Vailima Letters E-Book

Robert Louis Stevenson

• Herausgeber: Seltzer Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 420

Beschreibung

A series of letters written from Samoa in the 1890s. According to Wikipedia: "Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson ( 1850 - 1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-romanticism in English literature. He was the man who "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins", as G. K. Chesterton put it. He was also greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Vladimir Nabokov, and J. M. Barrie. Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their definition of modernism. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the canon."

Leseprobe

VAILIMA LETTERS BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT, USA

established in 1974, offering over 14,000 books

Books and Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Across the Plains

The Art of Writing

Ballads

Black Arrow

The Bottle Imp

Catriona or David Balfour (sequel to Kidnapped)

A Child's Garden of Verses

The Ebb-Tide

Edinburgh

Essays

Essays of Travel

Fables

Familiar Studies of Men and Books

Father Damien

Footnote to History

In the South Seas

An Inland Voyage

Island Nights' Entertainments

Kidnapped

Lay Morals

Letters

Lodging for the Night

Markheim

Master of Ballantrae

Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin

Memories and Portraits

Merry Men

Moral Emblems

New Arabian Nights

New Poems

The Pavilion on the Links

Four Plays

The Pocket R. L. S.

Prayers Written at Vailima

Prince Otto

Records of a Family of Engineers

The Sea Fogs

The Silverado Squatters

Songs of Travel

St. Ives

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Tales and Fantasies

Thrawn Janet

Travels with a Donkey

Treasure Island

Underwoods

Vailima Letters

Virginibus Puerisque

The Waif Woman

Weir of Hermiston

The Wrecker

The Wrong Box

feedback welcome: [email protected]

visit us at samizdat.com

CHAPTER I  IN THE MOUNTAIN, APIA, SAMOA,  NOV. 2, 1890

MY DEAR COLVIN, - This is a hard and 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 labourers 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 verandah, is to taste a quiet  conscience.  And the 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 interested; the woman I sat next LOOKED a full- 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  him to the King's, whom I have not called 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.

Then off up the hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close on  noon) staring hot, the breeze very strong and pleasant; the  ineffable 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?' - 'Ioe (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,  suckling kids, sleeping on their stiff 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 Scotchman, 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 that, eight of the South Sea book, and,  along and about and in between, a hatful of verses.  Some day  I'll send the verse to you, and you'll 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  scriving 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 outside.   If you could see this place! but 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 some 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 stones to be 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:-

[Map which cannot be reproduced]

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 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 other day; how hard  it was that the bad 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 my home will be inclosed 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  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 track overgrown, and  was restoring an old 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; exquisite 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 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 expessions' 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 SIC SEMPER!   But will he be 'his sometime 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: (1) no cook;  (2) an inveterate 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 daren'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 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  miserable 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.

 Tuesday 3rd

 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 at the South Seas, and finished  the chapter I had stuck upon on Saturday.  Fanny, awfully  hove-to with rheumatics and injuries received upon the field  of sport and glory, chasing pigs, 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, pine-apple in  claret, coffee.  Try to write a poem; no go.  Play the  flageolet.  Then sneakingly off to farmering and pioneering.   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 one gets to know so well; great,  soft, sappy 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 interrogation, 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 beginning 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 sundown sometimes rings with shrill cries,  like the hails of merry, scattered children.  As a matter of  fact, I believe stealthy wood-cutters from Tanugamanono were  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, pine-apple 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 temperate zone, it had seemed  nothing; 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 degrees!  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 - Mauga, 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: 1st, sore  hands; 2nd, had on my 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; 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.  Suddenly quoth Lafaele, 'Somebody he  sing out.' - 'Somebody he sing out?  All 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 pine-apple 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 blame the indefatigable fellow;  energy is too rare and goodwill 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 ADHUC DESUNT.

