THE HALL OF VAILIMA
The little maiden (she might have been ten or eleven years of age) ran up to us quite gleefully, intimated by smiles and gestures that she was prepared to act as guide, and at once possessed herself of our heavy basket of fruit. We followed her through a little wicket gate which led into a lovely grove with oranges on one side and bananas on the other, the leaves of the latter being larger and more glossy than any I have seen before or since. The play of light and shadow here was something to dream of, and often we stood still too enraptured to pursue our way. Soon we crossed a little mountain stream, clear as crystal, with but a single plank for bridge, and lingered awhile to admire the cream-breasted kingfishers and the numerous little[7]crayfish disporting themselves in and above the water. In time we left the cultivated land behind and followed aslender path into the bush, where under foot was a dense growth of sensitive plant with delicately cut foliage and little fluffy pink ball-like blossoms. Our footsteps were marked by the quivering and shrinking of the shy, tremulous leaves, but as I looked back they once more stood bravely erect. This was the plant that baffled all poor Stevenson’s efforts at eradication, living, thriving, ever renewing itself in spite of him.
“A fool,” says he, “brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture and sentimentalize 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.”[8]
The trees here were simply magnificent, the fern life too was everywhere abundant, exquisite ferns, such as we grow in our hot-houses at home. Trees, ferns, creepers, flowers were tangled together in a vast net-work of luxuriant vegetation, each individual plant fighting for its very existence, contending for its due share of light, and air, and space. Here it was that Stevenson conceived his poem of “The Woodman”; every word of it came home to me withthe inevitableness of absolute truth as we fought our way upward and onward.
“I saw the wood for what it was,The lost and the victorious cause,The deadly battle pitched in line,Saw silent weapons cross and shine,Silent defeat, silent assault,A battle and a burial vault.”
Stevenson’s attitude towards nature was a very remarkable one. Like Wordsworth, he endued her with a real, living personality, but unlike Wordsworth, he never seems to enter into a direct communion with her. She does not soothe him into “a wise passiveness,” she rather inspires him with a strange, fierce energy. Take this passage, selected almost at random from one of his published letters to Sidney Colvin: “I wonder if any one ever had the same attitude to nature as I hold and have held for so long. This business (of weeding) 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 always present in my mind, the horror of 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 myself blood boltered—then I look back on my cleared grass, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make stout my heart.”
The living individual personality of nature is here as clearly recognised as Wordsworth himself recognised it, but the standpoint of regard is wholly different. Stevenson was aware of the spirit that clothed itself with the visible, but he was no dreamy lover enamoured of that spirit. He was rather (as he so often says) the ally in a fair quarrel, only desirous of bending Nature to his will, of pitting his strength against hers.
But I am digressing, and the mountain top and the grave are before me, and I am in the forest on my way thither. Now and again a tiny bright-coloured bird would flash across the path, now and again a huge trail of giant convolvulus, blue as the sky, would bar our progress. Over an hour had elapsed before we gained the summit, and the latter half of the ascent was by far the most difficult.
Small wonder that sixty natives were required to get the coffin up, and even so the question will always remain, How did they accomplish the feat? One may talk of the Road of the Loving Heart, but this was a veritable ViaDolorosa, a road of Sorrow and of Pity. The path zigzagged through the forest until it ended in a slender, fern-grown, almost imperceptible bush-track. More than once it led over the face of the solid rock, but branches of creepers, by which it was easy to swing oneself up, were abundant, though still the top appeared to recede, and to become more and more unattainable.
The mosquitos made the lives of my two companions a burden; on all sides of us we heard their sinister aereal trumpeting, the heat was insupportable—stifling, the very air seemed stagnant and dead, but, quite unawares, we were gradually nearing our goal. Suddenly our little brown-skinned guide, who was travelling ever so far ahead, in spite of the burden of our heavy basket of fruit, flung herself down on a small plateau just above us, and we, toiling painfully after, knew we had attained.
A minute later and we stood in reverent silence beside a massive sarcophagus, constructed of concrete and surrounded by a broad slab. Not an ideal structure by any manner of means, not even beautiful, and yet in its massive ruggedness it somehow suited the man and the place. The broad slab was strewn with faded wreaths and flowers, and on one side of the sarcophagus were inscribed Stevenson’s name, with the date of his birth and death,also these eight lines, familiar to all who have read his poems:
“Under the wide and starry sky,Dig the grave and let me lie,Glad did I live and gladly die,And I lay me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me,Here he lies where he longed to be,Home is the sailor, home from the sea,And the hunter home from the hill.”
