. Rode up 
 with the carpenter. Ah, my wicked Jack ! 
 on Christmas Eve, as I was taking the 
 saddle bag off, he kicked at me, and fetched 
 me too, right on the shin. On Friday, 
 being annoyed at the carpenter's horse 
 having a longer trot, he uttered a shrill 
 
 1 See A Footnote to History for more in praise of Dr. 
 Stuebel, and of his exceptional deserts among white officials 
 ia Samoa.
 
 86 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 cry and tried to bite him! Alas, alas, 
 these are like old days; my dear Jack is a 
 Bogue, 1 but I cannot strangle Jack into 
 submission. 
 
 I have given up the big house for just 
 now ; we go ahead right away with a small 
 one, which should be ready in two months, 
 and I suppose will suffice for just now. 
 
 I know I haven't told you about our 
 aitn, have I? It is a lady, Aitu fafine : 
 she lives on the mountain-side; her pres- 
 ence is heralded by the sound of a gust of 
 wind; a sound very common in the high 
 woods ; when she catches you, I do not 
 know what happens; but in practice she 
 is avoided, so I suppose she does more 
 than pass the time of day. The great aitn 
 Saumai-afe was once a living woman ; and 
 became an aitu, no one understands how; 
 she lives in a stream at the well-head, her 
 hair is red, she appears as a lovely young 
 lady, her bust particularly admired, to 
 
 1 The wicked Skye-terrier of Bournemouth days, cele- 
 brated in the essay On the Character of Dogs.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. S/ 
 
 handsome young men; these die, her love l8 9 
 being fatal ; as a handsome youth she has 
 been known to court damsels with the like 
 result, but this is very rare; as an old 
 crone she goes about and asks for water, 
 and woe to them who are uncivil ! Sanmai- 
 afe means literally, "Come here a thous- 
 and!" A good name for a lady of her 
 manners. My aitufafine does not seem to 
 be in the same line of business. It is 
 unsafe to be a handsome youth in Samoa; 
 a young man died from her favours last 
 month so we said on this side of the 
 island ; on the other, where he died, it was 
 not so certain. I, for one, blame it on 
 Madam Saumai-afe without hesitation. 
 
 Example of the farmer's sorrows. I 
 slipped out on the balcony a moment ago. 
 It is a lovely morning, cloudless, smoking 
 hot, the breeze not yet arisen. Looking 
 west, in front of our new house, I saw two 
 heads of Indian corn wagging, and the rest 
 and all nature stock still. As I looked, 
 one of the stalks subsided and disappeared.
 
 88 VAILTMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 I dashed out to the rescue; two small pigs 
 were deep in the grass quite hid till 
 within a few yards gently but swiftly 
 demolishing my harvest. Never be a 
 farmer. 
 
 I2.30/. m. 
 
 I while away the moments of digestion 
 by drawing you a faithful picture of my 
 morning. When I had done writing as 
 above it was time to clean our house. 
 When I am working, it falls on my wife 
 alone, but to-day we had it between us; 
 she did the bedroom, I the sitting-room, 
 in fifty-seven minutes of really most un- 
 palatable labour. Then I changed every 
 stitch, for I was wet through, and sat down 
 and played on my pipe till dinner was 
 ready, mighty pleased to be in a mildly 
 habitable spot once more. The house had 
 been neglected for near a week, and was a 
 hideous spot ; my wife's ear and our visit 
 to Apia being the causes : our Paul we 
 prefer not to see upon that theatre, and 
 God knows he has plenty to do elsewhere.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 89 
 
 I am glad to look out of my back door 
 and see the boys smoothing the foundations 
 of the new house; this is all very jolly, but 
 six months of it has satisfied me; we have 
 too many things for such close quarters; to 
 work in the midst of all the myriad mis- 
 fortunes of the planter's life, seated in a 
 Dyonisius' (can't spell him) ear, whence I 
 catch every complaint, mishap and con- 
 tention, is besides the devil; and the hope 
 of a cave of my own inspires me with lust. 
 O to be able to shut my own door and make 
 my own confusion ! O to have the brown 
 paper and the matches and "make a hell of 
 my own " once more ! 
 
 I do not bother you with all my troubles 
 in these outpourings ; the troubles of the 
 farmer are inspiriting they are like diffi- 
 culties out hunting a fellow rages at the 
 time . and rejoices to recall and to com- 
 memorate them. My troubles have been 
 financial. It is hard to arrange wisely 
 interests so distributed. America, Eng- 
 land, Samoa, Sydney, everywhere I have
 
 90 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1890 an end of liability hanging out and some 
 shelf of credit hard by; and to juggle all 
 these and build a dwelling-place here, and 
 check expense a thing I am ill fitted for 
 you can conceive what a night-mare it is 
 at times. Then God knows I have not 
 been idle. But since The Master^ nothing 
 has come to raise any coins. I believe the 
 springs are dry at home, and now I am 
 worked out, and can no more at all. A 
 holiday is required. 
 
 Dec. 2$th. I have got unexpectedly to 
 work again, and feel quite dandy. Good- 
 bye. 
 
 R. L. S. 
 
 1 Of Ballantrae.
 
 IV 
 
 S. Lubeck, betwe >n Apia and Sydney. 
 Jan. \~th, 1891. 
 
 MY DEAR COLVIX, The Faamasino 
 Sili, or Chief Justice, to speak your low 
 language, has arrived. I had ridden down 
 with Henry and Lafaele; the sun was 
 down, the night was close at hand, so we 
 rode fast; just as I came to the corner of 
 the road before Apia, I heard a gun fire; 
 and lo, there was a great crowd at the end 
 of the pier, and the troops out, and a chief 
 or two in the height of Samoa finery, and 
 Seumanu coming in his boat (the oarsmen 
 all in uniform), bringing the Faamasino 
 Sili sure enough. It was lucky he was no 
 longer; the natives would not have waited 
 many weeks. But think of it, as I sat in 
 the saddle at the outside of the crowd 
 (looking, the English consul said, as if I 
 were commanding the manoeuvres), I was
 
 92 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 near ly knocked down by a stampede of the 
 three consuls; they had been waiting their 
 guest at the Matafele end, and some 
 wretched intrigue among the whites had 
 brought him to Apia, and the consuls had 
 to run all the length of the town and come 
 too late. 
 
 The next day was a long one; I was at a 
 marriage of G. the banker to Fanua, the 
 virgin of Apia. Bride and bridesmaids 
 were all in the old high dress; the ladies 
 were all native; the men, with the excep- 
 tion of Seumanu, all white. 
 
 It was quite a pleasant party, and while 
 we were waiting, we had a bird's-eye view 
 of the public reception of the Chief Justice. 
 The best part of it were some natives in 
 war array; with blacked faces, turbans, 
 tapa kilts, and guns, they looked very 
 manly and purposelike. No, the best part 
 was poor old drunken Joe, the Portuguese 
 boatman, who seemed to think himself 
 specially charged with the reception, and 
 ended by falling on his knees before the
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 93 
 
 Chief Justice on the end of the pier and in l8 9* 
 full view of the whole town and bay. The 
 natives pelted him with rotten bananas; 
 how the Chief Justice took it I was too far 
 off to see; but it was highly absurd. 
 
 I have commemorated my genial hopes 
 for the regimen of the Faamasino S.ili in 
 the following canine verses, which, if you 
 at all guess how to read them, are very 
 pretty in movement, and (unless he be a 
 mighty good man) too true in sense. 
 
 We're quarrelling, the villages, we've beaten the wooden 
 
 drums, 
 
 Sa femisai o nu'u, sa taia o pate, 
 Is expounded there by the justice, 
 Ua Atuatuvale a le faamasino e, 
 The chief justice, the terrified justice, 
 Le faamasino sili, le faamasino se, 
 Is on the point of running away the justice, 
 O le a solasola le faamasino e, 
 
 The justice denied any influence, the terrified justice, 
 O le faamasino le ai a, le faamasino se, 
 O le a solasola le faamasino e. 
 
 Well, after this excursion into tongues 
 that have never been alive though I 
 assure you we have one capital book in the
 
 94 VAILLMA LETTERS. 
 
 language, a book of fables by an old mis- 
 sionary of the unpromising name of Pratt, 
 which is simply the best and the most 
 literary version of the fables known to me. 
 I suppose I should except La Fontaine, 
 but L. F. takes a long time ; these are 
 brief as the books of our childhood, and 
 full of wit and literary colour; and O, 
 Colvin, what a tongue it would be to write, 
 if one only knew it and there were only 
 readers. Its curse in common use is an 
 incredible left-handed wordiness; but in 
 the hands of a man like Pratt it is succinct 
 as Latin, compact of long rolling polysyl- 
 lables and little and often pithy particles, 
 and for beauty of sound a dream. Listen, 
 I quote from Pratt this is good Samoan, 
 not canine 
 
 123 41 
 
 O le afa, uataaliliai leuluvao, ua pa mai lefaititili. 
 
 I almost wa, 2 the two a's just distin- 
 guished, 3 the at is practically suffixed to 
 the verb, 4 almost vow. The excursion 
 has prolonged itself.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 95 
 
 I started by the Liibcck to meet Lloyd 1891 
 and my mother; there were many reasons 
 for and against ; the main reason against 
 was the leaving of Fanny alone in her 
 blessed cabin, which has been somewhat 
 
 remedied by my carter, Mr. , putting 
 
 up in the stable and messing with her; but 
 perhaps desire of change decided me not 
 well, though I do think I ought to see an 
 occulist, being very blind indeed, and 
 sometimes unable to read. Anyway I left, 
 the only cabin passenger, four and a kid in 
 the second cabin, and a dear voyage it had 
 like to have proved. Close to Fiji (choose 
 a worse place on the map) we broke our 
 shaft early one morning; and when or 
 where we might expect to fetch land or 
 meet with any ship, I would like you to 
 tell me. The Pacific is absolutely desert. 
 I have sailed there now some years ; and 
 scarce ever seen a ship except in port or 
 close by; I think twice. It was the hurri- 
 cane season besides and hurricane waters. 
 Well, our chief engineer got the shaft it
 
 96 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 W as the middle crank shaft mended; 
 thrice it was mended, and twice broke 
 down; but now keeps up only we dare 
 not stop, for it is almost impossible to 
 start again. The captain in the meanwhile 
 crowded her with sail ; fifteen sails in all, 
 every stay being gratified with a stay-sail, 
 a boat-boom sent aloft for a maintop- 
 gallant yard, and the derrick of a crane 
 brought in service as bowsprit. All the 
 time we have had a fine, fair wind and a 
 smooth sea; to-day at noon our run was 
 203 miles (if you please!), and we are 
 within some 360 miles of Sydney. Prob- 
 ably there has never been a more gallant 
 success; and I can say honestly it was well 
 worked for. No flurry, no high words, no 
 long faces; only hard work and honest 
 thought; a pleasant, manly business to be 
 present at. All the chances were we 
 might have been six weeks ay, or three 
 months at sea or never turned up at all, 
 and now it looks as though we should reach 
 our destination some five days too late.
 
 [On Board Ship between Sydney and Apia, 
 Feb. 1891.] 
 
 MY DEAR COLVIN, I\\Q Janet Nicoll 1891 
 stuff was rather worse than I had looked 
 for; you have picked out all that is fit to 
 stand, bar two others (which I don't dis- 
 like) the Port of Entry and the House 
 of Temoana; that is for a present opinion; 
 I may condemn these also ere I have done. 
 By this time you should have another 
 Marquesan letter, the worst of the lot, I 
 think; and seven Paumotu letters, which 
 are not far out of the vein, as I wish it ; I 
 am in hopes the Hawaiian stuff is better 
 yet: time will show, and time will make 
 perfect. Is something of this sort prac- 
 ticable for the dedication? 
 
 TERRA MARIQUE 
 
 PER PERICULA PER ARDUA 
 
 AMICAE COMITI 
 
 D. D. 
 
 AMANS VIATOR 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 'T is a first shot concocted this morning 
 in my berth: I had always before been 
 trying it in English, which insisted on 
 being either insignificant or fulsome : I 
 cannot think of a better word than comes, 
 there being not the shadow of a Latin 
 book on board; yet sure there is some 
 other. Then viator (though it sounds all 
 right) is doubtful ; it has too much, per- 
 haps, the sense of wayfarer ? Last, will it 
 mark sufficiently that I mean my wife? 
 And first, how about blunders? I scarce 
 wish it longer. 
 
 Have had a swingeing sharp attack in 
 Sydney; beating the fields for two nights, 
 Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday was 
 brought on board, tel quel, a wonderful 
 wreck; and now, Wednesday week, am a 
 good deal picked up, but yet not quite a 
 Samson, being still groggy afoot and vague 
 in the head. My chess, for instance, which 
 is usually a pretty strong game, and defies 
 all rivalry aboard, is vacillating, devoid of 
 resource and observation, and hitherto not
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 99 
 
 covered with customary laurels. As for l8 9* 
 work, it is impossible. We shall be in 
 the saddle before long, no doubt, and the 
 pen once more couched. You must not 
 expect a letter under these circumstances, 
 but be very thankful for a note. Once at 
 Samoa, I shall try to resume my late excel- 
 lent habits, and delight you with journals, 
 you unaccustomed, I unaccustomed; but it 
 is never too late to mend. 
 
 It is vastly annoying that I cannot go 
 even to Sydney without an attack; and 
 heaven knows my life was anodyne. I only 
 once dined with anybody; at the club with 
 Wise; worked all morning a terrible 
 dead pull ; a month only produced the 
 imperfect embryos of two chapters ; lunched 
 in the boarding-house, played on my pipe; 
 went out and did some of my messages; 
 dined at a French restaurant, and returned 
 to play draughts, whist, or Van John with 
 my family. This makes a cheery life after 
 Samoa; but it isn't what you call burning 
 the candle at both ends, is it? (It appears
 
 IOO VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 to me not one word of this letter will be 
 Feb. 
 
 legible by the time I am done with it, this 
 
 dreadful ink rubs off.) I have a strange 
 kind of novel under construction; it begins 
 about 1660 and ends 1830, or perhaps I 
 may continue it to 1875 or so, with another 
 life. One, two, three, four, five, six gen- 
 erations, perhaps seven, figure therein; 
 two of my old stories, " Delafield " and 
 "Shovel," are incorporated; it is to be told 
 in the third person, with some of the 
 brevity of history, some of the detail of 
 romance. The Shovels of Newton French 
 will be the name. The idea is an old one; 
 it was brought to birth by an accident; a 
 friend in the islands who picked up F. 
 Jenkin, 1 read a part, and said: "Do you 
 know, that's a strange book? I like it; 
 
 1 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin, by R. L. S. Prefixed to 
 Papers Literary, Scientific, etc., by the late Fleeming Jenkin, 
 F.R.S., LL.D. ; 2 vols. London, Longmans, 1887. The 
 first chapters of this memoir consist of a genealogical 
 history of the family. Of " Delafield " I never heard ; 
 the plan of " Shovel," which was to be in great part a 
 story of the Peninsula War, had been sketched out as 
 long ago as the seventies..
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. IOI 
 
 I don't believe the public will; but I like l8 9* 
 it." He thought it was a novel! "Very 
 well," said I, "we'll see whether the pub- 
 lic will like it or not; they shall have 
 the chance." 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 R. L. S.
 
 VI 
 
 Friday, March igfk. 
 
 1891 MY DEAR S. C., You probably expect 
 that now I am back at Vailima I shall 
 resume the practice of the diary letter. A 
 good deal is changed. We are more; 
 solitude does not attend me as before; the 
 night is passed playing Van John for 
 shells ; and, what is not less important, I 
 have just recovered from a severe illness, 
 and am easily tired. 
 
 I will give you to-day. I sleep now in 
 one of the lower rooms of the new house, 
 where my wife has recently joined me. 
 We have two beds, an empty case for a 
 table, a chair, a tin basin, a bucket and a 
 jug; next door in the dining-room, the 
 carpenters camp on the floor, which is 
 covered with their mosquito nets. Before 
 the sun rises, at 5.45 or 5.50, Paul brings 
 me tea, bread, and a couple of eggs; and
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 1 03 
 
 by about six I am at work. I work in bed 1891 
 my bed is of mats, no mattress, sheets, 
 or filth mats, a pillow, and a blanket 
 and put in some three hours. It was 9.5 
 this morning when I set off to the stream- 
 side to my weeding; where I toiled, man- 
 uring the ground with the best enricher, 
 human sweat, till the conch-shell was 
 blown from our verandah at 10.30. At 
 eleven we dine; about half-past twelve I 
 tried (by exception) to work again, could 
 make nothing on't, and by one was on my 
 way to the weeding, where I wrought till 
 three. Half-past five is our next meal, 
 and I read Flaubert's Letters till the hour 
 came round; dined, and then, Fanny hav- 
 ing a cold, and I being tired, came over to 
 my den in the unfinished house, where I 
 now write to you, to the tune of the 
 carpenters' voices, and by the light I 
 crave your pardon by the twilight of 
 three vile candles filtered through the 
 medium of my mosquito bar. Bad ink 
 being of the party, I write quite blindfold,
 
 IO4 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9i and can only hope you may be granted to 
 read that which I am unable to see while 
 writing. 
 
 I said I was tired; it is a mild phrase; 
 my back aches like toothache; when I shut 
 my eyes to sleep, I know I shall see before 
 them a phenomenon to which both Fanny 
 and I are quite accustomed endless vivid 
 deeps of grass and weed, each plant par- 
 ticular and distinct, so that I shall lie 
 inert in body, and transact for hours the 
 mental part of my day business, choosing 
 the noxious from the useful. And in my 
 dreams I shall be hauling on recalcitrants, 
 and suffering stings from nettles, stabs 
 from citron thorns, fiery bites from ants, 
 sickening resistances of mud and slime, 
 evasions of slimy roots, dead weight of 
 heat, sudden puffs of air, sudden starts 
 from bird-calls in the contiguous forest 
 some mimicking my name, some laughter, 
 some the signal of a whistle, and living 
 over again at large the business of my 
 day.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 10$ 
 
 Though I write so little, I pass all my 1891 
 hours of field-work in continual converse 
 and imaginary correspondence. I scarce 
 pull up a weed, but I invent a sentence on 
 the matter to yourself; it does not get 
 written ; autant en emportent les vents; but 
 the intent is there, and for me (in some 
 sort) the companionship. To-day, for in- 
 stance, we had a great talk. I was toil- 
 ing, the sweat dripping from my nose, in 
 the hot fit after a squall of rain : methought 
 you asked me frankly, was I happy. 
 Happy (said I); I was only happy once; 
 that was at Hyeres ; it came to an end 
 from a variety of reasons, decline of health, 
 change of place, increase of money, age 
 with his stealing steps; since then, as 
 before then, I know not what it means. 
 But I know pleasure still; pleasure with a 
 thousand faces, and none perfect, a thou- 
 sand tongues all broken, a thousand hands, 
 and all of them with scratching nails. 
 High among these I place this delight of 
 weeding out here alone by the garrulous
 
 106 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9i water, under the silence of the high wood, 
 broken by incongruous sounds of birds. 
 And take my life all through, look at it 
 fore and back, and upside down, though 
 I would very fain change myself I would 
 not change my circumstances, unless it 
 were to bring you here. And yet God 
 knows perhaps this intercourse of writing 
 serves as well ; and I wonder, were you 
 here indeed, would I commune so con- 
 tinually with the thought of you. I say I 
 wonder for a form ; I know, and I know I 
 should not. 
 
 So far and much further, the conversa- 
 tion went, while I groped in slime after 
 viscous roots, nursing and sparing little 
 spears of grass, and retreating (even with 
 outcry) from the prod of the wild lime. I 
 wonder if any one had ever the same atti- 
 tude to Nature as I hold, and have held 
 for so long? This business fascinates me 
 like a tune or a passion; yet all the while 
 I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror 
 of the thing, objective and subjective, is
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. IO/ 
 
 always present to my mind; the horror of 1891 
 
 Mar 
 
 creeping things, a superstitious horror of 
 the void and the powers about me, the 
 horror of my own devastation and continual 
 murders. The life of the plants comes 
 through my finger-tips, their struggles go 
 to my heart like supplications. I feel my- 
 self blood-boltered; then I look back on 
 my cleared grass, and count myself an ally 
 in a fair quarrel, and make stout my heart. 
 
 It is but a little while since I lay sick in 
 Sydney, beating the fields about the navy 
 and Dean Swift and Dryden's Latin hymns; 
 judge if I love this reinvigorating climate, 
 where I can already toil till my head 
 swims and every string in the poor jump- 
 ing Jack (as he now lies in bed) aches with 
 a kind of yearning strain, difficult to suffer 
 in quiescence. 
 
 As for my damned literature, 1 God 
 knows what a business it is, grinding 
 along without a scrap of inspiration or a 
 note of style. But it has to be ground, and 
 
 1 The South Sea Letters.
 
 IO8 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 the mill grinds exceeding slowly though not 
 particularly small. The last two chapters 
 have taken me considerably over a month, 
 and they are still beneath pity. This I 
 cannot continue, time not sufficing; and 
 the next will just have to be worse. All 
 the good I can express is just this; some 
 day, when style revisits me, they will be 
 excellent matter to rewrite. Of course, 
 my old cure of a change of work would 
 probably answer, but I cannot take it now. 
 The treadmill turns; and with a kind of 
 desperate cheerfulness, I mount the idle 
 stair. I have n't the least anxiety about 
 the book; unless I die, I shall find the 
 time to make it good ; but the Lord 
 deliver me from the thought of the Letters! 
 However, the Lord has other things on 
 hand; and about six to-morrow, I shall 
 resume the consideration practically, and 
 face (as best I may) the fact of my incom- 
 petence and disaffection to the task. Toil 
 I do not spare; but fortune refuses me 
 success. We can do more, Whatever-his-
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. IO9 
 
 name-was, we can deserve it. But my l8 9 I 
 
 J Mar. 
 
 misdesert began long since, by the accep- 
 tation of a bargain quite unsuitable to all 
 my methods. 1 
 
 To-day I have had a queer experience. 
 My carter has from the first been using my 
 horses for his own ends; when I left for 
 Sydney, I put him on his honour to cease, 
 and my back was scarce turned ere he was 
 forfeit. I have only been waiting to dis- 
 charge him; and to-day an occasion arose. 
 I am so much the old wan virulent, so 
 readily stumble into anger, that I gave a 
 deal of consideration to my bearing, and 
 decided at last to imitate that of the late 
 
 . Whatever he might have to say, 
 
 this eminently effective controversialist 
 maintained a frozen demeanour and a 
 jeering smile. The frozen demeanour is 
 beyond my reach; but I could try the jeer- 
 ing smile; did so, perceived its efficacy, 
 
 1 The price advanced for these Letters was among the 
 considerations which originally induced the writer to set 
 out on his Pacific voyage.
 