 FRIDAY - I 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 mispronunciation 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 map; from the house run down to the stream  side, up the stream 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 contending  forest; weigh upon the imagination.  My poem the WOODMAN  stands; but I have taken refuge in a new story, which just  shot through me like a bullet in one of my moments of awe,  alone in that tragic jungle:-

 THE HIGH WOODS OF ULUFANUA.

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 daresay; 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; she could not sleep last night,  something it seemed like asthma - I trust not.  I suppose  Lloyd will be about, so you can give him the benefit of this  long scrawl.  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 leaves, he  strikes his prickles downward so as to catch the uprooting  finger; instinctive, 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; 'tis 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 perished.  The sensitive plant has  indigestible 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.  The job  is immense; I stagger under material.  I have seen the first  big TACHE.  It was necessary to see the smaller ones; the  letters were at my hand 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.  Problems of style are (as yet)  dirt under my 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'll send you a whole  lot to damn.  You never said thank-you for the handsome  tribute addressed to you from Apemama; 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 friendship, I have the honour to  subscribe myself, 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.  Well!

There is much eloquence in a well! I am, Sir Yours

The Epigrammatist

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

FINIS - EXPLICIT

CHAPTER II  VAILIMA, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH, 1890.

 MY DEAR COLVIN, - I wanted to go out 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 deception 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, Henry had  cleared a great deal of our bush 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 borrowed 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 wouldn'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, the  mariner's compass, derivations, grammar, 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; anything to do with the mind, with  the eye, with the hand - with a part of ME; diversion 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., AETAT.  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 intellectual husks, which the  professors masticated; 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 - Scholastikos, 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 been in an interesting condition for longer 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.  It seemed to  me beyond words; but Fanny's CRI DU COEUR 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 supposed 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: despatched his work and started after.  No  cart! he hurried on up the road - no cart.  Transfer the  scene to Vailima, where on a sudden to Fanny and me, the cart  appears, apparently at a hard gallop, some two hours before  it was expected; Henry radiantly 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 - couldn't  find anything else but our blankets - to rub them down, 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, 31ST? NOVEMBER.

 Near a week elapsed, and no journal.  On Monday afternoon,  Moors rode up and I rode down with him, dined, and went over  in the evening to the American Consulate; present, Consul- General Sewall, Lieut. Parker and Mrs. Parker, Lafarge the  American decorator, Adams an American 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 introductions 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 verandah, a good dinner on the  whole; talk with Lafarge about art and the lovely dreams of  art students.  Remark by Adams, which took me briskly home to  the Monument - 'I only liked one YOUNG woman - and that was  Mrs. Procter.'  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,  desiring the restrictions to be removed, or rather to be made  dependent on the character of the dance.  Clarke, who had  feared censure and all kinds of trouble, is, of course,  rejoicing greatly.  A characteristic feature: the argument of  the pastors was handed in in the form of a fictitious  narrative of the voyage of one Mr. Pye, an English traveller,  and his conversation with a chief; there are touches of  satire in this educational romance.  Mr. Pye, for instance,  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 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 prophetic 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  paddock, and the great boughs and the black shadows of our  trees were inconceivable.  But it was a poor time.

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'll 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' 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 grateful?  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.  Some time later, Paul  returned himself with 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 conceives 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.

 SOMETHING NEW.

 I was called from my letters by the voice of Mr. -, who had  just come up with a load of wood, roaring, 'Henry!  Henry!   Bring six boys!'  I saw there was something 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 Edinburgh folk; it was  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.

CHAPTER III  MONDAY, TWENTY-SOMETHINGTH OF DECEMBER, 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  speak to people, they say (Dr. Stuebel the German consul said  about three days ago), 'O 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 when I start out of Apia  on a dark night, 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 moonlight 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 phosphorescent; some nights  the whole ground is strewn with it, so that it seems like a  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  appalled; do you think he thought of shying?  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 shuddered.  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 now the  moon is on tap again, and the roads lighted.

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 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 daresay 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.W. by N., hoping to  strike the Vaituliga 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 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 wonderful 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.