On the other side was an inscription in Samoan, which translated is “Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried.” On either side of this text was graven a thistle and a hibiscus flower.
The chiefs have tabooed the use of firearms, or other weapons, on Mount Veea, in order that the birds may live there undisturbed and unafraid, and build their nests in the trees around Tusitala’s grave.
VIEW OF VAILIMA FROM STEVENSON’S GRAVE
We remained on the plateau for over an hour resting our weary limbs, and eating our lunch of fruit; and during that time we sat on the broad sun-warmed slab. A tiny lizard, with a golden head, a green body, and a blue tail,flickered to and fro. Overhead a huge flying fox, with outspread “batty wings” sailed majestically. We seemed alone in the world, we four human beings, and as we gazed about us we saw everywhere, far beneath us, the beautiful “sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land,” and down from us to the blueness, and beyond us, to an infinitude of distance, billow upon billow of wooded heights. Sitting there, on that green and level plateau on the summit of the mountain, my thoughts turned involuntarily to the last lofty resting-place of Browning’s “Grammarian.”
“Well, here’s the platform, here’s the proper place!Hail to your purlieus,All ye high flyers of the feathered race,Swallows and curlews!”“Here, here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,Lightnings are loosened,Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,Peace let the dew send!”
The wind sighed softly in the branches of theTavautrees, from out the green recesses of theToicame the plaintive coo of the wood-pigeon. In and out of the branches of the magnificentFautree, which overhangs the grave, a kingfisher, sea-blue, iridescent, flitted to and fro, whilst ascarlet hibiscus, in full flower, showed up royally against the gray lichened cement. All around was light and life and colour, and I said to myself, “He is made one with nature”; he is now, body and soul and spirit, commingled with the loveliness around. He who longed in life to scale the height, he who attained his wish only in death, has become in himself a parable of fulfilment. No need now for that heart-sick cry:—
“Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,Say, could that lad be I.”
No need now for the despairing finality of:—
“I have trod the upward and the downward slopes,I have endured and done in the days of yore,I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope,And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door.”
Death has set his seal of peace on the unequal conflict of mind and matter; the All-Mother has gathered him to herself.
In years to come, when his grave is perchance forgotten, a rugged ruin, home of the lizard and the bat, Tusitala—the story teller—“the man with a heart of gold” (as I so often heard him designated in the Islands) will live, when it may be his tales have ceased to interest, in the tenderremembrance of those whose lives he beautified, and whose hearts he warmed into gratitude.
THE STAIRCASE, VAILIMA
So we left him, “still loftier than the world suspects, living and dying,” and once more, following the footsteps of our guide, we took up that ferny moss-grown track. It was scarcely less easy to scramble down the steep descent than it had been to toil upwards. But “time and the hour run through the roughest day,” and we eventually arrived at the bottom, torn and scratched and not a little weary, but well content, only somewhat regretful that the visit to the grave was over and not still to come, comforting each other with the recollection that the house yet remained to be explored.
Vailima is not much changed since the days when Robert Louis Stevenson lived there. Where the walls had been, in the late native war, riddled with shot, they had been renewed, but so exactly on the old lines that the change was scarcely perceptible. Although the house has been added to, and in my estimation considerably improved thereby, yet the old part remains intact.
Herr Conrade, the manager for Herr Kunz, the present owner, was kind enough to show us everything, but naturally Stevenson’s suite of rooms were the only ones that possessed any special interest. First his bedroom, thenhis library, and lastly his Temple of Peace, the innermost shrine where he wrote, and which, opening as it did on to the upper verandah, commanded a magnificent view of sea and mountain. From the verandah could be seen the gleam of the sunlight on the breaking surf around the far distant bay. On the left, fronting seaward, were the heights where he was laid to rest.
Between two of the upper rooms (the bedroom and the library), there used to be a square hole, just large enough for a man to crawl through on hands and knees.[9]This was formerly the only entrance, but the present owner has had a door put up on which the outline of the hole is still indicated.
With the exception of these rooms, Vailima might have belonged to any other European of wealth and taste.
The question has been raised, Was Stevenson contented in Samoa? Did those three years bring him pleasure? May we not answer, Yes! and not only pleasure but profit. For the profit, note the books written during this period,The Master of Ballantrae, and the unfinishedWeir of Hermiston!