 1 10 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 kept in consequence my temper, and got 
 rid of my friend, myself composed and 
 smiling still, he white and shaking like an 
 aspen. He could explain everything; I 
 said it did not interest me. He said he 
 had enemies ; I said nothing was more 
 likely. He said he was calumniated ; with 
 all my heart, said I, but there are so many 
 liars, that I find it safer to believe them. 
 He said, in justice to himself, he must 
 explain : God forbid, I should interfere 
 with you, said I, with the same factitious 
 grin, but it can change nothing. So I 
 kept my temper, rid myself of an unfaith- 
 ful servant, found a method of conducting 
 similar interviews in the future, and fell 
 in my own liking. One thing more: I 
 
 learned a fresh tolerance for the dead ; 
 
 he too had learned perhaps had invented 
 the trick of this manner ; God knows what 
 weakness, what instability of feeling, lay 
 beneath. Ce que c est que de nous; poor 
 human nature; that at past forty I must 
 adjust this hateful mask for the first time,
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. Ill 
 
 and rejoice to find it effective; that the l8 9 
 
 Mar. 
 effort of maintaining an external smile 
 
 should confuse and embitter a man's soul. 
 
 To-day I have not weeded ; I have written 
 instead from six till eleven, from twelve 
 till two; with the interruption of the inter- 
 view aforesaid ; a damned letter is written 
 for the third time; I dread to read it, for I 
 dare not give it a fourth chance unless 
 it be very bad indeed. Now I write you 
 from my mosquito curtain, to the song of 
 saws and planes and hammers, and wood 
 clumping on the floor above ; in a day of 
 heavenly brightness ; a bird twittering near 
 by ; my eye, through the open door, com- 
 manding green meads, two or three forest 
 trees casting their boughs against the sky, 
 a forest-clad mountain-side beyond, and 
 close in by the door-jamb a nick of the 
 blue Pacific. It is March in England, 
 bleak March, and I lie here with the great 
 sliding doors wide open in an undershirt 
 and p'jama trousers, and melt in the closure 
 of mosquito bars, and burn to be out in the
 
 112 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 breeze. A few torn clouds not white, 
 the sun has tinged them a warm pink 
 swim in heaven. In which blessed and 
 fair day, I have to make faces and speak 
 bitter words to a man who has deceived 
 me, it is true but who is poor, and older 
 than I, and a kind of a gentleman too. 
 On the whole, I prefer the massacre of 
 weeds. 
 
 Sunday. 
 
 When I had done talking to you yester- 
 day, I played on my pipe till the conch 
 sounded, then went over to the old house 
 for dinner, and had scarce risen from table 
 ere I was submerged with visitors. The 
 first of these despatched, I spent the rest 
 of the evening going over the Samoan 
 translation of my Bottle Imp J with Claxton 
 
 1 The first serial tale, says Mr. Clarke, ever read by 
 Samoans in their own language was the story of the Bottle 
 fmp, " which found its way into print at Samoa, and was 
 read with wonder and delight in many a thatched Samoan 
 hut before it won the admiration of readers at home." 
 In the English form the story was published first in Black 
 and White, and afterwards in the volume called Island 
 Nights' Entertainments,
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 113 
 
 the missionary: then to bed, but being 1891 
 
 Mar. 
 upset, I suppose, by these interruptions, 
 
 and having gone all day without my weed- 
 ing, not to sleep. For hours I lay awake 
 and heard the rain fall, and saw faint, far- 
 away lightning over the sea, and wrote you 
 long letters which I scorn to reproduce. 
 This morning Paul was unusually early; 
 the dawn had scarce begun when he 
 appeared with the tray and lit my candle; 
 and I had breakfasted and read (with in- 
 describable sinkings) the whole of yester- 
 day's work before the sun had risen. Then 
 I sat and thought, and sat and better 
 thought. It was not good enough, nor 
 good ; it was as slack as journalism, but 
 not so inspired; it was excellent stuff 
 misused, and the defects stood gross on it 
 like humps upon a camel. But could I, in 
 my present disposition, do much more with 
 it? in my present pressure for time, were 
 I not better employed doing another one 
 about as ill, than making this some thou- 
 sandth fraction better? Yes, I thought;
 
 114 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 and tried the new one, and behold, I could 
 do nothing: my head swims, words do not 
 come to me, nor phrases, and I accepted 
 defeat, packed up my traps, and turned to 
 communicate the failure to my esteemed 
 correspondent. I think it possible I over- 
 worked yesterday. Well, we'll see to- 
 morrow perhaps try again later. It is 
 indeed the hope of trying later that keeps 
 me writing to you. If I take to my pipe, 
 I know myself all is over for the morn- 
 ing. Hurray, I '11 correct proofs! 
 
 Pago- Pago, Wednesday. 
 
 After I finished on Sunday I passed a 
 miserable day; went out weeding, but 
 could not find peace. I do not like to 
 steal my dinner, unless I have given my- 
 self a holiday in a canonical manner; and 
 weeding after all is only fun, the amount 
 of its utility small, and the thing capable 
 of being done faster and nearly as well by 
 a hired boy. In the evening Sewall came 
 up (American consul) and proposed to
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 115 
 
 take me on a malaga, 1 which I accepted. 1891 
 Monday I rode down to Apia, was nearly 
 all day fighting about drafts and money; 
 the silver problem does not touch you, but 
 it is (in a strange and I hope passing 
 phase) making my situation difficult in 
 Apia. About eleven, the flags were all 
 half-masted; it was old Captain Hamilton 
 (Samesoni the natives called him) who had 
 passed away. In the evening I walked 
 round to the U. S. Consulate; it was a 
 lovely night with a full moon ; and as I 
 got round to the hot corner of Matautu I 
 heard hymns in front. The balcony of the 
 dead man's house was full of women sing- 
 ing; Mary (the widow, a native) sat on a 
 chair by the doorstep, and I was set beside 
 her on a bench, and next to Paul the 
 carpenter; as I sat down I had a glimpse 
 of the old captain, who lay in a sheet on 
 his own table. After the hymn was over, 
 a native pastor made a speech which lasted 
 a long while; the light poured out of the 
 
 1 Boating expedition.
 
 Il6 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9i door and windows; the girls were sitting 
 clustered at my feet; it was choking hot. 
 After the speech was ended, Mary carried 
 me within; the captain's hands were folded 
 on his bosom, his face and head were com- 
 posed; he looked as if he might speak at 
 any moment; I have never seen this kind 
 of waxwork so express or more venerable; 
 and when I went away, I was conscious of 
 a certain envy for the man who was out of 
 the battle. All night it ran in my head, 
 and the next day when we sighted Tutuila, 
 and ran into this beautiful land-locked 
 loch of Pago-Pago (whence I write), Captain 
 Hamilton's folded hands and quiet face 
 said a great deal more to me than the 
 scenery. 
 
 I am living here in a trader's house; we 
 have a good table, Sewall doing things in 
 style; and I hope to benefit by the change, 
 and possibly get more stuff for Letters. 
 In the meanwhile, I am seized quite mal-a- 
 propos with desire to write a story, Tlie 
 Bloody Wedding, founded on fact very
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 1 1/ 
 
 possibly true, being an attempt to read a l8 9i 
 murder case not yet months old, in this 
 very place and house where I now write. 
 The indiscretion is what stops me; but if 
 I keep on feeling as I feel just now it will 
 have to be written. Three Star Nettison, 
 Kit Nettison, Field the Sailor, these are 
 the main characters: old Nettison, and the 
 captain of the man of war, the secondary. 
 Possible scenario. Chapter I. ...
 
 VII 
 
 Saturday, April 
 
 i8gi MY DEAR COLVIN, I got back on 
 Monday night, after twenty-three hours in 
 an open boat; the keys were lost; the 
 Consul (who had promised us a bottle of 
 Burgundy) nobly broke open his store-room, 
 and we got to bed about midnight. Next 
 morning the blessed Consul promised us 
 horses for the daybreak; forgot all about 
 it, worthy man; set us off at last in the 
 heat of the day, and by a short cut which 
 caused infinite trouble, and we were not 
 home till dinner. I was extenuated, and 
 have had a high fever since, or should 
 have been writing before. To-day for the 
 first time, I risk it. Tuesday I was pretty 
 bad; Wednesday had a fever to kill a 
 horse; Thursday I was better, but still out 
 of ability to do aught but read awful trash. 
 This is the time one misses civilisation; I 
 wished to send out for some police novels;
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 119 
 
 Montepin would have about suited my l8 9i 
 frozen brain. It is a bother when all one's 
 thought turns on one's work in some sense 
 or other; I could not even think yesterday; 
 I took to inventing dishes by way of enter- 
 tainment. Yesterday, while I lay asleep 
 in the afternoon, a very lucky thing hap- 
 pened ; the Chief Justice came to call; met 
 one of our employes on the road ; and was 
 shown what I had done to the road. 
 
 "Is this the road across the island?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "The only one," said Innes. 
 
 "And has one man done all this?" 
 
 "Three times," said the trusty Innes. 
 "It has had to be made three times, and 
 when Mr. Stevenson came, it was a track 
 like what you see beyond." 
 
 "This must be put right," said the Chief 
 Justice. 
 
 Sunday. 
 
 The truth is, I broke down yesterday 
 almost as soon as I began, and have been 
 surreptitiously finishing the entry to-day.
 
 I2O VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 For all that I was much better, ate all the 
 time, and had no fever. The day was 
 otherwise uneventful. I am 'reminded; I 
 had another visitor on Friday ; and Fanny 
 and Lloyd, as they returned from a forest 
 raid, met in our desert, untrodden road, 
 first Father Didier, Keeper of the con- 
 science of Mataafa, the rising star; and 
 next the Chief Justice, sole stay of Laupepa, 
 the present and unsteady star, and remem- 
 ber, a few days before we were close to 
 the sick bed and entertained by the amateur 
 physician of Tamasese, the late and sunken 
 star. "That is the fun of this place," 
 observed Lloyd ; " everybody you meet is 
 so important." Everybody is also so 
 gloomy. It will come to war again, is 
 the opinion of all the well informed and 
 before that to many bankruptcies; and 
 after that, as usual, to famine. Here, 
 under the microscope, we can see history 
 at work.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 121 
 
 Wednesday, 
 
 I have been very neglectful. A return J 8 9i 
 
 April, 
 
 to work, perhaps premature, but necessary, 
 has used up all my possible energies and 
 made me acquainted with the living head- 
 ache. I just jot down some of the past 
 notabilia. Yesterday B., a carpenter, and 
 K., my (unsuccessful) white man, were 
 absent all morning from their work; I was 
 working myself, where I hear every sound 
 with morbid certainty, and I can testify 
 that not a hammer fell. Upon inquiry I 
 found they had passed the morning making 
 ice with our ice machine and taking the 
 horizon with a spirit level ! I had no 
 sooner heard this than a violent head- 
 ache set in ; I am a real employer of labour 
 now, and have much of the ship captain 
 when aroused ; and if I had a headache, I 
 believe both these gentlemen had aching 
 
 hearts. I promise you, the late was 
 
 to the front; and K. , who was the most 
 guilty, yet (in a sense) the least blamable, 
 having the brains and character of a canary-
 
 122 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 189.1 bird, fared none the better for B.'s rep. 
 artees. I hear them hard at work this 
 morning, so the menace may be blessed. 
 It was just after my dinner, just before 
 theirs, that I administered my redoubtable 
 tongue it is really redoubtable to these 
 skulkers. (Paul used to truimph over Mr. 
 J. for weeks. "I am very sorry for you," 
 he would say; "you're going to have a 
 talk with Mr. Stevenson when he comes 
 home: you don't know what that is!") In 
 fact, none of them do, till they get it. I 
 have known K., for instance, for months; 
 he has never heard me complain, or take 
 notice, unless it were to praise; I have 
 used him always as my guest, and there 
 seems to be something in my appearance 
 which suggests endless, ovine long-suffer- 
 ing! We sat in the upper verandah all 
 evening, and discussed the price of iron 
 roofing, and the state of the draught-horses, 
 with Innes, a new man we have taken, and 
 who seems to promise well. 
 
 One thing embarrasses me. No one
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 123 
 
 ever seems to understand my attitude about 1891 
 that book ; the stuff sent was never meant 
 for other than a first state; I never meant 
 it to appear as a book. Knowing well that 
 I have never had one hour of inspiration 
 since it was begun, and have only beaten 
 out my metal by brute force and patient 
 repetition, I hoped some day to get a 
 "spate of style" and burnish it fine 
 mixed metaphor. I am now so sick that I 
 intend, when the Letters are done and 
 some more written that will be wanted, 
 simply to make a book of it by the prun- 
 ing-knife. I cannot fight longer; I am 
 sensible of having done worse than I 
 hoped, worse than I feared; all I can do 
 now is to do the best I can for the future, 
 and clear the book, like a piece of bush, 
 with axe and cutlass. Even to produce 
 the MS. of this will occupy me, at the most 
 favourable opinion, till the middle of next 
 year; really five years were wanting, when 
 I could have made a book; but I have a 
 family and perhaps I could not make the 
 book after all.
 
 VIII 
 
 April z^th, '91. 
 
 1891 MY DEAR COLVIN, I begin again. I 
 was awake this morning about half-past 
 four. It was still night, but I made my 
 fire, which is always a deligthful employ- 
 ment, and read Lockhart's "Scott" until 
 the day began to peep. It was a beautiful 
 and sober dawn, a dove- coloured dawn, 
 insensibly brightening to gold. I was 
 looking at it some while over the down- 
 hill profile of our eastern road, when I 
 chanced to glance northward, and saw with 
 extraordinary pleasure the sea lying out- 
 spread. It seemed as smooth as glass, and 
 yet I knew the surf was roaring all along 
 the reef, and indeed, if I had listened, I 
 could have heard it and saw the white 
 sweep of it outside Matautu. 
 
 I am out of condition still, and can do 
 nothing, and toil to be at my pen, and see
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 125 
 
 some ink behind me. I have taken up 1891 
 again The High Woods of Ulnjanua. I 
 still think the fable too fantastic and far- 
 fetched. But, on a re-reading, fell in love 
 with my first chapter, and for good or evil 
 I must finish it. It is really good, well 
 fed with facts, true to the manners, and 
 (for once in my works) rendered pleasing 
 by the presence of a heroine who is pretty. 
 Miss Uma is pretty; a fact. All my other 
 women have been as ugly as sin, and like 
 Falconet's horse (I have just been reading 
 the anecdote in Lockhart), mortes forbye. 
 
 News : Our old house is now half demol- 
 ished; it is to be rebuilt on a new site; 
 now we look down upon and through the 
 open posts of it like a bird-cage, to the 
 woods beyond. My poor Paulo has lost 
 his father and succeeded to thirty thousand 
 thalers (I think); he had to go down to the 
 Consulate yesterday to send a legal paper; 
 got drunk, of course, and is still this morn- 
 ing in so bemused a condition that our 
 breakfasts all went wrong. Lafaele is
 
 126 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 absent at the deathbed of his fair spouse, 
 fair she was, but not in deed, acting as 
 harlot to the wreckers at work on the war- 
 ships, to which society she probably owes 
 her end, having fallen off a cliff, or been 
 thrust off it inter pocula. Henry is the 
 same, our stand-by. In this transition 
 stage he has been living in Apia; but the 
 other night he stayed up, and sat with us 
 about the chimney in my room. It was 
 the first time he had seen a fire in a hearth ; 
 he could not look at it without smiles, and 
 was always anxious to put on another stick. 
 We entertained him with the fairy tales of 
 civilisation theatres, London, blocks in 
 the street, Universities, the Underground, 
 newspapers, etc., and projected once more 
 his visit to Sydney. If we can manage, it 
 will be next Christmas. (I see it will 
 be impossible for me to afford a further 
 journey this winter.) We have spent since 
 we have been here about ^2500, which is 
 not much if you consider we have built on 
 that three houses, one of them of some
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 12? 
 
 size, and a considerable stable, made two 1891 
 miles of road some three times, cleared 
 many acres of bush, made some miles of 
 path, planted quanities of food, and en- 
 closed a horse paddock and some acres of 
 pig run; but 'tis a good deal of money 
 regarded simply as money. K. is bosh; I 
 have no use for him ; but we must do what 
 we can with the fellow meanwhile; he is 
 good-humoured and honest, but inefficient, 
 idle himself, the cause of idleness in 
 others, grumbling, a self-excuser all the 
 faults in a bundle. He owes us thirty 
 weeks' service the wretched Paul about 
 half as much. Henry is almost the only 
 one of our employes who has a credit. 
 
 May i-jth. 
 
 Well, am I ashamed of myself? I do 
 not think so. I have been hammering 
 Letters ever since, and got three ready 
 and a fourth about half through; all four 
 will go by the mail, which is what I wish, 
 for so I keep at least my start: Days and
 
 128 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l %9 1 days of unprofitable stubbing and digging, 
 7 " and the result still poor as literature, left- 
 handed, heavy, unillumined, but I believe 
 readable and interesting as matter. It has 
 been no joke of a hard time, and when my 
 task was done, I had little taste for any- 
 thing but blowing on the pipe. A few 
 necessary letters filled the bowl to over- 
 flowing. 
 
 My mother has arrived, young, well, and 
 in good spirits. By desperate exertions, 
 which have wholly floored Fanny, her 
 room was ready for her, and the dining- 
 room fit to eat in. It was a famous vic- 
 tory. Lloyd never told me of your portrait 
 till a few days ago; fortunately, I had no 
 pictures hung yet ; and the space over my 
 chimney waits your counterfeit present- 
 ment. I have not often heard anything 
 that pleased me more; your severe head 
 shall frown upon me and keep me to the 
 mark. But why has it not come? Have 
 you been as forgetful as Lloyd?
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 1 29 
 
 iSt/i. 
 
 Miserable comforters are ye all ! I read 1891 
 your esteemed pages this morning by lamp- ay ' 
 light and the glimmer of the dawn, and as 
 soon as breakfast was over, I must turn to 
 and tackle these despised labours ! Some 
 courage was necessary, but not wanting. 
 There is one thing at least by which I can 
 avenge myself for my drubbing, for on one 
 point you seem impenetrably stupid. Can 
 I find no form of words which will at last 
 convey to your intelligence the fact that 
 these letters were never meant, and are not 
 no^u meant, to be other than a quarry of 
 materials from which the book may be drawn ? 
 There seems something incommunicable in 
 this (to me) simple idea; I know Lloyd 
 failed to comprehend it, I doubt if he has 
 grasped it now; and I despair, after all 
 these efforts, that you should ever be 
 enlightened. Still, oblige me by reading 
 that form of words once more, and see if a 
 light does not break. You may be sure, 
 after the friendly freedoms of your criti- 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 cism (necessary I am sure, and wholesome 
 y ' I know, but untimely to the poor labourer 
 in his landslip) that mighty little of it 
 will stand. 
 
 Our Paul has come into a fortune, and 
 wishes to go home to the Hie Germanic. 
 This is a tile on our head, and if a shower, 
 which is now falling, lets up, I must go 
 down to Apia, and see if I can find a sub- 
 stitute of any kind. This is, from any 
 point of view, disgusting; above all, from 
 that of work ; for whatever the result, the 
 mill has to be kept turning; apparently 
 dust, and not flour, is the proceed. Well, 
 there is gold in the dust, which is a fine 
 consolation, since well, I can't help it; 
 night or morning, I do my darndest, and 
 if I cannot charge for merit, I must e'en 
 charge for toil, of which I have plenty and 
 plenty more ahead before this cup is 
 drained ; sweat and hyssop are the in- 
 gredients. 
 
 We are clearing from Carruthers' Road 
 to the pig fence. Twenty-eight powerful
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 131 
 
 natives with Catholic medals about their 1891 
 necks, all swiping in like Trojans; long 
 may the sport continue! 
 
 The invoice to hand. Ere this goes out, 
 I hope to see your expressive, but surely 
 not benignant countenance! Adieu, O 
 culler of offensive expressions "and a' 
 to be a posy to your ain dear May ! " 
 Fanny seems a little revived again after 
 her spasm of work. Our books and furni- 
 ture keep slowly draining up the road, in a 
 sad state of scatterment and disrepair; I 
 wish the devil had had K. by his red beard 
 before he had packed my library. Odd 
 leaves and sheets and boards a thing to 
 make a bibliomaniac shed tears are 
 fished out of odd corners. But I am no 
 bibliomaniac, praise Heaven, and I bear 
 up, and rejoice when I find anything safe. 
 
 \gtk. 
 
 However, I worked five hours on the 
 brute, and finished my Letter all the same, 
 and couldn't sleep last night by conse- 
 quence. Haven't had a bad night since I
 
 132 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 don't know when; dreamed a large, hand- 
 ay ' some man (a New Orleans planter) had 
 insulted my wife, and, do what I pleased, 
 I could not make him fight me; and woke 
 to find it was the eleventh anniversary of 
 my marriage. A letter usually takes me 
 from a week to three days ; but I 'm some- 
 times two days on a page I was once 
 three and then my friends kick me. 
 Cest-y-bete! I wish letters of that charm- 
 ing quality could be so timed as to arrive 
 when a fellow was n't working at the truck 
 in question; but, of course, that can't be. 
 Did not go down last night. It showered 
 all afternoon, and poured heavy and loud 
 all night. 
 
 You should have seen our twenty-five 
 popes (the Samoan phrase for a Catholic, 
 lay or cleric) squatting when the day's 
 work was done on the ground outside the 
 verandah, and pouring in the rays of forty- 
 eight eyes through the back and the front 
 door of the dining-room, while Henry and 
 I and the boss pope signed the contract.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 133 
 
 The second boss (an old man) wore a kilt 1891 
 (as usual) and a Balmoral bonnet with a ay ' 
 little tartan edging and the tails pulled 
 off. . I told him that hat belonged to my 
 country Sekotia; and he said, yes, that 
 was the place that he belonged to right 
 enough. And then all the Papists laughed 
 till the woods rang; he was slashing away 
 with a cutlass as he spoke. 
 
 The pictures have decidedly not come; 
 they may probably arrive Sunday.
 
 IX 
 
 June, 1891. 
 
 1891 SrR, To you, under your portrait, 
 which is, in expression, your true, breath- 
 ing self, and up to now saddens me; in 
 time, and soon, I shall be glad to have it 
 there; it is still only a reminder of your 
 absence. Fanny wept when we unpacked 
 it, and you know how little she is given to 
 that mood ; I was scarce Roman myself, 
 but that does not count I lift up my 
 voice so readily. These are good compli- 
 ments to the artist. I write in the midst 
 of a wreck of books, which have just come 
 up, and have for once defied my labours to 
 get straight. The whole floor is filled 
 with them, and (what 's worse) most of the 
 shelves forbye; and where they are to go 
 to, and what is to become of the librarian, 
 God knows. It is hot to-night, and has 
 been airless all day, and I am out of sorts, 
 and my work sticks, the devil fly away
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 135 
 
 with it and me. We had an alarm of war l8 9* 
 
 June, 
 
 since last I wrote my screeds to you, and 
 it blew over, and is to blow on again, and 
 the rumour goes they are to begin by kill- 
 ing all the whites. I have no belief in 
 this, and should be infinitely sorry if it 
 came to pass I do not mean for its, that 
 were otiose but for the poor, deluded 
 schoolboys, who should hope to gain by 
 such a step. 
 
