Vailima Letters | Page 3

royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois
Benedictine College" within the 60 days following each date you
prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?

The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois Benedictine
College".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

Vailima Letters Robert Louis Stevenson Scanned and proofed by David
Price, email [email protected]

Vailima Letters

CHAPTER I

IN THE MOUNTAIN, APIA, SAMOA, MONDAY, NOVEMBER
2ND, 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