VAILIMA
For the pleasure he shall speak for himself, and mark the subtle distinction he draws between happiness and pleasure. “I was only happy once—that was at Hyères, 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 thousand 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 water, under the silence of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds.”
“Intense in all he did, Tusitala could do nothing by halves,” said a man who knew him well. “Whether it was at clearing land or writing books he always worked at the top of his power, and enjoying as he did the life of the gay house party in the evening, he would rise at daylight to make up his loss of time.” His was the old, old story of the sword that wore out the scabbard—flesh and spirit at issue, and the flesh so frail, so unequal to the conflict. There was an Austrian Count in Upolu whom the captain took us one day to see, and who, to use the colonial word, “batched” in a little bungalow in the midst of a huge coconut plantation.
The bungalow contained but one room—the bedroom, and the broad encircling verandah served for sitting room. Here we sat and talked about Tusitala, and drank to his memory. The conversation turned on Vailima, and our host took us within and showed us the only two adornments that his room possessed. Over his camp bed hung a framed photograph bearing the inscription “My friend Tusitala,” and fronting the bed was another of the house and Mount Veea.
“So,” he said, “I keep him there, for he was my saviour, and I wish ‘good night’ and ‘good morning,’ every day, both to himself and to his old home.” The count then told us that when he was stopping at Vailima he used to have his bath daily on the verandah below his room. One lovely morning he got up very early, got into the bath, and splashed and sang, feeling very well and very happy, and at last beginning to sing very loudly, he forgot Mr. Stevenson altogether. All at once there was Stevenson himself, his hair all ruffled up, his eyes full of anger. “Man,” he said, “you and your infernal row have cost me more than two hundred pounds in ideas,” and with that he was gone, but he did not address the count again the whole of that day. Next morning he had forgotten the count’s offence and was just as friendly as ever,but—the noise was never repeated! Another of the count’s stories amused me much. “An English lord came all the way to Samoa in his yacht to see Mr. Stevenson, and found him in his cool Kimino sitting with the ladies and drinking tea on his verandah; the whole party had their feet bare. The English lord thought that he must have called at the wrong time, and offered to go away, but Mr. Stevenson called out to him, and brought him back, and made him stay to dinner. They all went away to dress, and the guest was left sitting alone in the verandah. Soon they came back, Mr. Osborne and Mr. Stevenson wearing the form of dress most usual in that hot climate, a white mess jacket, and white trousers, but their feet were still bare. The guest put up his eyeglass and stared for a bit, then he looked down upon his own beautifully shod feet and sighed. They all talked and laughed until the ladies came in, the ladies in silk dresses, befrilled with lace, but still with bare feet, and the guest took a covert look through his eyeglass and gasped, but when he noticed that there were gold bangles on Mrs. Strong’s ankles and rings upon her toes, he could bear no more and dropped his eyeglass on the ground of the verandah breaking it all to bits.” Such was my informant’s story, which I give for what it is worth.
NATIVE FEAST AT VAILIMA
On our way back to the steamer we visited the lovely waterfall referred to inVailima Letters, also the Girls’ School for the daughters of Native Chiefs. The latter affords most interesting testimony to the value of mission work. The principal of the school—a German lady—told us that both Stevenson and his mother took the deepest interest in this school, and subscribed liberally towards its support.
We had, I regret to say, very little time in Apia, and no time for Papasea, or The Sliding Rock, which lies some miles inland. The natives love to shoot this fall, and many of the white folk of both sexes follow their example.
Next morning we were off again, steaming for the other side of the island, where we stayed two days shipping copra. Here I met many of Stevenson’s friends, and can recall a chat I had with the photographer to whom I am indebted for several of the photographs in this book. He was a thin spare man, about six-and-twenty years of age, and not so very unlike the pictures of Stevenson himself.
“I had but recently come to Samoa,” he said, “and was standing one day in my shop when Mr. Stevenson came in and spoke. “Mon,” he said, “I tak ye to be a Scotsman like mysel.”
ONE OF THE FIVE RIVERS FROM WHICH VAILIMA TAKES ITS NAME
“I would I could have claimed a kinship,” deplored the photographer, “but alas! I am English to the back-bone, with never a drop of Scotch blood in my veins, and I told him this, regretting the absence of the blood tie.