 {Letter resumed.] 
 
 June 2OfA. 
 
 No diary this time. Why? you ask. I 
 have only sent out four Letters, and two 
 chapters of the Wrecker. Yes, but to get 
 these I have written 132 pp., 66,000 words 
 in thirty days; 2200 words a clay; the 
 labours of an elephant. God knows what 
 it 's like, and don't ask me, but nobody 
 shall say I have spared pains. I thought 
 for some time it would n't come at all. I 
 was days and days over the first letter of 
 the lot days and days writing and delet- 
 ing and making no headway whatever, till
 
 136 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 I thought I should have gone bust ; but it 
 64 came at last after a fashion, and the rest 
 went a thought more easily, though I am 
 not so fond as to fancy any better. 
 
 Your opinion as to the letters as a whole 
 is so damnatory that I put them by. But 
 there is a "hell of a want of" money this 
 year. And these Gilbert Island papers, 
 being the most interesting in matter, and 
 forming a compact whole, and being well 
 illustrated, I did think of as a possible 
 resource. 
 
 It would be called 
 
 Six Mont/is in Melanesia, 
 Two Island Kings, 
 
 Monarchies, 
 
 Gilbert Island Kings, 
 
 Monarchies, 
 
 and I daresay I '11 think of a better yet 
 and would divide thus : 
 
 Butaritari. 
 
 I. A Town asleep, 
 ii. The Three Brothers.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 137 
 
 in. Around our House. J 891 
 
 June. 
 
 iv. A Tale of a Tapu. 
 v. The Five Days' Festival, 
 vi. Domestic Life (which might 
 
 be omitted, but not well, 
 
 better be recast). 
 
 The King- of Apcmama. 
 
 vn. The Royal Traders, 
 vin. Foundation of Equator Town, 
 ix. The Palace of Mary Warren. 
 x. Equator Town and the Palace. 
 XL King and Commons, 
 xii. The Devil Work Box. 
 xin. The Three Corslets, 
 xiv. Tail piece; the Court upon a 
 
 Journey. 
 
 I wish you to watch these closely, judg- 
 ing them as a whole, and treating them as 
 I have asked you, and favour me with your 
 damnatory advice. I look up at your por- 
 trait, and it frowns upon me. You seem 
 to view me with reproach. The expres- 
 sion is excellent; Fanny wept when she
 
 138 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 saw it, and you know she is not given to 
 the melting mo9<i. She seems really 
 better; I have a touch of fever again, I 
 fancy overwork, and to-day, when I have 
 overtaken my letters, I shall blow on my 
 pipe. Tell Mrs. S. I have been playing 
 Le Chant d 1 A mour lately, and have arranged 
 it, after awful trouble, rather prettily for 
 two pipes; and it brought her before me 
 with an effect scarce short of hallucination. 
 I could hear her voice in every note; yet I 
 had forgot the air entirely, and began to 
 pipe it from notes as something new, when 
 I was brought up with a round turn by this 
 reminiscence. We are now very much 
 installed; the dining-room is done, and 
 looks lovely. Soon we shall begin to pho- 
 tograph and send you our circumstances. 
 My room is still a howling wilderness. I 
 sleep on a platform in a window, and strike 
 my mosquito bar and roll up my bedclothes 
 every morning, so that the bed becomes by 
 day a divan. A great part of the floor is 
 knee-deep in books, yet nearly all the
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 139 
 
 shelves are filled, alas! It is a place to 1891 
 
 June 
 
 make a pig recoil, yet here are my inter- 
 minable labours begun daily by lamp -light, 
 and sometimes not yet done when the lamp 
 has once more to be lighted. The effect 
 of pictures in this place is surprising. 
 They give great pleasure. 
 
 June 2ist. 
 
 A word more. I had my breakfast this 
 morning at 4.30! My new cook has beaten 
 me and (as Lloyd says) revenged all the 
 cooks in the world. I have been hunting 
 them to give me breakfast early since I was 
 twenty; and now here comes Mr. Ratke, 
 and I have to plead for mercy. I cannot 
 stand 4.30; I am a mere fevered wreck; it 
 is now half-past eight, and I can no more, 
 and four hours divide me from lunch, the 
 devil take the man! Yesterday it was 
 about 5.30, which I can stand; day before 
 5, which is bad enough; to-day, I give 
 out. It is like a London season, and as I 
 do not take a siesta once in a month, and
 
 140 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 then only five minutes, I am being worn to 
 the bones, and look aged and anxious. 
 
 We have Rider Haggard's brother here 
 as a Land Commissioner; a nice kind of a 
 fellow; indeed, all the three Land Com- 
 mssioners are very agreeable.
 
 X 
 
 Sunday, Sept. 5 (?), 1891. 
 
 MY DEAR CoLviN, 1 Yours from Loch- 1891 
 inver has just come. You ask me if I am Sept< 
 ever homesick for the Highlands and the 
 Isles. Conceive that for the last month I 
 have been living there between 1786 and 
 1850, in my grandfather's diaries and 
 letters. I Jiad to take a rest ; no use 
 talking; so I put in a month over my Lives 
 of the Stevensons with great pleasure and 
 profit and some advance; one chapter and 
 a part drafted. The whole promises well. 
 Chapter i. Domestic Annals. Capter 11. 
 The Northern Lights. Chapter in. The 
 Bell Rock. Chapter iv. A Family of 
 Boys. Chap. v. The Grandfather, vi. 
 
 1 Between this letter and the preceding, one has gone 
 astray. It was chiefly concerned with the disturbed state 
 of Samoan affairs, the threatenings of war, and the mis- 
 management of the two treaty officials.
 
 142 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 Alan Stevenson, vn. Thomas Stevenson. 
 My materials for my great-grandfather are 
 almost null ; for my grandfather copious 
 and excellent. Name, a puzzle. A Scottish 
 Family, A Family of Engineers, Northern 
 Lights, The Engineers of tJie Northern 
 Lights: A Family History. Advise; but 
 it will take long. Now, imagine if I have 
 been homesick for Barrahead and Island 
 Glass, and Kirkwall, and Cape Wrath, and 
 the Wells of the Pentland Firth; I could 
 have wept. 
 
 Now for politics. I am much less 
 alarmed; I believe the malo (=raj, govern- 
 ment) will collapse and cease like an over- 
 lain infant, without a shot fired. They 
 have now been months here on their big 
 salaries and Cedarcrantz, whom I spe- 
 cially like as a man, has done nearly noth- 
 ing, and the Baron, who is well-meaning, 
 has done worse. They have these large 
 salaries, and they have all the taxes ; they 
 have made scarce a foot of road ; they have 
 not given a single native a position all
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 143 
 
 to white men ; they have scarce laid out a 1891 
 . . Sept. 
 
 penny on Apia, and scarce a penny on 
 
 the King; they have forgot they were in 
 Samoa, or that such a thing as Samoans 
 existed, and had eyes and some intelli- 
 gence. The Chief Justice has refused to 
 pay his customs ! The President proposed 
 to have an expensive house built for him- 
 self, while the King, his master, has none! 
 I had stood aside, and been a loyal, and, 
 above all, a silent subject, up to then; but 
 now I snap my fingers at their vialo. It is 
 damned, and I 'm damned glad of it. And 
 this is not all. Last " Wainiii" when I 
 sent Fanny off to Fiji, I hear the wonder- 
 ful news that the Chief Justice is going to 
 Fiji and the Colonies to improve his mind. 
 I showed my way of thought to his guest, 
 Count Wachtmeister, whom I have sent to 
 you with a letter he will tell you all the 
 news. Well, the Chief Justice stayed, but 
 they said he was to leave yesterday. I 
 had intended to go down, and see and warn 
 him! But the President's house had come
 
 144 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 up in the meanwhile, and I let them go to 
 ept ' their doom, which I am only anxious to 
 see swiftly and (if it may be) bloodlessly 
 fall. 
 
 Thus I have in a way withdrawn my 
 unrewarded loyalty. Lloyd is down to-day 
 with Moors to call on Mataafa; the news 
 of the excursion made a considerable row 
 in Apia, and both the German and the 
 English consuls besought Lloyd not to go. 
 But he stuck to his purpose, and with my 
 approval. It 's a poor thing if people are 
 to give up a pleasure party for a malo that 
 has never done anything for us but draw 
 taxes, and is going to go pop, and leave us 
 at the mercy of the identical Mataafa, 
 whom I have not visited for more than a 
 year, and who is probably furious. 
 
 The sense of my helplessness here has 
 been rather bitter; I feel it wretched to 
 see this dance of folly and injustice and 
 unconscious rapacity go forward from day 
 to day, and to be impotent. I was not 
 consulted or only by one man, and that
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS 145 
 
 on particular points; I did not choose to 1891 
 
 Sept. 
 
 volunteer advice till some pressing occa- 
 sion ; I have not even a vote, for I am not 
 a member of the municipality. 
 
 What ails you, miserable man, to talk 
 of saving material ? I have a whole world 
 in my head, a whole new society to work, 
 but I am in no hurry; you will shortly 
 make the acquaintance of the Island of 
 Ulufanua, on which I mean to lay several 
 stories; the Bloody Wedding, possibly the 
 High Woods (Oh, it 's so good, the High 
 Woods, but the story is craziness; that's 
 the trouble,) a political story, the Labour 
 Slave, etc. Ulufanua is an imaginary 
 island; the name is a beautiful Samoan 
 word for the top of a forest; ulu leaves 
 or hair, fanua = land. The ground or 
 country of the leaves. " Ulufanua the isle 
 of the sea," read that verse dactylically and 
 you get the beat ; the it's are like our 
 double oo \ did ever you hear a prettier 
 word ? 
 
 I do not feel inclined to make a volume 
 
 VOL. I. IO
 
 146 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 of Essays, 1 but if I did, and perhaps the 
 idea is good and any idea is better than 
 South Seas here would be my choice of 
 the Scribner articles: Dreams, Beggars, 
 Lantern-Bearers, Random Memories. There 
 was a paper called the Old Pacific Capital 
 in Eraser, in Tulloch's time, which had 
 merit ; there were two on Fontainebleau 
 in the Magazine of Art in Henley's time. 
 I have no idea if they 're any good; then 
 there 's the Emigrant Train. Pnlms et 
 Umbra is in a different key, and would n't 
 hang on with the rest. 
 
 I have just interrupted my letter and 
 read through the chapter of the High 
 Woods that is written, a chapter and a bit, 
 some sixteen pages, really very fetching, 
 but what do you wish? the story is so 
 wilful, so steep, so silly it 's a hallucina- 
 tion I have outlived, and yet I never did a 
 better piece of work, horrid, and pleasing, 
 
 1 Tn reply to a suggestion which ultimately took effect 
 in the shape of the volume called Across the Plains (Chatto 
 and Windus, 1892).
 
 VATLIMA LETTERS. 147 
 
 and extraordinarily true; it 's sixteen pages * 8 9i 
 of the South Seas; their essence. What 
 am I to do? Lose this little gem for 
 I '11 be bold, and that 's what I think it 
 or go on with the rest, which I don't 
 believe in, and don't like, and which can 
 never make aught but a silly yarn? Make 
 another end to it? Ah, yes, but that 's not 
 the way I write; the whole tale is implied; 
 I never use an effect when I can help it, 
 unless it prepares the effects that are to 
 follow; that's what a story consists in. 
 To make another end, that is to make the 
 beginning all wrong. The denouement of 
 along story is nothing; it is just a "full 
 close," which you may approach and accom- 
 pany as you please it is a coda, not an 
 essential member in the rhythm ; but the 
 body and end of a short story is bone of 
 the bone and blood of the blood of the 
 beginning. Well, I shall end by finishing 
 it against my judgment ; that fragment is 
 my Delilah. Golly, it 's good. I am not 
 shining by modesty; but I do just love the
 
 148 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 colour and movement of that piece so far as 
 Sept. . 
 
 it goes. 
 
 I was surprised to hear of your fish : ng. 
 And you saw the " Pharos," 1 thrice fortun- 
 ate man; I wish I dared go home, I wouM 
 ask the Commissioners to take me round 
 for old sake's sake, and see all my family 
 pictures once more from the Mull of Gal- 
 loway to Unst. However, all is arranged 
 for our meeting in Ceylon, except the date 
 and the blooming pounds. I have heard of 
 an exquisite hotel in the country, airy, 
 large rooms, good cookery, not dear; we 
 shall have a couple of months there, if we 
 can make it out, and converse or as 
 my grandfather always said " commune. " 
 " Communings with Mr. Kennedy as to 
 Lighthouse Repairs." He was a fine old 
 fellow, but a droll. 
 
 1 The steam-yacht of the Commissioners of Northern 
 Lights, on which he had been accustomed as a lad to 
 accompany his father on the official trips of inspection 
 round the coast.
 
 VA1LIMA LETTERS. 149 
 
 Evening. 
 
 Lloyd has returned. Peace and war 1891 
 tvere played before his eyes at heads or 
 tails. A German was stopped with levelled 
 guns; he raised his whip; had it fallen, 
 we might have been now in war. Excuses 
 were made by Mataafa himself. Doubt- 
 less the thing was clone I mean the stop- 
 ping of the German a little to show off 
 
 before Lloyd. Meanwhile was up 
 
 here, telling how the Chief Justice was 
 really gone for five or eight weeks, and 
 begging me to write to the Times and 
 denounce the state of affairs; many strong 
 reasons he advanced ; and Lloyd and I have 
 been since his arrival and 's departure, 
 near half an hour, debating what should be 
 done. Cedarcrantz is gone; it is not my 
 fault; he knows my views on that point 
 alone of all points; he leaves me with 
 my mouth sealed. Yet this is a nice thing 
 that because he is guilty of a fresh offence 
 his flight the mouth of the only . 
 possible influential witness should be
 
 I5O VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 189* closed! I do not like this argument. I 
 look like a cad, if I do in the man's 
 absence what I could have done in a more 
 manly manier in his presence. True; but 
 why did he go? It is his last sin. And 
 I, who like the man extremely that is 
 the word I love his society he is intelli- 
 gent, pleasant, even witty, a gentleman 
 and you know how that attaches I loathe 
 to seem to play a base part ; but the poor 
 natives who are like other folk, false 
 enough, lazy enough, not heroes, not saints 
 ordinary men damnably misused are 
 they to suffer because I like Cedarcrantz, 
 and Cedarcrantz has cut his lucky? This 
 is a littla tragedy, observe well a tragedy ! 
 I may be right, I may be wrong in my 
 judgment, but I am in treaty with my 
 honour. I know not how it will seem to- 
 morrow. Lloyd thought the barrier of 
 honour insurmountable, and it is an ugly 
 obstacle. He (Cedarcrantz) will likely 
 meet my wife three days from now, may 
 travel back with her, will be charming if
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 151 
 
 he does; suppose this, and suppose him to '891 
 arrive and find that I have sprung a mine 
 
 or the nearest approach to it I could find 
 
 behind his back? My position is pretty. 
 Yes, I am an aristocrat. I have the old 
 petty, personal view of honour? I should 
 blush till I die if I do this; yet it is on the 
 cards that I may do it. So much I have 
 written you in bed, as a man writes, or 
 talks, in a bittrc WaJil. Now I shall sleep, 
 and see if I am more clear. I will consult 
 the missionaries at least I place some 
 reliance in M. also or I should if he 
 were not a partisan ; but a partisan he is. 
 There 's the pity. To sleep! A fund of 
 wisdom in the prostrate body and the fed 
 brain. Kindly observe R. L. S. in the 
 talons of politics! ' Tis funny 't is sad. 
 Nobody but these cursed idiots could have 
 so driven me; I cannot bear idiots. 
 
 My dear Colvin, T must go to sleep; it is 
 long past ten a dreadful hour for me. 
 And here am I lingering (so I feel) in the 
 dining-room at the Monument, talking to
 
 152 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 189! vou across the table, both on our feet, and 
 Sept. 
 
 only the two stairs to mount, and get to 
 bed, and sleep, and be waked by dear old 
 George to whom I wish my kindest 
 remembrances next morning. I look 
 round, and there is my blue room, and my 
 long lines of shelves, and the door gaping 
 on a moonless night, and no word of S. C. 
 but his twa portraits on the wall. Good- 
 bye, my dear fellow, and good-night. 
 Queer place the world ! 
 
 Monday. 
 
 No clearness of mind with the morning; 
 I have no guess what I should do. 'T is 
 easy to say that the public duty should 
 brush aside these little considerations of 
 personal dignity; so it is that politicians 
 begin, and in a month you find them rat 
 and flatter and intrigue with brows of 
 brass. I am rather of the old view, that a 
 man's first duty is to these little laws; the 
 big he does not, he never will understand; 
 I may be wrong about the Chief Justice
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 153 
 
 and the Baron and the state of Samoa; I 1891 
 
 Scot 
 cannot be wrong about the vile attitude I 
 
 put myself in if I blow the gaff on Cedar- 
 crantz behind his back. 
 
 Tuesday. 
 
 One more word about the South Seas, in 
 answer to a question I observe I have for- 
 gotten to answer. The Tahiti part has 
 never turned up, because it has never been 
 written. As for telling you where I went 
 or when, or anything about Honolulu, I 
 would rather die; that is fair and plain. 
 How can anybody care when or how I left 
 Honolulu? A man of upwards of forty 
 cannot waste his time in communicating 
 matter of that indifference. The letters, 
 it appears, are tedious; they would be 
 more tedious still if I wasted my time 
 upon such infantile and sucking-bottle 
 details. If ever I put in any such detail, 
 it is because it leads into something or 
 serves as a transition. To tell it for its 
 own sake, never! The mistake is all
 
 154 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 through that I have told too much; I had 
 not sufficient confidence in the reader, and 
 have overfed him ; and here are you anxious 
 to learn how I O Colvin ! Suppose it 
 had made a book, all such information is 
 given to one glance of an eye by a map 
 with a little dotted line upon it. But let 
 us forget this unfortunate affair. 
 
 Wednesday. 
 
 Yesterday I went down to consult Clarke, 
 who took the view of delay. Has he 
 changed his mind already? I wonder: 
 here at least is the news. Some little 
 while back some men of Manono what 
 is Manono ? a Samoan rotten borough, 
 a small isle of huge political importance, 
 heaven knows why, where a handful of 
 chiefs make half the trouble in the country. 
 Some men of Manono (which is strong 
 Mataafa) burned down the houses and de- 
 stroyed the crops of some Malietoa neigh- 
 bours. The President went there the other 
 day and landed alone on the island, which
 
 YA1LIMA LETTERS. 155 
 
 (to give him his due) was plucky. More- \$9 l 
 over, he succeeded in persuading the folks 
 to come up and be judged on a particular 
 day in Apia. That day they did not come; 
 but did come the next, and to their vast 
 surprise, were given six months' imprison- 
 ment and clapped in gaol. Those who had 
 accompanied them, cried to them on the 
 streets as they were marched to prison, 
 "Shall we rescue you? " The condemned, 
 marching in the hands of thirty men with 
 loaded rifles, cried out "No!" And the 
 trick was done. But it was ardently be- 
 lieved a rescue would be attempted; the 
 gaol was laid about with armed men day 
 and night; but there was some question of 
 their loyalty, and the commandant of the 
 forces, a very nice young beardless Swede, 
 became nervous, and conceived a plan. 
 How if he should put dynamite under the 
 gaol, and in case of an attempted rescue 
 blow up prison and all? He went to the 
 President, who agreed ; he went to the 
 American man-of-war for the dynamite
 
 156 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 and machine, was refused, and got it at 
 last from the Wreckers. The thing began 
 to leak out, and there arose a muttering in 
 town. People had no fancy for amateur 
 explosions, for one thing. For another, it 
 did not clearly appear that it was legal; the 
 men had been condemned to six months' 
 prison, which they were peaceably under- 
 going; they had not been condemned to 
 death. And lastly, it seemed a somewhat 
 advanced example of civilisation to set 
 before barbarians. The mutter in short 
 became a storm, and yesterday, while I 
 was down, a cutter was chartered, and the 
 prisoners were suddenly banished to the 
 Tokelaus. Who has changed the sentence ? 
 We are going to stir in the dynamite 
 matter; we do not want the natives to 
 fancy us consenting to such an outrage. 1 
 
 Fanny has returned from her trip, and 
 on the whole looks better. The High 
 
 1 More about this affair is to be found in the writer's 
 letters of the same date to the Times, and in his Footnote 
 to History, p. 297.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 157 
 
 Woods are under way, and their name is 1891 
 now the Beach of Falesd, and the yarn is 
 cured. I have about thirty pages of it 
 done; it will be fifty to seventy I suppose. 
 No supernatural trick at all; and escaped 
 out of it quite easily; can't think why I 
 was so stupid for so long. Mighty glad to 
 have Fanny back to this "Hell of the 
 South Seas," as the German Captain called 
 it. What will Cedarcrantz think when he 
 comes back? To do him justice, had he 
 been here, this Manono hash would not 
 have been. 
 
 Here is a pretty thing. When Fanny 
 was in Fiji all the Samoa and Toeklau 
 folks were agog about our "flash" house; 
 but the whites had never heard of it. 
 
 ROBERT Louis STEVENSON, 
 Author of The Beach of Falesd.
 
 XI 
 
 Sept. 28. 
 
 1891 MY DEAR COLVIN, Since I last laid 
 Sept< down my pen, I have written and rewritten 
 The Beach of Falesd; something like sixty 
 thousand words of sterling domestic fiction 
 (the story, you will understand, is only 
 half that length); and now I don't want to 
 write any more again for ever, or feel so; 
 and I 've got to overhaul it once again to 
 my sorrow. I was all yesterday revising, 
 and found a lot of slacknesses and (what is 
 worse in this kind of thing) some literary- 
 isms. One of the puzzles is this: It is a 
 first person story a trader telling his own 
 adventure in an island. When I began I 
 allowed myself a few liberties, because I 
 was afraid of the end ; now the end proved 
 quite easy, and could be done in the pace; 
 so the beginning remains about a quarter 
 tone out (in places); but I have rather
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 159 
 
 decided to let it stay so. The problem is ',891 
 always delicate; it is the only thing that 
 worries me in first person tales, which 
 otherwise (quo' Alan) "set better wi' my 
 genius." There is a vast deal of fact in 
 the story, and some pretty good comedy. 
 It is the first realistic South Sea story; I 
 mean with real South Sea character and 
 details of life. Everybody else who has 
 tried, that I have seen, got carried away by 
 the romance, and ended in a kind of sugar- 
 candy sham epic, and the whole effect was 
 lost there was no etching, no human 
 grin, consequently no conviction. Now I 
 have got the smell and look of the thing a 
 good deal. You will know more about the 
 South Seas after you have read my little 
 tale than if you had read a library. As 
 to whether any one else will read it, I 
 have no guess. I am in an off time, but 
 there is just the possibility it might make 
 a hit ; for the yarn is good and melodra- 
 matic, and there is quite a love affair for 
 me; and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator) is a
 
 I6O VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 huge lark, though I say it. But there is 
 always the exotic question, and everything, 
 the life, the place, the dialects trader's 
 talk, which is a strange conglomerate of 
 literary expressions and English and 
 American slang, and Beach de Mar, or 
 native English, the very trades and 
 hopes and fears of the characters, are all 
 novel, and may be found unwelcome to 
 that great, hulking, bullering whale, the 
 public. 
 
