_Aug._ 7_th_.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is to inform you, sir, that on Sunday last (and this
is Tuesday) I attained my ideal here, and we had a paper chase in Vailele
Plantation, about 15 miles, I take it, from us; and it was all that could
be wished. It is really better fun than following the hounds, since you
have to be your own hound, and a precious bad hound I was, following
every false scent on the whole course to the bitter end; but I came in
3rd at the last on my little Jack, who stuck to it gallantly, and awoke
the praises of some discriminating persons. (5 + 7 + 2.5 = 14.5 miles;
yes, that is the count.) We had quite the old sensations of
exhilaration, discovery, an appeal to a savage instinct; and I felt
myself about 17 again, a pleasant experience. However, it was on the
Sabbath Day, and I am now a pariah among the English, as if I needed any
increment of unpopularity. I must not go again; it gives so much
unnecessary tribulation to poor people, and, sure, we don’t want to make
tribulation. I have been forbidden to work, and have been instead doing
my two or three hours in the plantation every morning. I only wish
somebody would pay me £10 a day for taking care of cacao, and I could
leave literature to others. Certainly, if I have plenty of exercise, and
no work, I feel much better; but there is Biles the butcher! him we have
always with us.
I do not much like novels, I begin to think, but I am enjoying
exceedingly Orme’s _History of Hindostan_, a lovely book in its way, in
large quarto, with a quantity of maps, and written in a very lively and
solid eighteenth century way, never picturesque except by accident and
from a kind of conviction, and a fine sense of order. No historian I
have ever read is so minute; yet he never gives you a word about the
people; his interest is entirely limited in the concatenation of events,
into which he goes with a lucid, almost superhuman, and wholly ghostly
gusto. ‘By the ghost of a mathematician’ the book might be announced. A
very brave, honest book.
Your letter to hand.
Fact is, I don’t like the picter. O, it’s a good picture, but if you
_ask_ me, you know, I believe, stoutly believe, that mankind, including
you, are going mad, I am not in the midst with the other frenzy dancers,
so I don’t catch it wholly; and when you show me a thing—and ask me,
don’t you know—Well, well! Glad to get so good an account of the
_Amateur Emigrant_. Talking of which, I am strong for making a volume
out of selections from the South Sea letters; I read over again the King
of Apemama, and it is good in spite of your teeth, and a real curiosity,
a thing that can never be seen again, and the group is annexed and
Tembinoka dead. I wonder, couldn’t you send out to me the _first_ five
Butaritari letters and the Low Archipelago ones (both of which I have
lost or mislaid) and I can chop out a perfectly fair volume of what I
wish to be preserved. It can keep for the last of the series.
_Travels and Excursions_, vol. II. Should it not include a paper on S.
F. from the _Mag. of Art_? The A. E., the New Pacific capital, the Old
ditto. _Silver. Squat._ This would give all my works on the States; and
though it ain’t very good, it’s not so very bad. _Travels and
Excursions_, vol. III., to be these resuscitated letters—_Miscellanies_,
vol. II.—_comme vous voudrez_, _cher monsieur_!
* * * * *
_Monday_, Aug. 13_th_.
I have a sudden call to go up the coast and must hurry up with my
information. There has suddenly come to our naval commanders the need of
action, they’re away up the coast bombarding the Atua rebels. All
morning on Saturday the sound of the bombardment of Lotuanu’u kept us
uneasy. To-day again the big guns have been sounding further along the
coast.
To-morrow morning early I am off up the coast myself. Therefore you must
allow me to break off here without further ceremony.—Yours ever,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.