“I could have sworn your back was the back of a Scotchman,” was his comment, “but,” and he held out his hand, “you look sick, and there is a fellowship in sickness not to be denied.” I said I was not strong, and had come to the Island on account of my health. “Well then,” replied Mr. Stevenson, “it shall be my business to help you to get well; come to Vailima whenever you like, and if I am out, ask for refreshment, and wait until I come in, you will always find a welcome there.”
At this point my informant turned away, and there was a break in his voice as he exclaimed, “Ah, the years go on, and I don’t miss him less, but more; next to my mother he was the best friend I ever had: a man with a heart of gold; his house was a second home to me.”
“You like his books, of course.”
“Yes!” (this very dubiously), “I like them, but he was worth all his books put together. People who don’t know him, like him for his books. I like him for himself, and I often wish I liked his books better. It strikes me that we in the Colonies don’t think somuch of them as you do in England, perhaps we are not educated up to his style.” And this is the class of comment I heard over and over again in the Colonies, from men who liked the man, but had no especial liking for his books. Is it that Robert Louis Stevenson appeals first and foremost to a cultured audience? Surely not. Putting the essays out of court, his books are one and all tales of adventure, stories of romance. The interest may be heightened by style—by the use of words that fit the subject, as a tailor-made gown fits its wearer—but the subject is never sacrificed to the style. It seems to me that one of my friends on theManipouri(himself a great reader and no mean critic) came very near solving the problem when he said, “Frankly, much as I like the man, I don’t care one straw about his writings. I’ve got on board this boatThe Master of Ballantrae,The Black Arrow,Kidnapped, andThe Ebb Tide. They all read like so many boys’ books, and when I became a man I put away childish things. I’ve plenty of adventure and excitement in my life, and I want a book that tells me about the home life in the old country, or else an historical novel. Give me Thomas Hardy, or Mrs. Humphry Ward, or Marion Crawford, or Antony Hope.My bad taste, I daresay, but it is so, and I am not alone in my verdict, although I reckon the majority of the folk, this side of the world, would prefer Marie Corelli or Mrs. L. T. Meade.”
ANOTHER OF THE FIVE RIVERS
I cannot leave Samoa without saying a few words about the natives, in whom Tusitala took so deep an interest.
As I write there rises before my mental vision a crowd of brown-skinned men, women, and children, their bodies glistening with coconut oil, and looking as sleek as a shoal of porpoises. Supple of limb, handsome of feature, the men are mostly possessed of reddish or yellow-tinted hair, which stands straight out from their heads in a stiff mop. The colour is due to the rubbing in of a much prized description of red clay, and the stiffness to their constant use of coral lime, for purposes of cleanliness.
All the men wear the kilt of the South Seas, thesulu,ridi, orlava-lava, and as often as not a tunic besides. Nearly all the women are clothed in “pinafore” dresses, infinitely graceful and becoming. Men and women alike adorn themselves with flowers, wreaths of flowers in their hair, flowers interwoven in theirsulu’s,garlands of flowers around the neck, in addition to countless strings of shells and beads.
That they loved Tusitala with a deep and lasting affection is undoubted, and if proof were needed this touching little story may be taken as but one of many evidences. Sosimo, one of his servants, went out of his way to do Tusitala an act of personal kindness. In expressing his gratitude Stevenson said, “Oh! Sosimo, great is the service.” “Nay, Tusitala,” replied the Samoan, “greater is the love.” The following is the Native Lament composed by one of the Chiefs at the time of Stevenson’s death. The translation is by Mr. Lloyd Osborne, Stevenson’s step-son and able collaborator. I was allowed to copy the poems from the little pamphlet kindly lent me by the Captain.[10]
DANCE OF SAMOAN NATIVES
NATIVE LAMENT FOR TUSITALA.Listen oh! this world as I tell of the disaster,That befell in the late afternoon,That broke like a wave of the sea,Suddenly and swiftly blinding our eyes.Alas! for Lois who speaks, tears in his voice,Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala who rests in the forest.Aimlessly we wait and wonder, Will he come again?Lament, oh Vailima, waiting and ever waiting;Let us search and inquire of the Captains of Ships,“Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come?”Tuila, sorrowing one, come hither,Prepare me a letter, I will carry it.Let her Majesty, Queen Victoria, be told,That Tusitala, the loving one, has been taken home.Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala, who rests in the forest.Alas! my heart weeps with anxious pity,As I think of the days before us,Of the white men gathering for the Christmas assembly;Alas! for Alola,[11]left in her loneliness,And the men of Vailima, who weep together,Their leader being taken;Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala, who sleeps in the forest.Alas! oh, my heart, it weeps unceasingly,When I think of his illness,Coming upon him with so fatal a swiftness,Would that it had waited a word or a glance from him,Or some token from us of our love.Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala who sleeps in the forest.Grieve oh, my heart! I cannot bear to look on,At the chiefs who are assembling.Alas! Tusitala, thou art not here;I look hither and thither in vain for thee,Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala, he sleeps in the forest.