 Since I wrote, I have been likewise 
 drawing up a document to send it to the 
 President; it has been dreadfully delayed, 
 not by me, but to-day they swear it will be 
 sent in. A list of questions about the 
 dynamite report are herein laid before him, 
 and considerations suggested why he should 
 answer. 
 
 October $th. 
 
 Ever since my last snatch I have been 
 much chivied about over the President 
 business; his answer has come, and is an 
 evasion accompanied with schoolboy inso-
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. l6l 
 
 lencc, and we are going to try to answer 1891 
 it. I drew my answer and took it down 
 yesterday; but one of the signatories wants 
 another paragraph added, which I have not 
 yet been able to draw, and as to the wisdom 
 of which I am not yet convinced. 
 
 A T cxt day, Oct. 7th, the right day. 
 
 We are all in rather a muddled state 
 with our President affair. I do loathe 
 politics, but at the same time, I cannot 
 stand by and have the natives blown in the 
 air treacherously with dynamite. They 
 are still quiet; how long this may continue 
 I do not know, though of course by mere 
 prescription the Government is strength- 
 ened, and is probably insured till the next 
 taxes fall due. But the unpopularity of 
 the whites is growing. My native over- 
 seer, the great Henry Simele, announced 
 to-day that he was " weary of whites upon 
 the beach. All too proud," said this vera- 
 cious witness. One of the proud ones had 
 threatened yesterday to cut off his head 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 1 62 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 w ith a bush knife ! These are " native out- 
 rages ; " honour bright, and setting theft 
 aside, in which the natives are active, this 
 is the main stream of irritation. The 
 natives are generally courtly, far from 
 always civil, but really gentle, and with a 
 strong sense of honour of their own, and 
 certainly quite as much civilised as our 
 dynamiting President. 
 
 We shall be delighted to see Kipling. 1 
 I go to bed usually about half-past eight, 
 and my lamp is out before ten ; I breakfast 
 at six. We may say roughly we have no 
 soda water on the island, and just now 
 truthfully no whisky. I have heard the 
 chimes at midnight; now no more, I guess. 
 But Fanny and I, as soon as we can get 
 coins for it, are coming to Europe, not to 
 England: I am thinking of Royat. Bar 
 wars. If not, perhaps the Apennines 
 might give us a mountain refuge for two 
 
 1 Mr. Rudyard Kipling was at this time planning; a trip 
 to Samoa, hut the plan was unfortunately not carried out, 
 and he and Stenvenson never met.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 163 
 
 months or three in summer. How is that 1891 
 
 Oct. 
 
 for high ? But the money must be all in 
 hand first. 
 
 October \yh, 
 
 How am I to describe my life these last 
 few days ? I have been wholly swallowed 
 up in politics, a wretched business, with 
 fine elements of farce in it too, which repay 
 a man in passing, involving many dark and 
 many moonlight rides, secret councils 
 which are at once divulged, sealed letters 
 which are read aloud in confidence to the 
 neighbours, and a mass of fudge and fun, 
 which would have driven me crazy ten 
 years ago, and now makes me smile. 
 
 On Friday, Henry came and told us he 
 must leave and go to "my poor old family 
 in Savaii;" why? I do not quite know 
 but I suspect to be tattooed if so, then 
 probably to be married, and we shall see 
 him no more. I told him he must do what 
 he thought his duty; we had him to lunch, 
 drank his health, and he and I rode down 
 about twelve. When I got down, I sent
 
 164 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 rny horse back to help bring down the 
 family later. My own afternoon was cut 
 out for me ; my last draft for the President 
 had been objected to by some of the signa- 
 tories. I stood out, and one of our small 
 number accordingly refused to sign. Him 
 I had to go and persuade, which went off 
 very well after the first hottish moments; 
 you have no idea how stolid my temper is 
 now. By about five the thing was done; 
 and we sat down to dinner at the China- 
 man's the Verrey or Doyen's of Apia 
 G. and I at each end as hosts; G. 's wife 
 Fanua, late maid of the village; her 
 (adopted) father and mother, Seumanu and 
 Faatulia, Fanny, Belle, Lloyd, Austin, 
 and Henry Simele", his last appearance. 
 Henry was in a kilt of gray shawl, with a 
 blue jacket, white shirt and black necktie, 
 and looked like a dark genteel guest in a 
 Highland shooting-box. Seumanu (oppo- 
 site Fanny, next G. ) is chief of Apia, a 
 rather big gun in this place, looking like a 
 large, fatted, military Englishman, bar the
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 1 65 
 
 colour. Faatulia, next me, is a bigger chief l8 9! 
 than her husband. Henry is a chief too 
 his chief name, liga (Ee-eeng-a), he has 
 not yet "taken" because of his youth. 
 We were in fine society, and had a pleasant 
 meal-time, with lots of fun. Then to the 
 Opera I beg your pardon, I mean the 
 Circus. We occupied the first row in 
 the reserved seats, and there in the row 
 behind were all our friends Captain Foss 
 and his Captain- Lieutenant, three of the 
 American officers, very nice fellows, the 
 Dr., etc., so we made a fine show of what 
 an embittered correspondent of the local 
 paper called "the shoddy aristocracy of 
 Apia;" and you should have seen how we 
 carried on, and how I clapped, and Captain 
 Foss hollered " tvnndcrscJion ! " and threw 
 himself forward in his seat, and how we 
 all in fact enjoyed ourselves like school- 
 children, Austin not a shade more than his 
 neighbours. Then the Circus broke up, and 
 the party went home, but I stayed down, 
 having business on the morrow.
 
 1 66 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 Yesterday, October I2th, great news 
 reaches me, and Lloyd and I, with the 
 mail just coming in, must leave all, saddle, 
 and ride down. True enough, the Presi- 
 dent had resigned ! Sought to resign his 
 presidency of the council, and keep his 
 advisership to the King; given way to the 
 Consul's objections and resigned all then 
 fell out with them about the disposition of 
 the funds, and was now trying to resign 
 from his resignation ! Sad little President, 
 so trim to look at, and I believe so kind to 
 his little wife! Not only so, but I meet 
 D. on the beach. D. calls me in consulta- 
 tion, and we make with infinite difficulty a 
 draft of a petition to the King. . . . Then 
 to dinner at M.'s, a very merry meal, 
 interrupted before it was over by the 
 arrival of the committee. Slight sketch 
 of procedure agreed upon, self-appointed 
 spokesman, and the deputation sets off. 
 Walk all through Matafele, all along 
 Mulinuu, come to the King's house; he 
 has verbally refused to see us in answer to
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. l6/ 
 
 our letter, swearing he is gase-gase (chief- 
 sickness, not common man's), and indeed 
 we see him inside in bed. It is a miserable 
 low house, better houses by the dozen in 
 the little hamlet (Tanugamanono) of bush- 
 men on our way to Vailima; and the 
 President's house in process of erection 
 just opposite ! We are told to return to- 
 morrow ; I refuse ; and at last we are very 
 sourly received, sit on the mats, and I 
 open out, through a very poor interpreter, 
 and sometimes hampered by unacceptable 
 counsels from my backers. I can speak 
 fairly well in a plain way now. C. asked 
 me to write out my harangue for him this 
 morning; I have clone so, and couldn't get 
 it near as good. I suppose (talking and 
 interpreting) I was twenty minutes or half- 
 an-hour on the deck; then his majesty 
 replied in the dying whisper of a big chief; 
 a few words of rejoinder (approving), and 
 the deputation withdrew, rathsr well 
 satisfied. 
 
 A few days ago this intervention would
 
 1 68 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9! have been a deportable offence; not now, 
 
 Oct. 
 
 I bet; I would like them to try. A litile 
 
 way back along Mulinuu, Mrs. G. met us 
 with her husband's horse; and he and she 
 and Lloyd and I rode back in a heavenly 
 moonlight. Here ends a chapter in the 
 life of an island politician ! Catch me at 
 it again; 't is easy to go in, but it is not a 
 pleasant trade. I have had a good team, 
 as good as I could get on the beach ; but 
 what trouble even so, and what fresh 
 troubles shaping. But I have on the whole 
 carried all my points; I believe all but 
 one, and on that (which did not concern 
 me) I had no right to interfere. I am sure 
 you would be amazed if you knew what a 
 good hand I am at keeping my temper, 
 talking people over, and giving reasons 
 which are not my reasons, but calculated 
 for the meridian of the particular objec- 
 tion ; so soon does falsehood await the 
 politician in his whirling path.
 
 XII 
 
 Monday, October 2 
 
 MY DEAR CARTHEW, 1 See what I have l8 9* 
 
 Oct. 
 written, but it 's Colvin I 'm after I have 
 
 written two chapters, about thirty pages of 
 Wrecker since the mail left, which must be 
 my excuse, and the bother I 've had with it 
 is not to be imagined; you might have 
 seen me the day before yesterday weighing 
 British sov. 's and Chili dollars to arrange 
 my treasure chest. And there was such a 
 calculation, not for that only, but for the 
 ship's position and distances when but I 
 am not going to tell you the yarn and 
 then, as my arithmetic is particularly lax, 
 Lloyd had to go over all my calculations; 
 and then, as I had changed the amount of 
 money, he had to go over all Jiis as to the 
 
 1 Readers of the Wrecker will not need to be reminded 
 that this is the name of the personage on whom the mystery 
 in that story hinges.
 
 I/O VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 amount of the lay; and altogether, a bank 
 could be run with less effusion of figures 
 than it took to shore up a single chapter of 
 a measly yarn. However, it 's done, and I 
 have but one more, or at the outside, two 
 to do, and I am Free! and can do any 
 damn thing I like. 
 
 Before falling on politics, I shall give 
 you my day. Awoke somewhere about the 
 first peep of day, came gradually to, and 
 had a turn on the verandah before 5.55, 
 when "the child" (an enormous Wallis 
 Islander) brings me an orange ; at 6, break- 
 fast; 6.10, to work; which lasts till, at 
 10. 30, Austin comes for his history lecture ; 
 this is rather dispiriting, but education 
 must be gone about in faith and charity, 
 both of which pretty nigh failed me to-day 
 about (of all things) Carthage; n, lunch- 
 eon; after luncheon in my mother's room, 
 I read Chapter XXIII. of The Wrecker, 
 then Belle, Lloyd, and I go up and make 
 music furiously till about 2 (I suppose), 
 when I turn into work again till 4; fool
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. I/ 1 
 
 from 4 to half-past, tired out and waiting 1891 
 for the bath hour; 4.30, bath; 4.40, eat 
 two heavenly mangoes on the verandah, 
 and see the boys arrive with the pack- 
 horses; 5, dinner; smoke, chat on verandah, 
 then hand of cards, and at last at 8 come 
 up to my room with a pint of beer and a 
 hard biscuit, which I am now consuming, 
 and as soon as they are consumed I shall 
 turn in. 
 
 Such are the innocent days of this 
 ancient and outworn sportsman; to-day 
 there was no weeding, usually there is 
 however, edged in somewhere. My books 
 for the moment are a crib to Phseclo, and 
 the second book of Montaigne ; and a 
 little while back I was reading Frederic 
 Harrison, "Choice of Books," etc. very 
 good indeed, a great deal of sense and 
 knowledge in the volume, and some very 
 true stuff, contra Carlyle, about the eigh- 
 teenth century. A hideous idea came over 
 me that perhaps Harrison is now getting 
 old. Perhaps you are. Perhaps I am.
 
 1/2 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9* Oh, this infidelity must be stared firmly 
 down. I am about twenty-three say 
 twenty-eight; you about thirty, or, by 'r 
 lady, thirty-four; and as Harrison belongs 
 to the same generation, there is no good 
 bothering about him. 
 
 Here has just been a fine alert; I gave 
 my wife a dose of chlorodyne. "Some- 
 thing wrong," says she. "Nonsense," said 
 I. " Embrocation," said she. I smelt it, 
 and it smelt very funny. " I think it 's 
 just gone bad, and to-morrow will tell. " 
 Proved to be so. 
 
 Wednesday. 
 
 History of Tuesday. Woke at usual 
 time, very little work, for I was tired, and 
 had a job for the evening to write parts 
 for a new instrument, a violin. Lunch, 
 chat, and up to my place to practise; but 
 there was no practising for me my 
 flageolet was gone wrong, and I had to 
 take it all to pieces, clean it, and put it up 
 again. As this is a most intricate job 
 the thing dissolves into seventeen separate
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. I/J 
 
 members, most of these have to be fitted ^91 
 
 Oct. 
 
 on their individual springs as fine as 
 needles, and sometimes two at once with 
 the springs shoving different ways it 
 took me till two. Then Lloyd and I rode 
 forth on our errands; first to Motootua, 
 where we had a really instructive conver- 
 sation on weeds and grasses. Thence 
 down to Apia, where we bought a fresh 
 bottle of chlorodyne and conversed on 
 politics. 
 
 My visit to the King, which I thought 
 at the time a particularly nugatory and 
 even schoolboy step, and only consented to 
 because I had held the reins so tight over 
 my little band before, has raised a deuce 
 of a row new proclamation, no one is 
 to interview the sacred puppet without 
 consuls' permission, two days' notice, and 
 an approved interpreter read (I suppose) 
 spy. Then back; I should have said I 
 was trying the new horse ; a tallish piebald, 
 bought from the circus ; he proved steady 
 and safe, but in very bad condition, and
 
 174 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 not so much the wild Arab steed of the 
 desert as had been supposed. The height 
 of his back, after commodious Jack, 
 astonished me, and I had a great conscious- 
 ness of exercise and florid action, as I 
 posted to his long, emphatic trot. We had 
 to ride back easy ; even so he was hot and 
 blown ; and when we set a boy to lead him 
 to and fro, our last character for sanity 
 perished. We returned just neat for 
 dinner; and in the evening our violinist 
 arrived, a young lady, no great virtuoso 
 truly, but plucky, industrious, and a good 
 reader; and we played five pieces with 
 huge amusement, and broke up at nine. 
 This morning I have read a splendid piece 
 of Montaigne, written this page of letter, 
 and now turn to the Wrecker. 
 
 Wednesday November i6th or i/th 
 and I am ashamed to say mail day. The 
 Wrecker is finished, that is the best of my 
 news; it goes by this mail to Scribner's; 
 and I honestly think it a good yarn on the 
 whole and of its measly kind. The part
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 175 
 
 that is genuinely good is Nares, the l8 9' 
 American sailor; that is a genuine figure; 
 had there been more Nares it would have 
 been a better book; but of course it did n't 
 set up to be a book, only a long tough yarn 
 with some pictures of the manners of to- 
 day in the greater world not the shoddy 
 sham world of cities, clubs, and colleges, 
 but the world where men still live a man's 
 life. The worst of my news is the in- 
 fluenza; Apia is devastate; the shops 
 closed, a ball put off, etc. As yet we 
 have not had it at Vailima, and who knows? 
 we may escape. None of us go down, but 
 of course the boys come and go. 
 
 Your letter had the most wonderful " I 
 told you so " I ever heard in the course of 
 my life. Why, you madman, I would n't 
 change my present installation for any 
 post, dignity, honour, or advantage conceiv- 
 able to me. It fills the bill ; I have the 
 loveliest time. And as for wars and 
 rumours of war, you surely know enough of 
 me to be aware that I like that also a thon-
 
 176 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 sand times better than decrepit peace in 
 Middlesex? I do not quite like politics; 
 I am too aristocratic, I fear, for that. 
 God knows I don't care who I chum with; 
 perhaps like sailors best; but to go round 
 and sue and sneak to keep a crowd together 
 never. My imagination, which is not 
 the least damped by the idea of having my 
 head cut off in the bush, recoils aghast 
 from the idea of a life like Gladstone's, 
 and the shadow of the newspaper chills me 
 to the bone. Hence my late eruption was 
 interesting, but not what I like. All else 
 suits me in this (killed a mosquito) Ai 
 abode. 
 
 About politics. A determination was 
 come to by the President that he had been 
 an idiot; emissaries came to G. and me to 
 kiss and be friends. My man proposed I 
 should have a personal interview ; I said it 
 was quite useless, I had nothing to say; I 
 had offered him the chance to inform me, 
 had pressed it on him, and had been very 
 unpleasantly received, and now "Time
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. I// 
 
 was. " Then it was decided that I was to 1891 
 be made a culprit against Germany; the 
 German Captain a delightful fellow and 
 our constant visitor wrote to say that as 
 "a German officer" he could not come 
 even to say farewell. We all wrote back 
 in the most friendly spirit, telling him 
 (politely) that some of these days he would 
 be sorry, and we should be delighted to 
 see our friend again. Since then I have 
 seen no German shadow. 
 
 Mataafa has been proclaimed a rebel ; the 
 President did this act, and then resigned. 
 By singular good fortune, Mataafa has not 
 yet moved; no thanks to our idiot gov- 
 ernors. They have shot their bolt; they 
 have made a rebel of the only man (to their 
 own knowledge, on the report of their oivn 
 spy) who held the rebel party in check; 
 and having thus called on war to fall, they 
 can do no more, sit equally "expertes" of 
 vis and counsel, regarding their handi- 
 work. It is always a cry with these folk 
 that he (Mataafa) had no ammunition. I
 
 1/8 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 always said it would be found ; and we 
 
 Oct. 
 
 know of five boat-loads that have found 
 their way to Malie already. Where there 
 are traders, there will be ammunition; 
 aphorism by R. L. S. 
 
 Now what am I to do next? 
 
 Lives of the Stevensons? Historia 
 Samoa? A History for Children? Fiction? 
 I have had two hard months at fiction; 
 I want a change. Stevensons ? I am 
 expecting some more material ; perhaps 
 better wait. Samoa; rather tempting; 
 might be useful to the islands and to 
 me; for it will be written in admirable 
 temper; I have never agreed with any 
 party, and see merits and excuses in all ; 
 should do it (if I did) very slackly and 
 easily, as if half in conversation. History 
 for Children? This flows from my lessons 
 to Austin; no book is any good. The best 
 I have seen is Freeman's Old English 
 History ; but his style is so rasping, and a 
 child can learn more, if he's clever. I 
 found my sketch of general Aryan History,
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 179 
 
 given in conversation, to have been prac- 1891 
 tically correct at least what I mean is, 
 Freeman had very much the same stuff in 
 his early chapters, only not so much, and 
 I thought not so well placed; and the child 
 remembered some of it. Now the difficulty 
 is to give this general idea of main place, 
 growth, and movement; it is needful to 
 tack it on a yarn. Now Scotch is the only 
 History I know; it is the only history 
 reasonably represented in my library; it is 
 a very good one for my purpose, owing to 
 LVVO civilisations having been face to face 
 throughout or rather Roman civilisation 
 face to face with our ancient barbaric life 
 and government, down to yesterday, to 
 1750 anyway. But the Talcs of a Grand- 
 father stand in my way; I am teaching 
 them to Austin now, and they have all 
 Scott's defects and all Scott's hopeless 
 merit. I cannot compete with that ; and 
 yet, so far as regards teaching History, 
 how he has missed his chances ! I think 
 I '11 try; I really have some historic sense,
 
 ISO VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 189* I feel that in my bones. Then there 's 
 Oct. . 
 
 another thing. Scott never knew the 
 
 Highlands; he was always a Borderer. 
 He has missed that whole, long, strange, 
 pathetic story of our savages, and, besides, 
 his style is not very perspicuous to child- 
 hood. Gad, I think I '11 have a flutter. 
 Buridan's Ass! Whether to go, what to 
 attack. Must go to other letters; shall 
 add to this, if I have time.
 
 XIII 
 
 A T ov. zfyh, 1891. 
 
 MY DEAR COLVIX, MY DEAR COLVIN. l8 9* 
 
 Nov 
 
 I wonder how often I 'in going to write it. 
 In spite of the loss of three days, as I have 
 to tell, and a lot of weeding and cacao 
 planting, I have finished since the mail 
 left four chapters, forty-eight pages of my 
 Samoa history. It is true that the first 
 three had been a good deal drafted two 
 years ago, but they had all to be written 
 and re-written, and the fourth chapter is 
 all new. Chapter I. Elements of Discord 
 Native. II. Elements of Discord 
 Foreign. III. The Success of Eaupepa. 
 IV. Brandeis. V. Will probably be called 
 "The Rise of Mataafa. " VI. Furor Con- 
 sularis a devil of a long chapter. VII 
 Stuebel the Pacificator. VIII. Govern- 
 ment under the Treaty of Berlin. IX. 
 Practical Suggestions. Say three-sixths of
 
 182 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 it are done, maybe more ; by this mail five 
 chapters should go, and that should be a 
 good half of it; say sixty pages. And if 
 you consider that I sent by last mail the 
 end of the Wrecker, coming on for seventy 
 or eighty pages, and the mail before that 
 the entire Tale of the Beach of Falscd, I do 
 not think I can be accused of idleness. 
 This is my season ; I often work six and 
 seven, and sometimes eight hours ; and the 
 same day I am perhaps weeding or planting 
 for an hour or two more and I dare say 
 you know what hard work weeding is 
 and it all agrees with me at this time of 
 the year like like idleness, if a man of 
 my years could be idle. 
 
 My first visit to Apia was a shock to 
 me; every second person the ghost of him- 
 self, and the place reeking with infection. 
 But I have not got the thing yet, and hope 
 to escape. This shows how much stronger 
 I am ; think of me flitting through a town 
 of influenza patients seemingly unscathed. 
 We are all on the cacao planting.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 183 
 
 The next day my wife and I rode over 
 to the German plantation, Vailele, whose 
 manager is almost the only German left to 
 speak to us. Seventy labourers down with 
 influenza! It is a lovely ride, half-way 
 clown our mountain towards Apia, then 
 turn to the right, ford the river, and three 
 miles of solitary grass and cocoa palms, to 
 where the sea beats and the wild wind 
 blows unceasingly about the plantation 
 house. On the way down Fanny said, 
 " Now w r hat would you do if you saw 
 Colvin coming up?" 
 
 Next day we rode down to Apia to make 
 calls. 
 
 Yesterday the mail came, and the fat was 
 in the fire. 
 
 Book. 1 All right I must say I like 
 your order. And the papers are some of 
 them up to dick, and no mistake. I agree 
 
 1 Across the Plains. The papers specially referred to 
 in the next lines are those written at Saranac Lake in the 
 winter of 1887-8, including A Letter to a Young Gentleman, 
 Pulvis et Umbra, A Christmas Sermon.
 
