It was on July 26, 1888, that Stevenson started from the harbor of San
Francisco on what was intended to be a health and pleasure excursion
of a few months' duration, but turned into a voluntary exile prolonged
until the hour of his death. The trading party consisted, besides
himself, of his wife, his mother, his stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, and
the servant Valentine. They sailed on board the schooner yacht Casco,
Captain Otis, and made straight for the Marquesa dropping anchor on
July 28th in the harbor of Nukahiva. The magic effect of this first
island landfall on his mind he has described in the opening chapter of
his book _The South Seas_. After spending six weeks in this group they
sailed southeastward, visiting (a somewhat perilous piece of navigation)
several of the coral atolls of the Paumotus or Low Archipelago. Thence
they arrived in the first week of October at the Tahitian group or
"Society Islands." In these their longest stay was not at the chief
town, Papeete, but in a more secluded and very beautiful station,
Tautira, where they were detained by the necessity of re-masting the
schooner, and where Stevenson and one of the local chiefs, Ori a Ori,
made special friends and parted with heartfelt mutual regret. Thence
sailing due northward through forty degrees of latitude, they arrived
about Christmas at Honolulu, the more than semi-civilized capital of the
Hawaiian group (Sandwich Islands), where they paid off the yacht Casco
and made a stay of nearly six months. There the elder Mrs. Stevenson
left them to return to Scotland, and only rejoined her son's household
when it was fairly installed two years later at Vailima. From Honolulu
Stevenson made several excursions, including one, which profoundly
impressed him, to the leper settlement at Molokai, the scene of Father
Damien's ministrations and death.
The result of this first year's voyaging and residence among the Pacific
Islands had been so encouraging a renewal of health, and so keen a
zest added to life by the restored capacity for outdoor activity and
adventure, that Stevenson determined to prolong his experiences in yet
more remote archipelagoes of the same ocean. He started accordingly from
Honolulu in June, 1889, on a trading schooner, the Equator, bound to the
Gilberts, one of the least visited and most primitively mannered of all
the island groups of the Western Pacific; emerged toward Christmas of
the same year into semi-civilization again at Samoa; stayed there for
six weeks, enchanted with the scenery and the people; bought a property,
the future Vailima, on the mountain-side above Apia, with a view to
making it, if not a home, at least a place of rest and call on later
projected excursions among the islands; and began to make collections
for his studies in recent Samoan history. In February he went on to
Sydney to find his correspondence and consider future plans. It was
during this stay at Sydney that his righteous indignation was aroused by
the publication of a letter in depreciation of Father Damien, written
by the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu. Here also he fell once more sharply
ill, with a renewal of all his old symptoms, and the conclusion was
forced upon him that he must make his home for the rest of his life in
the tropics—though with occasional excursions, as he then thought, at
least half-way homeward to places where it might be possible for friends
from England to meet him. With a view to shaking off the effects of
his fresh attack, he started with his party on a fresh sea voyage from
Sydney, this time on a trading steamer, the Janet Nicoll, which took him
by a very devious course among many remote islands during the months of
April-August, 1890. During this journey he began to put into shape the
notes for a comprehensive book on the South Seas—not one of incidents
and impressions only, which was what his readers craved from him, but
one of studious inquiry and research—which he had been compiling ever
since he left San Francisco. On the return voyage of the Janet Nicoll
he left her at New Caledonia, staying for some days at Noumea before
he went on to Sydney, where he spent four or five weeks of later August
and September; and in October he came to take up his abode for good on
his Samoan property, where the work of clearing and planting had been
going on busily during his absence.
The letters in the following section are selected from those which
reached his correspondents in England and the United States at
intervals, necessarily somewhat rare, during the first part of these
voyages—that is, from the Marquesas, Paumotus, and the Tahitian and
Hawaiian groups—down to June, 1889.
YACHT _Casco_, ANAHO BAY, NUKAHIVA,
MARQUESAS ISLANDS. [July, 1888.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—From this somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, I write
to say how d'ye do. It is all a swindle: I chose these isles as having
the most beastly population, and they are far better, and far more
civilised than we. I know one old chief Ko-o-amua, a great cannibal in
his day, who ate his enemies even as he walked home from killing 'em,
and he is a perfect gentleman and exceedingly amiable and simple-minded:
no fool, though.
The climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of the
loveliest spots imaginable. Yesterday evening we had near a score
natives on board; lovely parties. We have a native god; very rare now.
Very rare and equally absurd to view.
This sort of work is not favourable to correspondence; it takes me
all the little strength I have to go about and see, and then come home
and note the strangeness around us. I shouldn't wonder if there came
trouble here some day, all the same. I could name a nation[M] that is
not beloved in certain islands—and it does not know it! Strange: like
ourselves, perhaps, in India! Love to all and much to yourself.