NATIVE LAMENT FOR TUSITALA.
Listen oh! this world as I tell of the disaster,That befell in the late afternoon,That broke like a wave of the sea,Suddenly and swiftly blinding our eyes.Alas! for Lois who speaks, tears in his voice,Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala who rests in the forest.Aimlessly we wait and wonder, Will he come again?Lament, oh Vailima, waiting and ever waiting;Let us search and inquire of the Captains of Ships,“Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come?”Tuila, sorrowing one, come hither,Prepare me a letter, I will carry it.Let her Majesty, Queen Victoria, be told,That Tusitala, the loving one, has been taken home.Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala, who rests in the forest.Alas! my heart weeps with anxious pity,As I think of the days before us,Of the white men gathering for the Christmas assembly;Alas! for Alola,[11]left in her loneliness,And the men of Vailima, who weep together,Their leader being taken;Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala, who sleeps in the forest.Alas! oh, my heart, it weeps unceasingly,When I think of his illness,Coming upon him with so fatal a swiftness,Would that it had waited a word or a glance from him,Or some token from us of our love.Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala who sleeps in the forest.Grieve oh, my heart! I cannot bear to look on,At the chiefs who are assembling.Alas! Tusitala, thou art not here;I look hither and thither in vain for thee,Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow!Alas! for Tusitala, he sleeps in the forest.
FIJI
The Aftermath
Theobject of my journey was attained. Samoa, with its mist-swept mountains, its sun-lit waterfalls, its gleaming “etherial musky highlands,” lay behind me, dim as a dream, a pictured memory of the past; and yet I had not done with the Islands. At two, if not three, of the Fijian group, we were to ship copra and sugar; and report had said that the Fiji Islands were more lovely than the Samoan. So I add a valedictory chapter—an epilogue in fact—contenting myself with the very briefest of descriptions, trusting that my illustrations will supply the missing details.
We were bound for Levuka, and we passed en route the small island of Apolima, for which Stevenson conceived so great an admiration, although I fancy he never landed there, but only saw it, as I did, from the deck of a steamer.Basking in the golden radiance of the evening light, Apolima looked like the long-lost Island of Avilion,
“Where falls nor rain, nor hail, nor any snow,Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it liesDeep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns,And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.”
In the centre of the island is an extinct crater, and this crater is all one luxuriant tangle of dense bush. Here and there among the trees peeped out the brown huts of native Chiefs, for Apolima is a sacred island, and only the high Chiefs are privileged to dwell there. Next day we sighted Levuka, which looked more like a mountain range than an island.
The coral barrier extends for a mile and a half beyond the shore of Levuka, the reef showing occasional openings, and within one of these openings was the harbour.
These openings are like so many gates into fields of calm water, and fatal indeed would be any attempt to force a passage, for on the treacherous reef itself there is always to be seen the line of churned-up foam, and always to be heard, for miles away, the thunder of the surf. Here was the piteous spectacle of many a wreck, the bare ribs of death showing above the merciless coral.
At Apia the harbour lights showed through the gaunt skeleton of theAdler, and just outside the roadstead of Levuka my attention was drawn to all that was left of an East Indiaman.
If the coral could but speak what tales might it not tell of poor, drenched, fordone humanity, clutching with bleeding hands at what was so cruel and so inexorable—now sucked back by the indrawn breath of the waves, and now flung remorselessly forward on to the beautiful, bared teeth of the reef, until Death, more merciful than Life, put an end to their sufferings.
As we passed the reef I noticed that the vivid bluewithinthe natural harbour was separated from the “foamless, long-heaving, violet ocean”without, by a submarine rainbow.
Every colour was here represented and every gradation of colour. It looked as if the sun were shining below the water through the medium of some hidden prism.