 1 84 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 with you the lights seem a little turned 
 down. The truth is, I was far through (if 
 you understand Scots), and came none too 
 soon to the South Seas, where I was to 
 recover peace of body and mind. No man 
 but myself knew all my bitterness in those 
 days. Remember that, the next time you 
 think I regret my exile. And however 
 low the lights are, the stuff is true, and I 
 believe the more effective; after all, what 
 I wish to fight is the best fought by a 
 rather cheerless presentation of the truth. 
 The world must return some day to the 
 word duty, and be done with the word re- 
 ward. There are no rewards, and plenty 
 duties. And the sooner a man sees that 
 and acts upon it like a gentleman or a fine 
 old barbarian, the better for himself. 
 
 There is my usual puzzle about pub- 
 lishers. Chatto ought to have it, as he 
 has all the other essays; these all belong 
 to me, and Chatto publishes on terms. 
 Longman has forgotten the terms we are 
 on ; let him look up our first correspon-
 
 VAILIMA LE'ITERS. 1 8$ 
 
 dence, and he will see I reserved explicitly, ^9* 
 as was my habit, the right to republish as 
 I choose. Had the same arrangement with 
 Henley, Magazine of Art, and with Tulloch, 
 Eraser's. For any necessary note or 
 preface, it would be a real service if you 
 would undertake the duty yourself. I 
 should love a preface by you, as short or 
 as long as you choose, three sentences, 
 thirty pages, the thing I should like is 
 your name. And the excuse of my great 
 distance seems sufficient. I shall return 
 with this the sheets corrected as far as I 
 have them; the rest I will leave, if ycu 
 will, to you entirely; let it be your book, 
 and disclaim what you dislike in the 
 preface. You can say it was at my eager 
 prayer. I should say I am the less willing 
 to pass Chatto over, because he behaved 
 the other day in a very handsome manner. 
 He asked leave to reprint Damicn; I gave 
 it to him as a present, explaining I could 
 receive no emolument for a personal attack. 
 And he took out my share of profits, and
 
 1 86 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9* sent them in my name to the Leper Fund. 
 
 Nov. 
 
 I could not bear after that to take from 
 him any of that class of books which I 
 have always given him. Tell him the same 
 terms will do, Clark to print, uniform with 
 the others. 
 
 I have lost all the days since this letter 
 began re-handling Chapter IV. of the 
 Samoa racket. I do not go in for litera- 
 ture; address myself to sensible people 
 rather than to sensitive. And, indeed, it 
 is a kind of journalism, I have no right to 
 dally; if it is to help, it must come soon. 
 In two months from now it shall be done, 
 and should be published in the course of 
 March. I propose Cassell gets it. I am 
 going to call it "A Footnote to History: 
 Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa," I 
 believe. I recoil from serious names; 
 they seem so much too pretentious for a 
 pamphlet. It will be about the size of 
 Treasure Island, I believe. Of course, as 
 you now know, my case of conscience 
 cleared itself off, and I began my interven-
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 1 87 
 
 tion directly to one of the parties. The 
 other, the Chief Justice, I am to inform of 
 my book the first occasion. God knows if 
 the book will do any good or harm ; but 
 I judge it right to try. There is one man's 
 life certainly involved ; and it may be all 
 our lives. I must not stand and slouch, 
 but do my best as best I can. But you 
 may conceive the difficulty of a history 
 extending to the present week, at least, 
 and where almost all the actors upon all 
 sides are of my personal acquaintance. 
 The only way is to judge slowly, and write 
 boldly, and leave the issue to fate. ... I 
 am far indeed from wishing to confine 
 myself to creative work ; that is a loss, the 
 other repairs; the one chance for a man, 
 and, above all, for one who grows elderly, 
 ahem, is to vary drainage and repair. That 
 is the one thing I understand the culti- 
 vation of the shallow sohim of my brain. 
 But I would rather, from soon on, be 
 released from the obligation to write. 
 In five or six years this plantation
 
 1 88 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 x suppose it and us still to exist should 
 Dec. 
 
 pretty well support us and pay wages; 
 not before, and already the six years 
 seem long to me. If literature were but 
 a pastime! 
 
 I have interrupted myself to write the 
 necessary notification to the Chief Justice. 
 
 I see in looking up Longman's letter 
 that it was as usual the letter of an obli- 
 ging gentleman ; so do not trouble him with 
 my reminder. I wish all my publishers 
 were not so nice. And I have a fourth and 
 a fifth baying at my heels; but for these, 
 of course, they must go wanting. 
 
 Dec, 2nd. 
 
 No answer from the Chief Justice, which 
 is like him, but surely very wrong in such 
 a case. The lunch bell ! I have been off 
 work, playing patience and weeding all 
 morning. Yesterday and the day before I 
 drafted eleven and revised nine pages of 
 Chapter V., and the truth is, I was extinct 
 by lunch-time, and played patience sourly
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 189 
 
 the rest of the day. To-morrow or next 1891 
 
 Dec. 
 day I hope to go in again and win. Lunch 
 
 2nd Bell. 
 
 Dec. 2nd, afternoon. 
 
 I have kept up the idleness ; blew on the 
 pipe to Belle's piano; then had a ride in 
 the forest all by my nainsel; back and 
 piped again, and now dinner nearing. 
 Take up this sheet with nothing to say. 
 The weird figure of Faauma is in the room 
 washing my windows, in a black lavalava 
 (kilt) with a red handkerchief hanging from 
 round her neck between her breasts; not 
 another stitch ; her hair close cropped and 
 oiled ; when she first came here she was an 
 angelic little stripling, but she is now in 
 full flower or half-flower and grows 
 buxom. As I write, I hear her wet cloth 
 moving and grunting with some industry; 
 for I had a word this day with her husband 
 on the matter of work and meal-time, when 
 she is always late. And she has a vague 
 reverence for Papa, as she and her enor- 
 mous husband address me when anything
 
 IQO VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 is wrong. Her husband is Lafaele, some- 
 times called the archangel, of whom I have 
 writ you often. Rest of our household, 
 Talolo, cook; Pulu, kitchen boy, good, 
 steady, industrious lads; Henry, back 
 again from Savaii, where his love affair 
 seems not to have prospered, with what 
 looks like a spear-wound in the back of his 
 head, of which Mr. Reticence says noth- 
 ing; Simi, Manuele, and two other labourers 
 out-doors. Lafaele is provost of the live- 
 stock, whereof now, three milk-cows, one 
 bull-calf, one heifer, Jack, Macfarlane, the 
 mare, Harold, Tifaga Jack, Donald and 
 Edinburgh seven horses O, and the 
 stallion eight horses; five cattle; total, 
 if my arithmetic be correct, thirteen head 
 of beasts; I don't know how the pigs 
 stand, or the ducks, or the chickens; but 
 we get a good many eggs, and now and 
 again a duckling or a chickling for the 
 table; the pigs are more solemn, and 
 appear only on birthdays and sich.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 19! 
 
 Monday, Dec. 7. 
 
 On Friday morning about eleven 1500 1891 
 cacao seeds arrived, and we set to and 
 toiled from twelve that day to six, and 
 went to bed pretty tired. Next day I got 
 about an hour and a half at my History, 
 and was at it again by 8. 10, and except an 
 hour for lunch kept at it till four p. M. 
 Yesterday, I did some History in the 
 morning, and slept most of the afternoon ; 
 and to-day, being still averse from physical 
 labour, and the mail drawing nigh, drew out 
 of the squad, and finished for press the 
 fifth chapter of my History; fifty-nine 
 pages in one month; which (you will allow 
 me to say) is a devil of a large order; it 
 means at least 177 pages of writing; 89,000 
 words ! and hours going to and fro among 
 my notes. However, this is the way it has 
 to be done; the job must be done fast, or 
 it is of no use. And it is a curious yarn. 
 Honestly, I think people should be amused 
 and convinced, if they could be at the 
 pains to look at such a damned outlandish
 
 IQ2 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 piece of machinery, which of course they 
 won't. And much I care. 
 
 When I was filling baskets all Saturday, 
 in my dull mulish way, perhaps the slowest 
 worker there, surely the most particular, 
 and the only one that never looked up or 
 knocked off, I could not but think I should 
 have been sent on exhibition as an example 
 to young literary men. Here is how to 
 learn to write, might be the motto. You 
 should have seen us; the verandah was like 
 an Irish bog; our hands and faces were 
 bedaubed with soil ; and Faauma was sup- 
 posed to have struck the right note when 
 she remarked (apropos of nothing), "Too 
 much eleele (soil) for me!" The cacao 
 (you must understand) has to be planted at 
 first in baskets of plaited cocoa-leaf. From 
 four to ten natives were plaiting these in 
 the wood-shed. Four boys were digging 
 up soil and bringing it by the boxful to 
 the verandah. Lloyd and I and Belle, and 
 sometimes S. (who came to bear a hand), 
 were filling the baskets, removing stones
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 193 
 
 and lumps of clay; Austin and Faauma 1891 
 
 Dec. 
 carried them when full to Fanny, who 
 
 planted a seed in each, and then set them, 
 packed close, in the corners of the verandah. 
 From twelve on Friday till five p. M. on 
 Saturday we planted the first 1500, and 
 more than 700 of a second lot. You can- 
 not dream how filthy we were, and we were 
 all properly tired. They are all at it 
 again to-day, bar Belle and me, not re- 
 quired, and glad to be out of it. The Chief 
 Justice has not yet replied, and I have 
 news that he received my letter. What a 
 man ! 
 
 I have gone crazy over Bourget's Sensa- 
 tions d'ltalie; hence the enclosed dedica- 
 tion, 1 a mere cry of gratitude for the best 
 fun I 've had over a new book this ever so! 
 
 1 For the volume Across the Plains.
 
 XIV 
 
 Tuesday, Dec. 1891. 
 
 l8 9i SIR, I have the honour to report further 
 
 Dec. 
 
 explorations of the course of the river 
 Vaea, with accompanying sketch plan. 
 The party under my command consisted of 
 one horse, and was extremely insubordinate 
 and mutinous, owing to not being used to 
 go into the bush, and being half-broken 
 anyway and that the wrong half. The 
 route indicated for my party was up the 
 bed of the so-called river Vaea, which I 
 accordingly followed to a distance of per- 
 haps two or three furlongs eastward from 
 the house of Vailima, where the stream 
 being quite dry, the bush thick, and the 
 ground very difficult, I decided to leave 
 the main body of the force unaer my com- 
 mand tied to a tree, and push on myself 
 with the point of the advance guard, con- 
 sisting of one man. The valley had
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 195 
 
 become very narrow and airless; foliage 1891 
 close shut above; dry bed of the stream 
 much excavated, so that I passed under 
 fallen trees without stooping. Suddenly 
 
 - 
 
 u A > ' 
 
 < ^**u&r>----t-i-. 
 
 it turned sharply to the north, at right 
 angles to its former direction ; I heard 
 living water, and came in view of a tall 
 face of rock and the stream spraying down
 
 196 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 it; it might have been climbed, but it 
 would have been dangerous, and I had to 
 make my way up the steep earth banks, 
 where there is nowhere any footing for 
 man, only for trees, which made the rounds 
 of my ladder. I was near the top of this 
 climb, which was very hot and steep, and 
 the pulses were buzzing all over my body, 
 when I made sure there was one external 
 sound in my ears, and paused to listen. 
 No mistake; a sound of a mill-wheel 
 thundering, I thought, close by, yet below 
 me, a huge mill-wheel, yet not going 
 steadily, but with a scliottiscJie movement, 
 and at each fresh impetus shaking the 
 mountain. There, where I was, I just put 
 down the sound to the mystery of the bush ; 
 where no sound now surprises me and 
 any sound alarms; I only thought it would 
 give Jack a fine fright, down where he 
 stood tied to a tree by himself, and he was 
 badly enough scared when I left him. The 
 good folks at home identified it ; it was a 
 sharp earthquake.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 197 
 
 At the top of the climb I made my way ^9* 
 again to the water-course; it is here run- 
 ning steady and pretty full; strange these 
 intermittencies and just a little below 
 the main stream is quite dry, and all the 
 original brook has gone down some lava 
 gallery of the mountain and just a little 
 further below, it begins picking up from the 
 left hand in little boggy tributaries, and 
 in the inside of a hundred yards has grown 
 a brook again. l The general course of the 
 
 1 As to this peculiar intermittency of the Samoan 
 streams, full in their upper course, but below in many 
 places dry or lost, compare the late Lord Pembroke's 
 SoutJi Sea Bubbles, p. 212: "One odd thing connected 
 with these ravines is the fact that the higher you go the 
 more water you find. Unlike the Thames, which begins, 
 I believe, in half a mile of dusty lane, and expands in its 
 brimming breadth as it approaches the sea, a Samoan 
 stream begins in bubbling plenty and ends in utter drought 
 a mile or two from the salt water. Gradually as you as- 
 cend you become more and more hopeful ; moist patches 
 of sand appear here and there, then tiny pools that a fallen 
 leaf might cover, then larger ones with little thread-like 
 runs of water between them : larger and larger, till at last 
 you reach some hard ledge of trap, over which a glorious 
 stream gurgles and splashes into a pool ample enough for 
 the bath of an elephant."
 
 198 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 r brook was, I guess, S. E. ; the valley still 
 very deep and whelmed in wood. It 
 seemed a swindle to have made so sheer a 
 climb and still find yourself at the bottom 
 of a well. But gradually the thing seemed 
 to shallow, the trees to seem poorer and 
 smaller; I could see more and more of the 
 silver sprinkles of sky among the foliage, 
 instead of the sombre piling up of tree 
 behind tree. And here I had two scares 
 first, away up on my right-hand I heard 
 a bull low; I think it was a bull from the 
 quality of the low, which was singularly 
 songful and beautiful; the bulls belong to 
 me, but how did I know that the bull was 
 aware of that ? and my advance guard not 
 being at all properly armed, we advanced 
 with great precaution until I was satisfied 
 that I was passing eastward of the enemy. 
 It was during this period that a pool of the 
 river suddenly boiled up in my face in a 
 little fountain. It was in a very dreary, 
 marshy part among dilapidated trees that 
 you see through holes in the trunks of;
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 199 
 
 and if any kind of beast or elf or devil had l8 9 J 
 
 Dec. 
 come out of that sudden silver ebullition, 
 
 I declare I do not think I should have 
 been surprised. It was perhaps a thing as 
 curious a fish, with which these head 
 waters of the stream are alive. They are 
 some of them as long as my finger, should 
 be easily caught in these shallows, and 
 some day I '11 have a dish of them. 
 
 Very soon after I came to where the 
 stream collects in another banana swamp, 
 with the bananas bearing well. Beyond, 
 the course is again quite dry; it mounts 
 with a sharp turn a very steep face of the 
 mountain, and then stops abruptly at the 
 lip of a plateau, T suppose the top of Vaea 
 mountain: plainly no more springs here 
 there was no smallest furrow of a water- 
 course beyond and my task might be said 
 to be accomplished. But such is the ani- 
 mated spirit in the service that the whole 
 advance guard expressed a sentiment of 
 disappointment that an exploration, so far 
 successfully conducted, should come to a.
 
 200 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 stop in the most promising view of fresh 
 successes. And though unprovided either 
 with compass or cutlass, it was determined 
 to push some way along the plateau, mark- 
 ing our direction by the laborious process 
 of bending down, sitting upon, and thus 
 breaking the wild cocoanut trees. This was 
 the less regretted by all from a delightful 
 discovery made of a huge banyan growing 
 here in the bush, with flying-buttressed 
 flying buttresses, and huge arcs of trunk 
 hanging high overhead and trailing down 
 new complications of root. I climbed 
 some way up what seemed the original 
 beginning; it was easier to climb than a 
 ship's rigging, even rattljd; everywhere 
 there was foot -hold and hand-hold. It was 
 judged wise to return and rally the main 
 body, who had now been left alone for 
 perhaps forty minutes in the bush. 
 
 The return was effected in good order, 
 but unhappily I only arrived (like so many 
 other explorers) to find my main body or 
 rear-guard in a condition of mutiny; the
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 2OI 
 
 work, it is to be supposed, of terror. It is l8 9 l 
 right I should tell you the Vaea has a bad 
 name, an aitu fafine female devil of 
 the woods succubus haunting it, and 
 doubtless Jack had heard of her; perhaps, 
 during my absence, saw her; lucky Jack! 
 Anyway, he was neither to hold nor to 
 bind, and finally, after nearly smashing me 
 by accident, and from mere scare and 
 insubordination several times, deliberately 
 set in to kill me; but poor Jack! the tree 
 he selected for that purpose was a banana! 
 I jumped off and gave him the heavy end 
 of my whip over the buttocks! Then I 
 took and talked in his ear in various 
 voices ; you should have heard my alto it 
 was a dreadful, devilish note I knew 
 Jack kneiu it was an aitn. Then I mounted 
 him again, and he carried me fairly steadily. 
 He '11 learn yet. He has to learn to trust 
 absolutely to his rider; till he does, the 
 risk is always great in thick bush, where a 
 fellow must try different passages, and put 
 back and forward, and pick his way by 
 hair's-breadths.
 
 202 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 The expedition returned to Vailima in 
 time to receive the visit of the R. C. 
 Bishop. He is a superior man, much 
 above the average of priests. 
 
 Thursday. 
 
 Yesterday the same expedition set forth 
 to the southward by what is known as 
 Carruthers' Road. At a fallen tree which 
 completely blocks the way, the main body 
 was as before left behind, and the advance 
 guard of one now proceeded with the 
 exploration. At the great tree known as 
 Mepi Tree, after Maben the surveyor, the 
 expedition struck forty yards due west till 
 it struck the top of a steep bank which it 
 descended. The whole bottom of the 
 ravine is filled with sharp lava blocks 
 quite unrolled and very difficult and 
 dangerous to walk among ; no water in the 
 course, scarce any sign of water. And yet 
 surely water must have made this bold 
 cutting in the plateau. And if so, why is 
 the lava sharp? My science gave out; but
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 203 
 
 i could not but think it ominous and l8 9 r 
 volcanic. The course of the stream was 
 tortuous, but with a resultant direction a 
 little by west of north ; the sides the whole 
 way exceeding steep, the expedition buried 
 under fathoms of foliage. Presently water 
 appeared in the bottom, a good quantity; 
 perhaps thirty or forty cubic feet, with 
 pools and waterfalls. A tree that stands 
 all along the banks here must be very fond 
 of water; its roots lie close-packed down 
 the stream, like hanks of guts, so as to 
 make often a corrugated walk, each root 
 ending in a blunt tuft of filaments, plainly 
 to drink water. Twice there came in small 
 tributaries from the left or western side 
 the whole plateau having a smartish incli- 
 nation to the east ; one of the tributaries 
 in a handsome little web of silver hanging 
 in the forest. Twice I was startled by 
 birds; one that barked like a dog; another 
 that whistled loud ploughman's signals, so 
 that I vow I was thrilled, and thought I had 
 fallen among runaway blacks, and regretted
 
 204 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 rny cutlass which I had lost and left behind 
 Dec. 
 
 while taking bearings. A good many fishes 
 
 in the brook, and many cray-fish; one of 
 the last with a queer glow-worm head. 
 Like all our brooks, the water is pure as 
 air, and runs over red stones like rubies. 
 The foliage along both banks very thick 
 and high, the place close, the walking 
 exceedingly laborious. By the time the 
 expedition reached the fork, it was felt ex- 
 ceedingly questionable whether the moral 
 of the force were sufficiently good to under- 
 take more extended operations. A halt 
 was called, the men refreshed with water 
 and a bath, and it was decided at a drum- 
 head council of war to continue the descent 
 of the Embassy Water straight for Vailima, 
 whither the expedition returned, in rather 
 poor condition, and wet to the waist, about 
 4 P. M. 
 
 Thus in two days the two main water- 
 courses of this country have been pretty 
 thoroughly explored, and I conceive my 
 instructions fully carried out. The main
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 205 
 
 body of the second expedition was brought 1891 
 back by another officer despatched for that 
 purpose from Vailima. Casualties: one 
 horse wounded ; one man bruised ; no 
 deaths as yet, but the bruised man feels 
 to-day as if his case was mighty serious. 
 
 Dec. 25, '91. 
 
 Your note with a very despicable bulletin 
 of health arrived only yesterday, the mail 
 being a day behind. It contained also the 
 excellent Times article, which was a sight 
 for sore eyes. I am still taboo ; the blessed 
 Germans will have none of me; and I only 
 hope they may enjoy the Times article. 
 'T is my revenge! I wish you had sent 
 the letter too, as I have no copy, and do 
 not even know what I wrote the last day, 
 with a bad headache, and the mail going 
 out. However, it must have been about 
 right, for the Times article was in the 
 spirit I wished to arouse. I hope we can 
 get rid of the man before it is too late. 
 He has set the natives to war; but the
 
 2O6 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1891 natives, by God's blessing, do not want to 
 fight, and I think it will fizzle out no 
 thanks to the man who tried to start it. 
 But I did not mean to drift into these 
 politics; rather to tell you what I have 
 done since I last wrote. 
 
 Well, I worked away at my History for 
 a while, and only got one chapter done ; 
 no doubt this spate of work is pretty low 
 now, and will be soon dry ; but, God bless 
 you, what a lot I have accomplished ; 
 Wrecker done, Beach of Falesd done, half 
 the History: c est etonnant. (I hear from 
 Burlingame, by the way, that he likes the 
 end of the Wrecker; 't is certainly a 
 violent, dark yarn with interesting, plain 
 turns of human nature), then Lloyd and I 
 went down to live in Haggard's rooms, 
 where Fanny presently joined us. Hag- 
 gard's rooms are in a strange old building 
 old for Samoa, and has the effect of the 
 antique like some strange monastery; I 
 would tell you more of it, but I think I 'm 
 going to use it in a tale. The annexe close
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 2O/ 
 
 by had its door sealed ; poor Dowdney lost 1891 
 at sea in a schooner. The place is haunted. 
 The vast empty sheds, the empty store, the 
 airless, hot, long, low rooms, the claps of 
 wind that set everything flying a strange 
 uncanny house to spend Christmas in. 
 
 Jan. ist,'c)2. 
 
 For a day or two I have sat close and 1892 
 wrought hard at the History, and two more 
 chapters are all but done. About thirty 
 pages should go by this mail, which is not 
 what should be, but all I could overtake. 
 Will any one ever read it? I fancy not; 
 people don't read history for reading, but 
 for education and display and who desires 
 education in the history of Samoa, with 
 no population, no past, no future, or the 
 exploits of Mataafa, Malietoa, and Consul 
 Knappe? Colkitto and Galasp are a trifle 
 to it. Well, it can't be helped, and it 
 must be done, and better or worse, it 's 
 capital fun. There are two to whom I 
 have not been kind German Consul 
 Becker and English Captain Hand, R. N.
 