“Is it always beautiful like this?” I asked one of my friends on board who had spent many years in these parts, and who with eyes intently gazing shoreward, stood beside me on the upper deck.
“Always,” was the prompt reply, “at least, I have never seen it otherwise. Looks like a necklace of opals, does it not?”
“What causes the colour?”
“I have been waiting for that question, and it’s a difficult one to answer. I should say it was due to the difference of depth at which the patches of coral, seaweed, and white sand are to be found, and the effect of the sunshine on them through the clear, shallow, greenish water that covers the irregular surface of the reef. The shades of colour vary with the ebb and flow of the tide. I’ve seen it through a golden haze, and I’ve seen it through a violet haze, but always with these prismatic colours; it is at its very best at noontide. If you look over the side of the steamer you will see how the colours lie, not on the surface, but below the water—the deeper you can see, the more varied and intense the colour.”
On landing at Levuka it needed no one to tell us that desolation in the form of a hurricane had recently swept over the island. The ruined church confronted us, with ruined houses, and toppled over palms, the entire beach was strewn with broken shells, rainbow-coloured fragments of departed loveliness. We landed and took a nearer survey of the disaster. At the little noisy wharf crowds of natives pressed goods on us for sale, among them being lovely baskets of coral, conch shells,sulu’sandtapa. The Roman Catholic church had escaped, as by amiracle, for all around it were fallen palms. We entered and admired the inlaid (native) wood-work, and the beautiful pink shell, on a carved wooden stand, that served as a font.
FIJIAN BOAT
We left Levuka in the evening and reached Suva early next morning. I was awakened by the shrill trumpeting of conch shells, and hurrying on deck I saw alongside of us a boat full of natives, several of whom held conch shells to their mouths, and made a truly ear-piercing sound. I attempted to buy the largest of these shells, but its native owner refused to sell it.
In some respects Suva was the most picturesque island that we visited. The outlines were more rugged and varied than those of Samoa, and the growth of bush was certainly more luxuriant. One curiously rounded mountain peak went by the name of The Devil’s Thumb. We landed at seven o’clock, in the cool of the morning, and the delicious fragrance of the air left an abiding impression. After some discussion as to the best manner of spending our last day ashore, we decided to hire a little steam launch and go up the River Rewa as far as the sugar factory and plantation. This we did, and saw amongst other novelties the scarlet and black land crabs that live in holes along the mud banks on either side, as wellas the oysters clinging to the branching roots of the mangroves.
The sugar plantation was very interesting, as we here saw the natives at work in the cane-fields, but the factory was hot, sticky, and heavy with the nauseating smell of brown sugar. We returned at seven o’clock, and after dinner made a tour of inspection in the town.
Suva, being the capital of the Fiji Islands, is quite an imposing little place. There are no turf roads here but streets with shops and pavements, all well lighted, and gay with colour. We bought many curiosities and returned to the steamer laden with our treasures.
Next morning we left for Sydney, and although we touched at several little atolls en route, we only landed at two of them, and then only for about an hour.
So ended my tour. I set out on my pilgrimage with but one end in view, namely,THE GRAVE. I returned with “rich eyes and poor hands.” I had attained, but my attainment was shadowed by regret, for I had left my heart behind me, “my soul” had gone “down with these moorings, whence no windlass might extract nor any diver fish it up.”
Finis.
Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
Footnotes:
[1]I have described this island more particularly because it was the first I visited, and has ever since remained “a memory apart, virginal.” But looking back I realise that Nukualofa is by no means a beautiful type of coral island, since in common with all the Tongan group it is absolutely flat, and wholly lacks that diversity of outline (due to volcanic agency) which is the leading characteristic of the Samoan and Fijian groups.
[2]His Majesty King George of Tonga being in residence, the villa palace was inaccessible to visitors.
[3]More correctly mammy apples—the fruit of the “paw-paw” tree.
[4]If the reader wishes to understand the political history of Samoa let him read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest Stevenson’s “Footnote to History.”
[5]September, 1894,Vailima Letters.
[6]I am told this finger-post is now a thing of the past.
[7]Since reading Mr. Balfour’sLife of Stevenson, I am led to infer these last were a sort of fresh-water prawns.
[8]Vailima Letters, November, 1890.
[9]I have since I wrote this been informed by a member of the family that although the hole existed it was not between the library and the bedroom.
[10]Written at the time of his death for distribution among his personal friends, etc.
[11]Alola—literally, the “loved one.”