 2O8 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 On Dec. 3Oth I rode down with Belle 
 to go to (if you please) the Fancy Ball. 
 When I got to the beach, I found the 
 barometer was below 29, the wind still in 
 the east and steady, but a huge offensive 
 continent of clouds and vapours forming to 
 leeward. It might be a hurricane; I dared 
 not risk getting caught away from my 
 work, and leaving Belle, returned at once 
 to Vailima. Next day yesterday it 
 was a tearer ; we had storm shutters up ; I 
 sat in my room and wrote by lamplight 
 ten pages, if you please, seven of them 
 draft, and some of these compiled from as 
 many as seven different and conflicting 
 authorities, so that was a brave day's work. 
 About two a huge tree fell within sixty 
 paces of our house; a little after, a second 
 went; and we sent out boys with axes and 
 cut down a third, which was too near the 
 house, and buckling like a fishing rod. 
 At dinner we had the front door closed and 
 shuttered, the back door open, the lamp 
 lit. The boys in the cook-house were all
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 209 
 
 out at the cook-house door, where we could l8 9 2 
 see them looking in and smiling. Lauilo 
 and Faauma waited on us with smiles. 
 The excitement was delightful. Some 
 very violent squalls came as we sat there, 
 and everyone rejoiced; it was impossible 
 to help it ; a soul of putty had to sing. 
 All night it blew; the roof was continually 
 sounding under missiles; in the morning 
 the verandahs were half full of branches 
 torn from the forest. There was a last 
 very wild squall about six; the rain, like a 
 thick white smoke, flying past the house 
 in volleys, and as swift, it seemed, as rifle 
 balls; all with a strange, strident hiss, 
 such as I have only heard before at sea, 
 and, indeed, thought to be a marine phe- 
 nomenon. Since then the wind has been 
 falling with a few squalls, mostly rain. 
 But our road is impassable for horses; we 
 hear a schooner has been wrecked and 
 some native houses blown down in Apia, 
 where Belle is still and must remain a 
 prisoner. Lucky I returned while I could !
 
 210 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 ^92 But the great good is this; much bread- 
 fruit and bananas have been destroyed ; if 
 this be general through the islands, famine 
 will be imminent; and whoever blows the 
 coals, there can be no war. Do I then 
 prefer a famine to a war? you ask. Not 
 always, but just now. I am sure the 
 natives do not want a war; I am sure a 
 war would benefit no one but the white 
 officials, and I believe we can easily meet 
 the famine or at least that it can be 
 met. That would give our officials a legi- 
 timate opportunity to cover their past 
 errors. 
 
 Jan. 2nd. 
 
 I woke this morning to find the blow 
 quite ended. The heaven was all a mottled 
 gray; even the east quite colourless; the 
 downward slope of the island veiled in 
 wafts of vapour, blue like smoke; not a leaf 
 stirred on the tallest tree ; only, three 
 miles away below me on the barrier reef, I 
 could see the individual breakers curl and 
 fall, and hear their conjunct roaring rise,
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 211 
 
 as it still rises at i p. M., like the roar of a 1892 
 thoroughfare close by. I did a good morn- Ja " 
 ing's work, correcting and clarifying my 
 draft, and have now finished for press 
 eight chapters, ninety-one pages, of this 
 piece of journalism. Four more chapters, 
 say fifty pages, remain to be done; I should 
 gain my wager and finish this volume in 
 three months, that is to say, the end 
 should leave me per February mail ; I can- 
 not receive it back till the mail of April. 
 Yes, it can be out in time; pray God that 
 it be in time to help. 
 
 How do journalists fetch up their drivel? 
 I aim only at clearness and the most obvious 
 finish, positively at no higher degree of 
 merit, not even at brevity I am sure it 
 could have been all done, with double the 
 time, in two-thirds of the space. And yet 
 it has taken me two months to write 
 45, 500 words ; and be damned to my wicked 
 prowess, I am proud of the exploit! The 
 real journalist must be a man not of brass 
 only, but bronze. Chapter IX. gapes for
 
 212 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 me, but I shrink on the margin, and go on 
 Jan. 
 
 chattering to you. This last part will be 
 much less offensive (strange to say) to the 
 Germans. It is Becker they will never 
 forgive me for ; Knappe I pity and do not 
 dislike; Becker I scorn and abominate. 
 Here is the tableau, i. Elements of Dis- 
 cord: Native, n. Elements of Discord: 
 Foreign, in. The Sorrows of Laupepa. 
 iv. Brandeis. v. The Battle of Matautu. 
 vi. Last Exploits of Becker, vn. The 
 Samoan Camps, vm. Affairs of Lautii 
 and Fangalii. ix. " Furor Consularis. " x. 
 The Hurricane, xi. Stuebel Recluse, xn. 
 The Present Government. I estimate the 
 whole roughly at 70,000 words. Should 
 anybody ever dream of reading it, it would 
 be found amusing. - 3 l = 233 printed 
 pages; a respectable little five-bob volume, 
 to bloom unread in shop windows. After 
 that, I '11 have a spank at fiction. And 
 rest ? I shall rest in the grave, or when I 
 come to Italy. If only the public will 
 continue to support me ! I lost my chance
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 213 
 
 not dying; there seems blooming little fear '92 
 of it now. I worked close on five hours 
 this morning; the day before, close on 
 nine; and unless I finish myself off with 
 this letter, I '11 have another hour and a 
 half, or aiblins twa, before dinner. Poor 
 man, how you must envy me, as you hear 
 of these orgies of work, and you scarce able 
 for a letter. But Lord, Colvin, how lucky 
 the situations are not reversed, for I have 
 no situation, nor am fit for any. Life is a 
 steigh brae. Here, have at Knappe, and 
 no more clavers ! 
 
 ya. 
 
 There was never any man had so many 
 irons in the fire, except Jim Pinkerton. 1 
 1 forgot to mention I have the most 
 gallant suggestion from Lang, with an 
 offer of MS. authorities, which turns my 
 brain. It 's all about the throne of Poland 
 and buried treasure in the Mackay country, 
 and Alan Breck can figure there in glory. 
 
 1 In the Wrecker. As to the story thus suggested by 
 Mr. Andrew Lang, see below, pp. 245, 246, 272-76.
 
 214 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 Yesterday, J. and I set off to Blacklock's 
 (American Consul) who lives not far from 
 that little village I have so often men- 
 tioned as lying between us and Apia. I 
 had some questions to ask him for my 
 History; thence we must proceed to 
 Vailele, where I had also to cross-examine 
 the plantation manager about the battle 
 there. We went by a track I had never 
 before followed down the hill to Vaisigano, 
 which flows here in a deep valley, and was 
 unusually full, so that the horses trembled in 
 the ford. The whole bottom of the valley 
 is full of various streams posting between 
 strips of forest with a brave sound of 
 waters. In one place we had a glimpse of 
 a fall some way higher up, and then spark- 
 ling in sunlight in the midst of the green 
 valley. Then up by a winding path scarce 
 accessible to a horse for steepness, to the 
 other side, and the open cocoanut glades of 
 the plantation. Here we rode fast, did a 
 mighty satisfactory afternoon's work at the 
 plantation house, and still faster back.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 215 
 
 On the return Jack fell with me, but got l8 9 2 
 up again; when I felt him recovering I 
 gave him his head, and he shoved his foot 
 through the rein; I got him by the bit 
 however, and all was well ; he had mud 
 over all his face, but his knees were not 
 broken. We were scarce home when the 
 rain began again ; that was luck. It is 
 pouring now in torrents ; we are in the 
 height of the bad season. Lloyd leaves 
 along with this letter on a change to San 
 Francisco ; he had much need of it, but I 
 think this will brace him up. I am, as 
 you see, a tower of strength. I can 
 remember riding not so far and not near so 
 fast when I first came to Samoa, and being 
 shattered next day with fatigue; now I 
 could not tell I have done anything; have 
 re-handled my battle of Fangalii according 
 to yesterday's information four pages 
 rewritten; and written already some half- 
 dozen pages of letters. 
 
 I observe with disgust that while of 
 yore, when I own I was guilty, you never
 
 2l6 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 spared me abuse, but now, when I am so 
 virtuous, where is the praise? Do admit 
 that I have become an excellent letter- 
 writer at least to you, and that your 
 ingratitude is imbecile. Yours ever, 
 
 R. L. S.
 
 XV 
 
 Jan. 3U/, '92. 1892 
 
 MY DEAR COLVIN, No letter at all 
 from you, and this scratch from me! Here 
 is a year that opens ill. Lloyd is off to 
 "the coast" sick the coast means Cali- 
 fornia over most of the Pacific I have 
 been clown all month with influenza, and 
 am just recovering I am overlaid with 
 proofs, which I am just about half fit to 
 attend to. One of my horses died this 
 morning, and another is now dying on the 
 front lawn Lloyd's horse and Fanny's. 
 Such is my quarrel with destiny. But I 
 am mending famously, come and go on the 
 balcony, have perfectly good nights, and 
 though I still cough, have no oppression 
 and no hemorrhage and no fever. So if I 
 can find time and courage to add no more, 
 you will know my news is not altogether
 
 2l8 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 of the worst ; a year or two ago, and what 
 
 Jan. 
 
 a state I should have been in now ! Your 
 silence, I own, rather alarms me. But I 
 tell myself you have just miscarried; had 
 you been too ill to write, some one would 
 have written me. Understand, I send this 
 brief scratch not because I am unfit to 
 write more, but because I have 58 galleys 
 of the Wrecker and 102 of the Beach of 
 Falesd to get overhauled somehow or other 
 in time for the mail, and for three weeks I 
 have not touched a pen with my finger. 
 
 Feb. ist. 
 
 Feb. The second horse is still alive, but I 
 still think dying. The first was buried 
 this morning. My proofs are done; it 
 was a rough two days of it, but done. 
 Consummatum est; na uma. I believe the 
 Wrecker ends well ; if I know what a good 
 yarn is, the last four chapters make a 
 good yarn but pretty horrible. The 
 Beach of Falesd I still think well of, but 
 it seems it 's immoral and there 's a
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 2lp 
 
 to-do, and financially it may prove a heavy 
 disappointment. The plaintive request 
 sent to me, to make the young folks mar- 
 ried properly before "that night," I re- 
 fused; you will see what would be left 
 of the yarn, had I consented. 1 This is a 
 poison bad world for the romancer, this 
 Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of 
 it by not having any women in it at all ; 
 but when I remember I had the Treasure 
 of FrancJiard refused as unfit for a family 
 magazine, I feel despair weigh upon my 
 wrists. 
 
 As I know you are always interested in 
 novels, I must tell you that a new one is 
 now entirely planned. It is to be called 
 Sophia Scarlet, and is in two parts. Part 
 I. The Vanilla Planter. Part II. The 
 Overseers. No chapters, I think; just two 
 dense blocks of narrative, the first of 
 which is purely sentimental, but the 
 
 1 Editors and publishers had been inclined to shy at 
 the terms of the fraudulent marriage contract, which is 
 the pivot of the whole story ; see below. Letter XVIII.
 
 22O VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 second has some rows and quarrels, and 
 winds up with an explosion, if you please ! 
 I am just burning to get at Sophia, but I 
 must Ao this Samoan journalism that 's a 
 cursed duty. The first part of Sophia, bar 
 the first twenty or thirty pages, writes 
 itself; the second is more difficult, involv- 
 ing a good many characters about ten, I 
 think who have to be kept all moving, 
 and give the effect of a society. I have 
 three women to handle, out and well-away! 
 but only Sophia is in full tone. Sophia 
 and two men, Windermere, the Vanilla 
 Planter, who dies at the end of Part I., and 
 Rainsforth, who only appears in the begin- 
 ning of Part II. The fact is, I blush to 
 own it, but Sophia is a regular novel; 
 heroine and hero, and false accusation, and 
 love, and marriage, and all the rest of it 
 all planted in a big South Sea plantation 
 run by ex-English officers a la Stewart's 
 plantation in Tahiti. 1 There is a strong 
 
 1 For a lively account of this plantation and its history, 
 see South Sea Bubbles, chap. i.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 221 
 
 undercurrent of labour trade, which gives 1892 
 it a kind of Uncle Tom flavour, absit omen! 
 The first start is hard; it is hard to avoid 
 a little tedium here, but I think by begin- 
 ning with the arrival of the three Miss 
 Scarlets hot from school and society in 
 England, I may manage to slide in the 
 information. The problem is exactly a 
 Balzac one, and I wish I had his fist for 
 I have already a better method the 
 kinetic, whereas he continually allowed 
 himself to be led into the static. But 
 then he had the fist, and the most I can 
 hope is to get out of it with a modicum of 
 grace and energy, but for sure without the 
 strong impression, the full, dark brush. 
 Three people have had it, the real creator's 
 brush: Scott, see much of The Antiquary 
 and The Heart of Midlothian (especially all 
 round the trial, before, during, and after) 
 Balzac and Thackeray in Vanity Fair. 
 Everybody else either paints thin, or has to 
 stop to paint, or paints excitedly, so that 
 you see the author skipping before his
 
 222 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 canvas. Here is a long way from poor 
 
 Feb. _...-. , 
 
 Sophia Scarlet! 
 
 This day is published 
 Sophia Scarlet 
 
 By 
 ROBERT Louis STEVENSON.
 
 XVI 
 
 Feb. 1892. 
 
 MY DEAR COLVIX, This has been a 1892 
 busyish month for a sick man. First, 
 Faauma the bronze candlestick, whom 
 otherwise I called my butler bolted from 
 the bed and bosom of Lafaele, the Arch- 
 angel Hercules, perfect of the cattle. 
 There was the deuce to pay, and Hercules 
 was inconsolable, and immediately started 
 out after a new wife, and has had one up 
 on a visit, but says she has "no conversa- 
 tion ;" and I think he will take back the 
 erring and possibly repentent candlestick; 
 whom we all devoutly prefer, as she is not 
 only highly decorative, but good-natured, 
 and if she does little work makes no rows. 
 I tell this lightly, but it really was a heavy 
 business ; many were accused of complicity, 
 and Rafael was really very sorry. I had
 
 224 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 to hold beds of justice literally seated 
 in my bed and surrounded by lying 
 Samoans seated on the floor; and there 
 were many picturesque and still inexpli- 
 cable passages. It is hard to reach the 
 truth in these islands. 
 
 The next incident overlapped with this. 
 S. and Fanny found three strange horses 
 in the paddock: for long now the boys 
 have been forbidden to leave their horses 
 here one hour because our grass is over- 
 grazed. S. came up with the news, and I 
 saw I must now strike a blow. " To the 
 pound with the lot," said I. He proposed 
 taking the three himself, but I thought 
 that too dangerous an experiment, said I 
 should go too, and hurried into my boots 
 so as to show decision taken, in the neces- 
 sary interviews. They came of course 
 the interviews and I explained what I 
 was going to do at huge length, and stuck 
 to my guns. I am glad to say the natives, 
 with their usual (purely speculative) sense 
 of justice highly approved the step after
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 22$ 
 
 reflection. Meanwhile off went S. and I 1892 
 with the three corpora delicti; and a good 
 job I went! Once, when our circus began 
 to kick, we thought all was up; but we got 
 them down all sound in wind and limb. 
 I judged I was much fallen off from my 
 Elliott forefathers, who managed this class 
 of business with neatness and despatch. 
 Half-way down it came on to rain trcpic 
 style, and I came back from my outing 
 drenched like a drowned man I was 
 literally blinded as I came back among 
 these sheets of water; and the consequence 
 was I was laid down with diarrhcta and 
 threat. nings of Samoa colic for the inside 
 of another week. 
 
 I have a confession to make. When I 
 was sick I tried to get to work to finish 
 that Samoa thing, wouldn't go; and at 
 last, in the colic time, I slid off into Dai'id 
 Balfoiir, 1 some 50 pages of which are 
 drafted, and like me well. Really I think 
 
 1 The sequel to Kidnapped, published in the followed 
 year under the title Catriona. 
 VOL. I. \^
 
 226 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 it is spirited; and there's a heroine that 
 (up to now) seems to have attractions : 
 absit omen! David, on the whole, seems 
 excellent. Allan does not come in till the 
 tenth chapter, and I am only at the eighth, 
 so I don't know if I can find him again; 
 but David is on his feet, and doing well, 
 and very much in love, and mixed up with 
 the Lord Advocate and the (untitled) Lord 
 Lovat, and all mannsr of great folk. And 
 the tale interferes with my eating and 
 sleeping. The join is bad; I have not 
 thought to strain too much for continuity; 
 so this part be alive, I shall be content. 
 But there 's no doubt David seems to have 
 changed his style, de'il ha'e him! And 
 much I care, if the tale travel ! 
 
 Friday, Feb.?? 
 
 Two incidents to-day which I must 
 narrate. After lunch, it was raining piti- 
 lessly; we were sitting in my mother's 
 bedroom, and I was reading aloud King- 
 lake's Charge of the Light Brigade and we
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 227 
 
 had just been all seized by the horses ^9 
 aligning with Lord George Paget, when a 
 figure appeared on the verandah; a little, 
 slim, small figure of a lad, with blond (*. e. 
 limed) hair, a propitiatory smile, and a 
 nose that alone of all his features grew 
 pale with anxiety. "I come here stop," 
 was about the outside of his English; and 
 I began at once to guess that he was a 
 runaway labourer, 1 and that the bush-knife 
 in his hand was stolen. It proved he had 
 a mate, who had lacked his courage, and 
 was hidden clown the road ; they had both 
 made up their minds to run away, and had 
 "come here stop." I could not turn out 
 the poor rogues, one of whom showed me 
 marks on his back, into the drenching 
 forest; I could not reason with them, for 
 they had not enough English, and not one 
 of our boys spoke their tongue; so I bade 
 them feed and sleep here to-night, and 
 
 1 Most of the work on the plantations in Samoa is 
 done by " black boys," /. e. imported labourers from other 
 (Melanesia!)) islands.
 
 228 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 to-morrow I must do what the Lord shall 
 Feb. 
 
 bid me. 
 
 Near dinner time, I was told that a friend 
 of Lafaele's had found human remains in 
 my bush. After dinner, a figure was seen 
 skulking across towards the waterfall, 
 which produced from the verandah a shout, 
 in my most stentorian tones : " O at le 
 ingoa?" literally "Who the name?" 
 which serves here for "What 's your busi- 
 ness? " as well. It proved to be Lafaele's 
 friend; I bade a kitchen boy, Lauilo, go 
 with him to see the spot, for though it had 
 ceased raining, the whole island ran and 
 dripped. Lauilo was willing enough, but 
 the friend of the archangel demurred; he 
 had too much business; he had no time. 
 "All right," I said, "you too much fright- 
 ened, I go along," which of course pro- 
 duced the usual shout of delight from all 
 those who did not require to go. I got 
 into my Saranac snow boots; Lauilo got a 
 cutlass; Mary Carter, our Sydney maid, 
 joined the party for a lark, and off we set.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 229 
 
 I tell you our guide kept us moving; for 1892 
 the dusk fell swift. Our woods have an 
 infamous reputation at the best, and our 
 errand (to say the least of it) was grisly. 
 At last they found the remains; they were 
 old, which was all I cared to be sure of; 
 it seemed a strangely small "pickle-banes" 
 to stand for a big, flourishing, buck- 
 islander, and their situation in the darken- 
 ing and dripping bush was melancholy. 
 All at once, I found there was a second 
 skull, with a bullet-hole I could have stuck 
 my two thumbs in say anybody else's 
 one thumb. My Samoans said it could not 
 be, there were not enough bones ; I put 
 the two pieces of skull together, and at 
 last convinced them. Whereupon, in a 
 flash, they found the not unromantic expla- 
 nation. This poor brave had succeeded in 
 the height of a Samoan warrior's ambition; 
 he had taken a head, which he was never 
 destined to show to his applauding camp. 
 Wounded himself, he had crept here into 
 the bush to die with his useless trophy by
 
 230 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 his side. His date would be about fifteen 
 years ago, in the great battle between 
 Laupepa and Talavou, which took place on 
 My Land, Sir. To-morrow we shall bury 
 the bones and fire a salute in honour of 
 unfortunate courage. 
 
 Do you think I have an empty life? or 
 that a man jogging to his club has so much 
 to interest and amuse him ? touch and 
 try him too, but that goes along with the 
 others ; no pain, no pleasure, is the iron 
 law. So here I stop again, and leave, as 
 I left yesterday, my political business 
 untouched. And lo ! here comes my pupil, 
 I believe, so I stop in time. 
 
 March 2nd. 
 
 Mar. Since I last wrote, fifteen chapters of 
 David Balfour have been drafted, and five 
 tires an clair, I think it pretty good; 
 there 's a blooming maiden that costs 
 anxiety she is as virginal as billy; but 
 David seems there and alive, and the Lord 
 Advocate is good, and so I think is an
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 231 
 
 episodic appearance of the Master of '892 
 
 Mar. 
 
 Lovat. In Chapter xvn. I shall get David 
 abroad Alan went already in Chapter 
 xii. The book should be about the length 
 of Kidnapped; this early part of it, about 
 D. 's evidence in the Appin case, is more 
 of a story than anything in Kidnapped, but 
 there is no doubt there comes a break in 
 the middle, and the tale is practically in 
 two divisions. In the first James More 
 and the M'Gregors, and Catriona, only 
 show; in the second, the Appin case being 
 disposed of, and James Stewart hung, they 
 rule the roast and usurp the interest 
 should there be any left. Why did I take 
 up Dai'id Balfonr? I don't know. A 
 sudden passion. 
 
 Monday, I went down in the rain with a 
 colic to take the chair at a public meeting; 
 dined with Haggard; sailed off to my 
 meeting, and fought with wild beasts for 
 three anxious hours. All was lost that 
 any sensible man cared for, but the meet- 
 ing did not break up thanks a good deal
 
 232 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 to R. L. S. and the man who opposed 
 my election, and with whom I was all the 
 time wrangling, proposed the vote of thanks 
 to me with a certain handsomeness; I 
 assure you I had earned it. ... Haggard 
 and the great Abdul, his high-caste Indian 
 servant, imported by my wife, were sitting 
 up for me with supper, and I suppose it 
 was twelve before I got to bed. Tuesday 
 raining, my mother rode down, and we 
 went to the Consulate to sign a Factory 
 and Commission. Thence, I to the lawyers, 
 to the printing office, and to the Mission. 
 It was dinner time when I returned home. 
 
 This morning, our cook-boy having sud- 
 denly left injured feelings the arch- 
 angel was to cook breakfast. I found him 
 lighting the fire before dawn; his eyes 
 blazed, he had no word of any language 
 left to use, and I saw in him (to my 
 wonder) the strongest workings of gratified 
 ambition. Napoleon was no more pleased 
 to sign his first treaty with Austria than 
 was Lafaele to cook that breakfast. All
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 233 
 
 morning, when I had hoped to be at this l8 9 2 
 letter, I slept like one drugged, and you 
 must take this (which is all I can give you) 
 for what it is worth 
 
 D. B. 
 
 Memoirs of his Adventures at Home and 
 Abroad. The Second Part; wherein are set 
 forth the misfortunes in which he was in- 
 volved upon t/tc Appin Murder ; his troubles 
 vvith Lord Advocate Prcstongrange ; captivity 
 on the Bass Rock ; journey into France and 
 Holland ; and singular relations witli James 
 More Drummond or J\Iacgregor, a son of the 
 notorious Rob Roy. 
 
 Chapters i. A Beggar on Horseback, 
 ii. The Highland Writer, in. I go to 
 Pilrig. iv. Lord Advocate Prestongrange. 
 v. Butter and Thunder, vi. I make a 
 fault in honour, vir. The Bravo. vin. 
 The Heather on Fire. ix. I begin to be 
 haunted with a red-headed man. x. The 
 Wood by Silver-mills, xi. On the march 
 again with Alan. xn. Gillane Sands.
 
 234 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 xiii. The Bass Rock. xiv. Black Andie's 
 Tale of Tod Lapraik. xv. I go to Inverary. 
 That is it, as far as drafted. Chapters 
 iv. v. vii. ix. and xiv. I am specially 
 pleased with ; the last being an episodical 
 bogie story about the Bass Rock told there 
 by the Keeper.
 
 XVII 
 
 March gtA. 
 
 MY DEAR S. C, Take it not amiss if 1892 
 this is a wretched letter. I am eaten up 
 with business. Every day this week I 
 have had some business impediment - I 
 am even now waiting a deputation of chiefs 
 about the road and my precious morning 
 was shattered by a polite old scourge of a 
 faipulc parliament man come begging. 
 All the time David Balfonr is skelping 
 along. I began it the i3th of last month; 
 I have now 12 chapters, 79 pages ready for 
 press, or within an ace, and by the time 
 the month is out, one-half should be com- 
 pleted, and I '11 be back at drafting the 
 second half. What makes me sick is to 
 think of Scott turning out Guy Mannering 
 in three weeks! What a pull of work: 
 heavens, what thews and sinews! And
 
 236 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 2 here am I, my head spinning from having 
 only re-written seven not very difficult 
 pages and not very good when done. 
 Weakling generation. It makes me sick 
 of myself, to make such a fash and bobbery 
 over a rotten end of an old nursery yarn, 
 not worth spitting on when done. Still, 
 there is no doubt I turn out my work more 
 easily than of yore; and I suppose I should 
 be singly glad of that. And if I got my 
 book done in six weeks, seeing it will be 
 about half as long as a Scott, and I have to 
 write everything twice, it would be about 
 the same rate of industry. It is my fair 
 intention to be done with it in three 
 months, which would make me about one- 
 half the man Sir Walter was for application 
 and driving the dull pen. Of the merit 
 we shall not talk; but I don't think Davie 
 is witJiont merit. 
 
 March \2th. 
 
 And I have this day triumphantly finished 
 15 chapters, 100 pages being exactly 
 one-half (as near as anybody can guess) of
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 237 
 
 David Balfour; the book to be about a l8 9 2 
 fifth as long again (altogether) as Treasure 
 Island : could I but do the second half in 
 another month! But I can't, I fear; I 
 shall have some belated material arriving 
 by next mail, and must go again at the 
 History. Is it not characteristic of my 
 broken tenacity of mind, that I should 
 have left Davie Balfour some five years in 
 the British Linen Company's Office, and 
 then follow him at last with such vivacity? 
 But I leave you again; the last (iSth) 
 chapter ought to be re-wrote, or part of it, 
 and I want the half completed in the 
 month, and the month is out by midnight; 
 though, to be sure, last month was February, 
 and I might take grace. These notes are 
 only to show I hold you in mind, though I 
 know they can have no interest for man or 
 God or animal. 
 
 I should have told you about the Club. 
 We have been asked to try and start a sort 
 of weekly ball for the half-castes and 
 natives, ourselves to be the only whites;
 
 238 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 and we consented; from a very heavy sense 
 of duty, and with not much hope. Two 
 nights ago we had twenty people up, 
 received them in the front verandah, enter- 
 tained them on cake and lemonade, and I 
 made a speech embodying our proposals, 
 or conditions, if you like for I suppose 
 thirty minutes. No joke to speak to such 
 an audience, but it is believed I was 
 thoroughly intelligible. I took the plan 
 of saying everything at least twice in a 
 different form of words, so that if the one 
 escaped my hearers, the other might be 
 seized. One white man came with his 
 wife, and was kept rigorously on the front 
 verandah below ! You see what a sea of 
 troubles this is like to prove; but it is the 
 only chance and when it blows up, it 
 must blow up ! I have no more hope in 
 anything than a dead frog; I go into every- 
 thing with a composed despair, and don't 
 mind just as I always go to sea with the 
 conviction I am to be drowned, and like it 
 before all other pleasures. But you should
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 239 
 
 have seen the return voyage, when nine- l8 9 2 
 
 Mar. 
 
 teen horses had to be found in the dark, 
 and nineteen bridles, all in a drench of 
 rain, and the club, just constituted as such, 
 sailed away in the wet, under a cloudy 
 moon like a bad shilling, and to descend a 
 road through the forest that was at that 
 moment the image of a respectable moun- 
 tain brook. My wife, who is president 
 with power to expel, had to begin her 
 functions. . . . 
 
 25/7* March 
 
 Heaven knows what day it is, but I am 
 ashamed, all the more as your letter from 
 Bournemouth of all places poor old 
 Bournemouth ! is to hand, and contains 
 a statement of pleasure in my letters which 
 I wish I could have rewarded with a long 
 one. What has gone on ? A vast of 
 affairs, of a mingled, strenuous, incon- 
 clusive, desultory character; much waste 
 of time, much riding to and fro, and little 
 transacted or at least peracted. 
 
 Let me give you a review of the present
 
 240 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 2 state of our live stock. Six boys in the 
 
 Mar. 
 
 bush; six souls about the house. Talolo, 
 the cook, returns again to-day, after an 
 absence which has cost me about twelve 
 hours of riding, and I suppose eight hours' 
 solemn sitting in council. "I am sorry 
 indeed for the Chief Justice of Samoa," I 
 said ; " it is more than I am fit for to be 
 Chief Justice of Vailima." Lauilo is 
 steward. Both these are excellent ser- 
 vants ; we gave a luncheon party when we 
 buried the Samoan bones, and I assure you 
 all was in good style, yet we never inter- 
 fered. The food was good, the wine and 
 dishes went round as by mechanism. 
 Steward's assistant and washman. Arrick, 
 a New Hebridee black boy, hired from the 
 German firm; not so ugly as most, but not 
 pretty neither; not so dull as his sort are, 
 but not quite a Crichton. When he came 
 first, he ate so much of our good food that 
 he got a prominent belly. Kitchen assis- 
 tant, Tomas (Thomas in English), a Fiji 
 man, very tall and handsome, moving like
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 24! 
 
 a marionette with sudden bounds, and roll- l8 9 2 
 ing his eyes with sudden effort. Washer- 
 woman and precentor, Helen, Tomas's 
 wife. This is our weak point; we are 
 ashamed of Helen ; the cook-house blushes 
 for her; they murmur there at her presence. 
 She seems all right; she is not a bad- 
 looking, strapping wench, seems chaste, is 
 industrious, has an excellent taste in hymns 
 you should have heard her read one 
 aloud the other day, she marked the 
 rhythm with so much gloating, dissenter 
 sentiment. What is wrong, then ? says 
 you. Low in your ear and don't let the 
 papers get hold of it she is of no family. 
 None, they say ; literally a common woman. 
 Of course, we have out-islanders, who may 
 be villeins; but we give them the benefit 
 of the doubt, which is impossible with 
 Helen of Vailima; our blot, out pitted 
 speck. The pitted speck I have said is 
 our precentor. It is always a woman who 
 starts Samoan song; the men who sing 
 second do not enter for a bar or two. 
 
 VOL. I. 1 6
 
 242 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 poor, dear Faauma, the unchaste, the 
 extruded Eve of our Paradise, knew only 
 two hymns; but Helen seems to know the 
 whole repertory, and the morning prayers 
 go far more lively in consequence. 
 Lafaele, provost of the cattle. The cattle 
 are Jack, my horse, quite converted, my 
 wife rides him now, and he is as steady as 
 a doctor's cob; Tifaga Jack, a circus horse, 
 my mother's piebald, bought from a pass- 
 ing circus; Belle's mare, now in childbed 
 or next door, confound the slut ! Musu 
 amusingly translated the other day "don't 
 want to," literally cross, but always in the 
 sense of stubbornness and resistance my 
 wife's little dark-brown mare, with a white 
 star on her forehead, whom I have been 
 riding of late to steady her she has no 
 vices, but is unused, skittish and uneasy, 
 and wants a lot of attention and humour- 
 ing; lastly (of saddle horses) Luna not 
 the Latin moon, the Hawaiian overseer, but 
 it 's pronounced the same a pretty little 
 mare too, but scarce at all broken, a bad
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 243 
 
 bucker, and has to be ridden with a stock- l8 92 
 whip and be brought back with her rump 
 criss-crossed like a clan tartan; the two 
 cart horses, now only used with pack- 
 saddles; two cows, one in the straw (I 
 trust) to-morrow, a third cow, the Jersey 
 whose milk and temper are alike sub- 
 jects of admiration she gives good exer- 
 cise to the farming saunterer, and refreshes 
 him on his return with cream ; two calves, 
 a bull, and a cow; God knows how many 
 ducks and chickens, and for a wager not 
 even God knows how many cats; twelve 
 horses, seven horses, five kine: is not this 
 Babylon the Great which I have builded? 
 Call it Subpriorsford. 
 
 Two nights ago the club had its first 
 meeting; only twelve were present, but it 
 went very well. I was not there, I had 
 ridden down the night before after dinner 
 on my endless business, took a cup of tea 
 in the Mission like an ass, then took a cup 
 of coffee like a fool at Haggard's, then 
 fell into a discussion with the American
 
 244 VAIL1MA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 2 Consul ... I went to bed at Haggard's, 
 
 Mar. 
 
 came suddenly broad awake, and lay sleep- 
 less the live night. It fell chill, I had 
 only a sheet, and had to make a light and 
 range the house for a cover I found one in 
 the hall, a mackintosh. So back to my 
 sleepless bed, and to lie there till dawn. 
 In the morning I had a longish ride to take 
 in a day of a blinding, staggering sun, and 
 got home by eleven, our luncheon hour, 
 with my head rather swimmy; the only 
 time I have feared the sun since I was in 
 Samoa. However, I got no harm, but did 
 not go to the club, lay off, lazied, played 
 the pipe, and read a novel by James Payn 
 sometimes quite interesting, and in one 
 place really very funny with the quaint 
 humour of the man. Much interested the 
 other day. As I rode past a house, I saw 
 where a Samoan had written a word on 
 a board, and there was an y, perfectly 
 formed, but upside down. You never saw 
 such a thing in Europe; but it is as 
 common as dirt in Polynesia. Men's
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 245 
 
 names are tattooed on the forearm ; it is 1892 
 common to find a subverted letter tat- 
 tooed there. Here is a tempting problem 
 for psychologists. 
 
 I am now on terms again with the 
 German Consulate, I know not for how 
 long; not, of course, with the President, 
 which I find a relief; still, with the Chief 
 Justice and the English Consul. For 
 Haggard, I have a genuine affection ; he is 
 a lovable man. 
 
 Wearyful man! "Here is the yarn of 
 Loudon Dodd, not as he told it, but as it 
 was aftemvards written." 1 These word 
 were left out by some carelessness, and I 
 think I have been thrice tackled about 
 them. Grave them in your mind and wear 
 them on your forehead. 
 
 The Lang story will have very little 
 about the treasure; The Master' 2 ' will 
 
 1 In answer to the obvious remark that the length and 
 style of the Wrecker, then running in Scribner's Magazine, 
 were out of keeping with what professed at the outset to 
 be a spoken yarn. 
 
 2 Of Ballantrae.
 
 246 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 2 appear; and it is to a great extent a tale of 
 Prince Charlie after the '45, and a love 
 story forbye : the hero is a melancholy 
 exile, and marries a young woman who 
 interests the prince, and there is the devil 
 to pay. I think the Master kills him in a 
 duel, but don't know yet, not having yet 
 seen my second heroine. No the Master 
 does n't kill him, they fight, he is wounded, 
 and the Master plays deus ex machina. I 
 think just now of calling it The Tail of the 
 Race; no heavens! I never saw till this 
 moment but of course nobody but myself 
 would ever understand Mill-Race, they 
 would think of a quarter- mile. So I am 
 nameless again. My melancholy young 
 man is to be quite a Romeo. Yes, I '11 
 name the book from him: Dyce of Ythan 
 pronounce Eethan. 
 
 Dyce of Ythan 
 
 by R. L. S. 
 
 Oh, Shovel Shovel waits his turn, he 
 and his ancestors. I would have tackled 
 him before, but my State Trials have
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 247 
 
 never come. So that I have now quite l8 9 2 
 
 . Mar. 
 
 planned : 
 
 Dyce of Ythan. (Historical, 1750.) 
 
 Sophia Scarlet. (To-day.) 
 
 The Shovels of Newton French. (His- 
 torical, 1650 to 1830.) 
 And quite planned and part written : 
 
 The Pearl Fisher. (To-day.) (With 
 Lloyd, a machine.) 1 
 
 David Balfour. (Historical, 1751.) 
 And, by a strange exception for R. L. S., 
 all in the third person except D. B. 
 
 I don't know what day this is now (the 
 29th), but I have finished my two chapters, 
 ninth and tenth, of Samoa in time for the 
 mail, and feel almost at peace. The tenth 
 was the hurricane, a difficult problem ; it 
 so tempted one to be literary; and I feel 
 sure the less of that there is in my little 
 handbook, the more chance it has of some 
 utility. Then the events are compli- 
 cated, seven ships to tell of, and sometimes 
 three of them together; Oh, it was quite a 
 
 1 Afterwards changed into The Ebb Tide.
 
 248 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 2 job. But I think I have my facts pretty 
 correct, and for once, in my sickening yarn, 
 they are handsome facts: creditable to all 
 concerned; not to be written of and I 
 should think, scarce to be read without 
 a thrill. I doubt I have got no hurricane 
 into it, the intricacies of the yarn absorb- 
 ing me too much. But there it 's done 
 somehow, and time presses hard on my 
 heels. The book, with my best expedition, 
 may come just too late to be of use. In 
 which case I shall have made a handsome 
 present of some months of my life for 
 nothing and to nobody. Well, through 
 Her the most ancient heavens are fresh 
 and strong. 1 
 
 30^. 
 
 After I had written you, I re-read my 
 hurricane, which is very poor; the life of 
 the journalist is hard, another couple of 
 writings and I could make a good thing, I 
 believe, and it must go as it is! But, of 
 course, this book is not written for honour 
 
 1 Wordsworth, a shade misquoted.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 249 
 
 and glory, and the few who will read it l8 9 2 
 may not know the difference. Very little 
 time. I go down with the mail shortly, 
 dine at the Chinese restaurant, and go to 
 the club to dance with islandresses. Think 
 of my going out once a week to dance. 
 
 Politics are on the full job again, and 
 we don't know what is to come next. I 
 think the whole treaty raj seems quite 
 played out ! They have taken to bribing 
 the faipnle men (parliament men) to stay 
 in Mulinuu, we hear; but I have not yet 
 sifted the rumour. I must say I shall be 
 scarce surprised if it prove true; these 
 rumours have the knack of being right. 
 Our weather this last month has been 
 tremendously hot, not by the thermometer, 
 which sticks at 86, but to the sensation: 
 no rain, no wind, and this the storm 
 month. It looks ominous, and is certainly 
 disagreeable. 
 
 No time to finish, 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 R. L. S.
 
 XVIII 
 
 May 1st, 1892. 
 
 1892 MY DEAR COLVIN, As I rode down 
 last night about six, I saw a sight I must 
 try to tell you of. In front of me, right 
 over the top of the forest into which I was 
 descending was a vast cloud. The front of 
 it accurately represented the somewhat 
 rugged, long-nosed, and beetle-browed pro- 
 file of a man, crowned by a huge Kalmuck 
 cap; the flesh part was of a heavenly pink, 
 the cap, the moustache, the eyebrows were 
 of a bluish gray; to see this with its 
 childish exactitude of design and colour, 
 and hugeness of scale it covered at least 
 25 held me spellbound. As I continued 
 to gaze, the expression began to change; 
 he had the exact air of closing one eye, 
 dropping his jaw, and drawing down his 
 nose; had the thing not been so imposing,
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 251 
 
 I could have smiled; and then almost in a 1892 
 moment, a shoulder of leaden-coloured bank 
 drove in front and blotted it. My atten- 
 tion spread to the rest of the cloud, and it 
 was a thing to worship. It rose from the 
 horizon, and its top was within thirty 
 degrees of the zenith; the lower parts were 
 like a glacier in shadow, varying from dark 
 indigo to a clouded white in exquisite 
 gradations. The sky behind, so far as I 
 could see, was all of a blue already enriched 
 and darkened by the night, for the hill had 
 what lingered of the sunset. But the top 
 of my Titanic cloud flamed in broad sun- 
 light, with the most excellent softness and 
 brightness of fire and jewels, enlightening 
 all the world. It must have been far higher 
 than Mount Everest, and its glory, as I 
 gazed up at it out of the night, was beyond 
 wonder. Close by rode the little crescent 
 moon ; and right over its western horn, a 
 great planet of about equal lustre with 
 itself. The dark woods below were shrill 
 with that noisy business of the birds'
 
 252 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 evening worship. When I returned, after 
 
 May 
 
 eight, the moon was near down ; she 
 seemed little brighter than before, but now 
 that the cloud no longer played its part of 
 a nocturnal sun, we could see that sight, 
 so rare with us at home that it was counted 
 a portent, so customary in the tropics, of 
 the dark sphere with its little gilt band 
 upon the belly. The planet had been 
 setting faster, and was now below the 
 crescent. They were still of an equal 
 brightness. 
 
 I could not resist trying to reproduce 
 this in words, as a specimen of these 
 incredibly beautiful and imposing meteors 
 of the tropic sky that make so much of my 
 pleasure here; though a ship's deck is 
 the place to enjoy them. Oh, what awful 
 scenery, from a ship's deck, in the tropics ! 
 People talk about the Alps, but the clouds 
 of the trade wind are alone for sublimity. 
 
 Now to try and tell you what has been 
 happening. The state of these islands, 
 and of Mataafa and Laupepa (Malietoa's
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 253 
 
 ambd) had been much on my mind. I went 1892 
 to the priests and sent a message to 
 Mataafa, at a time when it was supposed 
 he was about to act. He did not act, 
 delaying in true native style, and I deter- 
 mined I should go to visit him. I have 
 been very good not to go sooner; to live 
 within a few miles of a rebel camp, to be a 
 novelist, to have all my family forcing me 
 to go, and to refrain all these months, 
 counts for virtue. But hearing that several 
 people had gone and the government done 
 nothing to punish them, and having an 
 errand there which was enough to justify 
 myself in my own eyes, I half determined 
 to go, and spoke of it with the half-caste 
 priest. And here (confound it) up came 
 Laupepa and his guards to call on me; we 
 kept him to lunch, and the old gentleman 
 was very good and amiable. He asked me 
 why I had not been to see him ? I reminded 
 him a law had been made, and told him I 
 was not a small boy to go and ask leave of 
 the consuls, and perhaps be refused. He
 
 254 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 2 told me to pay no attention to the law but 
 come when I would, and begged me to 
 name a day to lunch. The next day (I 
 think it was) early in the morning, a man 
 appeared; he had metal buttons like a 
 policeman but he was none of our Apia 
 force; he was a rebel policeman, and had 
 been all night coming round inland through 
 the forest from Malie. He brought a letter 
 addressed 
 
 / laua susnga To his Excellency 
 Misi Mea. Mr. Thingumbob. 
 
 (So as not to compromise me.) I can read 
 Samoan now, though not speak it. It was 
 to ask me for last Wednesday. My diffi- 
 culty was great; I had no man here who 
 was fit, or who would have cared, to write 
 for me; and I had to postpone the visit. 
 So I gave up half-a-day with a groan, went 
 down to the priests, arranged for Monday 
 week to go to Malie, and named Thursday 
 as my day to lunch with Laupepa. I was 
 sharply ill on Wednesday, mail day. But 
 on Thursday I had to trail down and go
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 255 
 
 through the dreary business of a feast, in 1892 
 the King's wretched shanty, full in view May 
 of the President's fine new house; it made 
 my heart burn. 
 
 This gave me my chance to arrange a 
 private interview with the King, and I 
 decided to ask Mr. Whitmee, one of our 
 missionaries, to be my interpreter. On 
 Friday, being too much exhausted to go 
 down, I begged him to come up. He did, 
 I told him the heads of what I meant to 
 say; and he not only consented, but said, 
 if we got on well with the King, he would 
 even proceed with me to Malie. Yester- 
 day, in consequence, T rode down to W. 's 
 house by eight in the morning; waited till 
 ten ; received a message that the King was 
 stopped by a meeting with the President 
 and faipule ; made another engagement for 
 seven at night; came up; went down; 
 waited till eight, and came away again, 
 brcdouillc, and a dead body. The poor, 
 weak, enslaved King had not dared to 
 come to me even in secret. Now I have
 
 256 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 to-day for a rest, and to-morrow to Malie. 
 
 May 
 
 Shall I be suffered to embark? It is 
 very doutbful ; they are on the trail. On 
 Thursday, a policeman came up to me and 
 began that a boy had been to see him, and 
 said I was going to see Mataafa. " And 
 what did you say ? " said I. "I told him 
 I did not know about where you were 
 going," said he. "A very good answer," 
 said I, and turned away. It is lashing rain 
 to-day, but to-morrow, rain or shine, I 
 must at least make the attempt; and I am 
 so weary, and the weather looks so bad. I 
 could half wish they would arrest me on 
 the beach. All this bother and pother to 
 try and bring a little chance of peace; all 
 this opposition and obstinacy in people 
 who remain here by the mere forbearance 
 of Mataafa, who has a great force within 
 six miles of their government buildings, 
 which are indeed only the residences of 
 white officials. To understand how I have 
 been occupied, you must know that " Misi 
 Mea" has had another letter, and this time
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 257 
 
 had to answer himself; think of doing so lS 92 
 in a language so obscure to me, with the 
 aid of a Bible, concordance and dictionary ! 
 What a wonderful Baboo compilation it 
 must have been ! I positively expected to 
 hear news of its arrival in Malie by the 
 sound of laughter. I doubt if you will be 
 able to read this scrawl, but I have managed 
 to scramble somehow up to date; and to- 
 morrow, one way or another, should be 
 interesting. But as for me, I am a wreck, 
 as I have no doubt style and handwriting 
 both testify. 
 
 8 P. M. 
 
 Wonderfully rested; feel almost fit for 
 to-morrow's deary excursion not that it 
 will be dreary if the weather favour, but 
 otherwise it will be death; and a native 
 feast, and I fear I am in for a big one, is a 
 thing I loathe. I wonder if you can really 
 conceive me as a politician in this extra- 
 mundane sphere presiding at public 
 meetings, drafting proclamations, receiv- 
 ing mis-addressed letters that have been 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 carried all night through tropical forests? 
 It seems strange indeed, and to you who 
 know me really, must seem stranger. I 
 do not say I am free from the itch of med- 
 dling, but God knows this is no tempting 
 job to meddle in; I smile at picturesque 
 circumstances like the Misi Mea (Monsieur 
 Chose is the exact equivalent) correspon- 
 dence, but the business as a whole bores 
 and revolts me. I do nothing and say 
 nothing; and then a day comes, and I say 
 "this can go on no longer." 
 
 9.30 P. M. 
 
 The wretched native dilatoriness finds 
 me out. News has just come that we must 
 embark at six to-morrow; I have divided 
 the night in watches, and hope to be called 
 to-morrow at four and get under way by 
 five. It is a great chance if it be managed ; 
 but I have given directions and lent my 
 own clock to the boys, and hope the best. 
 If I get called at four we shall do it nicely. 
 Good-night ; I must turn in.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 259 
 
 May -yd. 
 
 Well, we did get off by about 5.30, or, '892 
 by 'r lady! quarter of six: myself on 
 Donald, the huge gray cart-horse, with a 
 ship-bag across my saddle bow, Fanny on 
 Musu and Belle on Jack. We were all 
 feeling pretty tired and sick, and I looked 
 like heaven knows what on the cart horse : 
 "death on the pale horse," I suggested 
 and young Hunt the missionary, who met 
 me to-day on the same charger, squinted 
 up at my perch and remarked, "There 's a 
 sweet little cherub that sits up aloft." 
 The boat was ready and we set off down 
 the lagoon about seven, four oars, and 
 Talolo, my cook, steering. 
 
 May gth, (Monday anyway). 
 
 And see what good resolutions came to! 
 Here is all this time past, and no speed 
 made. Well, we got to Malie and were 
 received with the most friendly considera- 
 tion by the rebel chief. Belle and Fanny 
 were obviously thought to be my two 
 wives; they were served their kava to-
 
 26O VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 *&9 2 gether, as were Mataafa and myself. Talolo 
 utterly broke down as interpreter; long 
 speeches were made to me by Mataafa and 
 his orators, of which he could make noth- 
 ing but they were "very much surprised " 
 his way of pronouncing obliged and 
 as he could understand nothing that fell 
 from me except the same form of words, 
 the dialogue languished and all business 
 had to be laid aside. We had kava, 1 and 
 
 1 " Kava, properly Ava, is a drink more or less intoxi- 
 cating, made from the root of the Piper Afethysticum, a 
 Pepper plant. The root is grated : formerly it was chewed 
 by fair damsels. The root thus broken up is rubbed about 
 in a great pail, with water slowly added. A strainer of 
 bark cloth is plunged into it at times, and wrung out so as 
 to carry away the small fragments of root. The drink is 
 made and used in ceremony. Every detail is regulated by 
 rules, and the manner of the mixture of the water, the 
 straining, the handling of the cup, the drinking out of it 
 and returning, should all be done according to a well- 
 established manner and in certain cadences." I have ven- 
 tured to borrow this explanation from Mr. Lafarge's notes 
 to his catalogue of South Sea Drawings. It may serve to 
 make clearer several passages in later letters of the present 
 collection (e. . pp. 195, 210, 315). Readers of the late 
 Lord Pembroke's South Sea Bubbles will remember the 
 account of this beverage and its preparation in chap. vin. 
 of that volume.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 26l 
 
 then a dish of arrowroot ; one end of the 1892 
 house was screened off for us with a fine 
 tapa, and we lay and slept, the three of us, 
 heads and tails, upon the mats till dinner. 
 After dinner his illegitimate majesty and 
 myself had a walk, and talked as well as 
 my twopenny Samoan would admit. Then 
 there was a dance to amuse the ladies 
 before the house, and we came back by 
 moonlight, the sky piled full of high faint 
 clouds that long preserved some of the 
 radiance of the sunset. The lagoon was 
 very shallow; we continually struck, for 
 the moon was young and the light baffling; 
 and for a long time we were accompanied 
 by, and passed and re-passed, a huge 
 whale-boat from Savaii, pulling perhaps 
 twelve oars, and containing perhaps forty 
 people who sang in time as they went. So 
 to the hotel, where we slept, and returned 
 the next Tuesday morning on the three 
 same steeds. 
 
 Meanwhile my business was still un- 
 transacted. And on Saturday morning, I
 
 262 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 2 sent down and arranged with Charlie 
 Taylor to go down that afternoon. I had 
 scarce got the saddle bags fixed and had 
 not yet mounted, when the rain began. 
 But it was no use delaying now ; off I 
 went in a wild waterspout to Apia; found 
 Charlie (Sale) Taylor a sesquipedalian 
 young half-caste not yet ready, had a 
 snack of bread and cheese at the hotel 
 while waiting him, and then off to Malie. 
 It rained all the way, seven miles; the 
 road, which begins in triumph, dwindles 
 down to a nasty, boggy, rocky footpath 
 with weeds up to a horseman's knees; and 
 there are eight pig fences to jump, nasty 
 beastly jumps the next morning we found 
 one all messed with blood where a horse 
 had come to grief but my Jack is a clever 
 fencer; and altogether we made good time, 
 and got to Malie about dark. It is a 
 village of very fine native houses, high, 
 domed, oval buildings, open at the sides, 
 or only closed with slatted Venetians. To 
 be sure, Mataafa's is not the worst. It
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 263 
 
 was already quite dark within, only a little 1892 
 fire of cocoa-shell blazed in the midst and 
 showed us four servants; the chief was in 
 his chapel, whence we heard the sound of 
 chaunting. Presently he returned; Taylor 
 and I had our soaking clothes changed, 
 family worship was held, kava brewed, I 
 was exhibited to the chiefs as a man who 
 had ridden through all that rain and risked 
 deportation to serve their master; they 
 were bidden learn my face, and remember 
 upon all occasions to help and serve me. 
 Then dinner, and politics, and fine speeches 
 until twelve at night Oh, and some more 
 kava when I could sit up no longer; my 
 usual bed-time is eight, you must remem- 
 ber. Then one end of the house was 
 screened off for me alone, and a bed made 
 you never saw such a couch I believe 
 of nearly fifty (half at least) fine mats, by 
 Mataafa's daughter, Kalala. Here I re- 
 posed alone; and on the other side of the 
 tafa, Majesty and his household. Armed 
 guards and a drummer patrolled about the
 
 264 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 house all night ; they had no shift, poor 
 devils; but stood to arms from sun-down 
 to sun-up. 
 
 About four in the morning, I was awak- 
 ened by the sound of a whistle pipe blown 
 outside on the dark, very softly and to a 
 pleasing simple air; I really think I have 
 hit the first phrase : 
 
 Andante tranqnillo. 
 
 S-v? 
 
 It sounded very peaceful, sweet and strange 
 in the dark; and I found this was a part of 
 the routine of my rebel's night, and it was 
 done (he said) to give good dreams. By a 
 little before six, Taylor and I were in the 
 saddle again fasting. My riding boots 
 were so wet I could not get them on, so I 
 must ride barefoot. The morning was fair 
 but the roads very muddy, the weeds soaked 
 us nearly to the waist, Sale was twice spilt 
 at the fences, and we got to Apia a be- 
 draggled enough pair. All the way along
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 265 
 
 the coast, the pate (small wooden drum) was 1892 
 beating in the villages and the people 
 crowding to the churches in their fine 
 clothes. Thence through the mangrove 
 swamp, among the black mud and the 
 green mangroves, and the black and scarlet 
 crabs, to Mulinuu, to the doctor's, where 
 I had an errand, and so to the inn to break- 
 fast about nine. After breakfast I rode 
 home. Conceive such an outing, remem- 
 ber the pallid brute that lived in Skerryvore 
 like a weevil in a biscuit, and receive the 
 intelligence that I was rather the better 
 for my journey. Twenty miles ride, six- 
 teen fences taken, ten of the miles in a 
 drenching rain, seven of them fasting and 
 in the morning chill, and six stricken 
 hours' political discussions by an inter- 
 preter; to say nothing of sleeping in 
 a native house, at which many of our 
 excellent literati would look askance of 
 itself. 
 
 You are to understand: if I take all this 
 bother, it is not only from a sense of duty,
 
 266 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 l8 9 2 or a love of meddling damn the phrase, 
 take your choice but from a great affec- 
 tion for Mataafa. He is a beautiful, sweet 
 old fellow, and he and I grew quite ful- 
 some on Saturday night about our senti- 
 ments. I had a messenger from him to-day 
 with a flannel undershirt which I had left 
 behind like a gibbering idiot; and per- 
 petrated in reply another baboo letter. It 
 rains again to-day without mercy; blessed, 
 welcome rains, making up for the paucity 
 of the late wet season ; and when the 
 showers slacken, I can hear my stream 
 roaring in the hollow, and tell myself that 
 the cacaos are drinking deep. I am desper- 
 ately hunted to finish my Samoa book 
 before the mail goes; this last chapter is 
 equally delicate and necessary. The 
 prayers of the congregation are requested. 
 Eheu! and it will be ended before this 
 letter leaves and printed in the States 
 ere you can read this scribble. The first 
 dinner gong has sounded \ je vous salue, 
 monsieur et cher confrere. To/a, soifua!
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 267 
 
 Sleep! long life! as our Samoan salutation 1892 
 of farewell runs. 
 
 Friday, May 13^ 'h. 
 
 Well ; the last chapter, by far the most 
 difficult and ungrateful, is well under way, 
 I have been from six to seven hours upon 
 it daily since I last wrote; and that is all I 
 have done forbye working at Samoan rather 
 hard, and going down on Wednesday even- 
 ing to the club. I make some progress 
 now at the language; I am teaching Belle, 
 which clears and exercises myself. I am 
 particularly taken with the finesse of the 
 pronouns. The pronouns are all dual and 
 plural and the first person, both in the 
 dual and plural, has a special exclusive and 
 inclusive form. You can conceive what 
 fine effects of precision and distinction 
 can be reached in certain cases. Take 
 Ruth, i, vv. 8 to 13, and imagine how 
 those pronouns come in; it is exquisitely 
 elegant, and makes the mouth of the 
 litterateur to water. I am going to exer- 
 citate my pupil over those verses to-day for 
 pronoun practice.
 
 268 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 Tuesday. 
 
 1892 Yesterday came yours. Well, well, if 
 the dears prefer a week, why, I '11 give 
 them ten days, but the real document, 
 from which I have scarcely varied, ran for 
 one night. 1 I think you seem scarcely 
 fair to Wiltshire, who had surely, under 
 his beast -ignorant ways, right noble quali- 
 ties. And I think perhaps you scarce do 
 justice to the fact that this is a place of 
 realism a entrance; nothing extenuated or 
 coloured. Looked at so, is it not, with all 
 its tragic features, wonderfully idyllic, 
 with great beauty of scene and circum- 
 stance? And will you please to observe 
 that almost all that is ugly is in the 
 whites? I '11 apologize for Papa Randal if 
 you like; but if I told you the whole truth 
 for I did extenuate there! and he 
 seemed to me essential as a figure, and 
 essential as a pawn in the game, Wiltshire's 
 disgust for him being one of the small, 
 
 1 Referring to the marriage contract in the Beach of 
 Falesd : see above, Letter xv.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 269 
 
 efficient motives in the story. Now it 1892 
 would have taken a fairish dose to disgust May 
 Wiltshire. Again, the idea of publishing 
 
 the Beach substantivoly is dropped at 
 
 once, both on account of expostulation, 
 and. because it measured shorter than I had 
 expected. And it was only taken up, 
 when the proposed volume, Beach dc Mar, 
 petered out. It petered out thus : the chief 
 of the short stories got sucked into Sophia 
 Scarlet and Sophia is a book I am much 
 taken with, and mean to get to, as soon as 
 but not before I have done David 
 Balfour and TJic Young Chevalier. So you 
 see you are like to hear no more of the 
 Pacific or the nineteenth century for a 
 while. Tlic Young Chevalier is a story of 
 sentiment and passion, which I mean to 
 write a little differently from what I have 
 been doing if I can hit the key; rather 
 more of a sentimental tremolo to it. It 
 may thus help to prepare me for Sophia, 
 which is to contain three ladies, and a kind 
 of a love affair between the heroine and a
 
 270 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 dying planter who is a poet! large orders 
 7 forR. L. S. 
 
 Oh, the German taboo is quite over; no 
 soul attempts to support the C. J. or the 
 President, they are past hope; the whites 
 have just refused their taxes I mean the 
 council has refused to call for them, and if 
 the council consented, nobody would pay; 
 't is a farce, and the curtain is going to fall 
 briefly. Consequently in my History, I 
 say as little as may be of the two dwindling 
 stars. Poor devils! I liked the one, and 
 the other has a little wife, now lying in ! 
 There was no man born with so little ani- 
 mosity as I. When I heard the C. J. was 
 in low spirits and never left his house, I 
 could scarce refrain from going to him. 
 
 It was a fine feeling to have finished the 
 History; there ought to be a future state 
 to reward that grind ! It 's not literature, 
 you know; only journalism, and pedantic 
 journalism. I had but the one desire, to 
 get the thing as right as might be, and 
 avoid false concords even if that ! And
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 2/1 
 
 it was more than there was time for. l8 9 2 
 However, there it is : done. And if Samoa 
 turns up again, my book has to be counted 
 with, being the only narrative extant. 
 Milton and I if you kindly excuse the 
 juxtaposition harnessed ourselves to 
 strange waggons, and I at least will be 
 found to have plodded very soberly with 
 my load. There is not even a good sen- 
 tence in it, but perhaps I don't know 
 it may be found an honest, clear volume. 
 
 Wednesday. 
 
 Never got a word set down, and continues 
 on Thursday iQth May, his own marriage 
 clay as ever was. News ; yes. The C. J. 
 came up to call on us ! After five months' 
 cessation on my side, and a decidedly pain- 
 ful interchange of letters, I could not go 
 down could not to see him. My three 
 ladies received him, however; he was very 
 agreeable as usual, but refused wine, beer, 
 water, lemonade, chocolate and at last a 
 cigarette. Then my wife asked him, "So
 
 2/2 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 you refuse to break bread ? " and he waved 
 y his hands amiably in answer. All my 
 three ladies received the same impression 
 that he had serious matters in his mind: 
 now we hear he is quite cock-a-hoop since 
 the mail came, and going about as before 
 his troubles darkened. But what did he 
 want with me? 'T is thought he had re- 
 ceived a despatch and that he misreads 
 it (so we fully believe) to the effect that 
 they are to have war ships at command and 
 can make their little war after all. If it 
 be so, and they do it, it will be the meanest 
 wanton slaughter of poor men for the 
 salaries of two white failures. But what 
 was his errand with me ? Perhaps to warn 
 me that unless I behave he now hopes to 
 be able to pack me off in the Curaqoa when 
 she comes. 
 
 I have celebrated my holiday from Samoa 
 by a plunge at the beginning of The Young 
 Chevalier. I am afraid my touch is a little 
 broad in a love story; I can't mean one 
 thing and write another. As for women,
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 273 
 
 I am no more in any fear of them ; I can 1892 
 do a sort all right ; age makes me less 
 afraid of a petticoat, but I am a little in 
 fear of grossness. However, this David 
 Balfour's love affair, that's all right 
 might be read out to a mother's meeting 
 or a daughter's meeting. The difficulty 
 in a love yarn, which dwells at all on love, 
 is the dwelling on one string; it is mani- 
 fold, I grant, but the root fact is there 
 unchanged, and the sentiment being very 
 intense, and already very much handled in 
 letters, positively calls for a little pawing 
 and gracing. With a writer of my prosaic 
 literalness and pertinency of point of view, 
 this all shoves toward grossness posi- 
 tively even towards the far more damnable 
 closeness. This has kept me off the senti- 
 ment hitherto, and now I am to try : Lord ! 
 Of course Meredith can do it, and so could 
 Shakespeare; but with all my romance, I 
 am a realist and a prosaist, and a most 
 fanatical lover of plain physical sensations 
 plainly and expressly rendered ; hence my 
 
 VOL. I. l8
 
 2/4 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 perils. To do love in the same spirit as I 
 VIay did (for instance) D. Balfour's fatigue in 
 the heather; my dear sir, there were gross- 
 ness ready made ! And hence, how to 
 sugar? However, I have nearly done with 
 Marie-Madeleine, and am in good hopes of 
 Marie-Salome, the real heroine, the other 
 is only a prologuial heroine to introduce 
 the hero. 
 
 Friday. 
 
 Anyway, the first prologuial episode is 
 done, and Fanny likes it. There are only 
 four characters; Francis Blair of Balmile 
 (Jacobite Lord Gladsmuir) my hero; the 
 Master of Ballantrae ; Paradon, a wine- 
 seller of Avignon; Marie-Madeleine his 
 wife. These two last I am now done with, 
 and I think they are successful, and I hope 
 I have Balmile on his feet; and the style 
 seems to be found. It is a little charged 
 and violent; sins on the side of violence; 
 but I think will carry the tale. I think it 
 is a good idea so to introduce my hero, 
 being made love to by an episodic woman.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 275 
 
 This queer tale I mean queer for me 1892 
 has taken a great hold upon me. Where 
 the devil shall I go next? This is simply 
 the tale of a coup dc tetc of a young man 
 and a young woman ; with a nearly, per- 
 haps a wholly, tragic sequel, which I desire 
 to make thinkable right through, and sen- 
 sible; to make the reader, as far as I shall 
 be able, eat and drink and breathe it. 
 Marie-Salome des Saintes-Maries is, I 
 think, the heroine's name; she has got to 
 be yet : sursum corda! So has the young 
 Chevalier, whom I have not yet touched, 
 and who comes next in order. Characters : 
 Balmile, or Lord Gladsmuir, comme vous 
 vonlcz; Prince Charlie; Earl Marischal ; 
 Master of Ballantrae; and a spy, and Dr. 
 Archie Campbell, and a few nondescripts; 
 then, of women, Marie-Salome and Flora 
 Blair; seven at the outside; really four full 
 lengths, and I suppose a half-dozen episodic 
 profiles. How I must bore you with these 
 ineptitudes! Have patience. I am going 
 to bed; it is (of all hours) eleven. I have
 
 2/6 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 been forced in (since I began to write to 
 you) to blatter to Fanny on the subject of 
 my heroine, there being two cruces as to 
 her life and history: how came she alone? 
 and how far did she go with the Chevalier? 
 The second must answer itself when I get 
 near enough to see. The first is a back- 
 breaker. Yet I know there are many 
 reasons why a fille de famille, romantic, 
 adventurous, ambitious, innocent of the 
 world, might run from her home in these 
 days; might she not have been threatened 
 with a convent? might there not be some 
 Huguenot business mixed in? Here am I, 
 far from books ; if you can help me with a 
 suggestion, I shall say God bless you. 
 She has to be new run away from a strict 
 family, well-justified in her own wild but 
 honest eyes, and meeting these three men, 
 Charles Edward, Marischal, and Balmile, 
 through the accident of a fire at an inn. 
 She must not run from a marriage, I think ; 
 it would bring her in the wrong frame of 
 mind. Once I can get her, sola, on the
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 277 
 
 highway, all were well with my narrative. 1892 
 Perpend. And help if you can. 
 
 Lafaele, long (I hope) familiar to you, 
 has this day received the visit of his son 
 from Tonga; and the son proves to be a 
 very pretty, attractive young daughter ! I 
 gave all the boys kava in honour of her 
 arrival; along with a lean, side-whiskered 
 Tongan, dimly supposed to be Lafaele's 
 step-father; and they have been having a 
 good time; in the end of my verandah, I 
 hear Simi, my present incapable steward, 
 talking Tongan with the nondescript papa. 
 Simi, our out-door boy, burst a succession 
 of blood-vessels over our work, and I had 
 to make a position for the wreck of one of 
 the noblest figures of a man I ever saw. I 
 believe I may have mentioned the other 
 day how I had to put my horse to the trot, 
 the canter and (at last) the gallop to run 
 him clown. In a photograph I hope to 
 send you (perhaps with this) you will see 
 Simi standing in the verandah in profile. 
 As a steward, one of his chief points is to
 
 278 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 i 8 9 2 break crystal; he is great on fracture 
 what do I say ? explosion ! He cleans a 
 glass, and the shards scatter like a comet's 
 bowels. 
 
 N. B. If I should by any chance be 
 deported, the first of the rules hung up for 
 that occasion is to communicate with you 
 by telegraph. Mind, I do not fear it, but 
 it is possible. 
 
 Monday 2$tA. 
 
 We have had a devil of a morning of 
 upset and bustle; the bronze candlestick 
 Faauma has returned to the family, in time 
 to take her position of stepmamma, and it 
 is pretty to see how the child is at once at 
 home, and all her terrors ended. 
 
 2"]th. Mail day. 
 
 And I don't know that I have much to 
 report. I may have to leave for Malie as 
 soon as these mail packets are made up. 
 'T is a necessity (if it be one) I rather 
 deplore. I think I should have liked to 
 lazy; but I dare say all it means is the
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 279 
 
 May 
 
 delay of a day or so in harking back to 1892 
 David Balfour; that respectable youth 
 chides at being left (where he is now) in 
 Glasgow with the Lord Advocate, and after 
 five years in the British Linen, who shall 
 blame him? I was all forenoon yesterday 
 down in Apia, dictating, and Lloyd type- 
 writing, the conclusion of Samoa; and 
 then at home correcting till the dinner 
 bell ; and in the evening again till eleven 
 of the clock. This morning I have made 
 up most of my packets, and I think my 
 mail is all ready but two more, and the tag 
 of this. I would never deny (as D. B. 
 might say) that I was rather tired of it. 
 But I have a damned good dose of the devil 
 in my pipe-stem atomy; I have had my 
 little holiday outing in my kick at The 
 Young Chevalier, and I guess I can settle 
 to David Balfour to-morrow or Friday like 
 a little man. I wonder if any one had ever 
 more energy upon so little strength? I 
 know there is a frost ; the Samoa book can 
 only increase that I can't help it, that
 
 280 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 1892 book is not written for me but for Miss 
 
 May 
 
 Manners; but I mean to break that frost 
 inside two years, and pull off a big success, 
 and Vanity whispers in my ear that I have 
 the strength. If I haven't, whistle ower 
 the lave o't! I can do without glory, and 
 perhaps the time is not far off when I 
 can do without corn. It is a time coming 
 soon enough, anyway; and I have endured 
 some two and forty years without public 
 shame, and had a good time as I did it. 
 If only I could secure a violent death, 
 what a fine success! I wish to die in 
 my boots; no more Land of Counterpane 
 for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be 
 thrown from a horse ay, to be hanged, 
 rather than pass again through that slow 
 dissolution. 
 
 I fancy this gloomy ramble is caused by 
 a twinge of age; I put on an under-shirt 
 yesterday (it was the only one I could find) 
 that barely came under my trousers ; and 
 just below it, a fine healthy rheumatism 
 has now settled like a fire in my hip.
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 28 1 
 
 From such small causes do these valuable 1892 
 considerations flow ! 
 
 I shall now say adieu, dear Sir, having 
 ten rugged miles before me and the horrors 
 of a native feast and parliament without an 
 interpreter, for to-day I go alone. 
 Yours ever, 
 
 R. L. S. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 A 000 005 422