On Sunday, the 16th, Her British Majesty's ship _Katoomba_, Captain

Bickford, C.M.G., arrived in Apia with fresh orders. Had she but come

ten days earlier the whole of this miserable business would have been

prevented, for the three Powers were determined to maintain Malietoa

Laupepa by arms, and had declared finally against Mataafa. Right or

wrong, it was at least a decision, and therefore welcome. It may not be

best--it was something. No honest friend to Samoa can pretend anything

but relief that the three Powers should at last break their vacillating

silence. It is of a piece with their whole policy in the islands that

they should have hung in stays for upwards of two years--of a piece with

their almost uniform ill-fortune that, eight days before their purpose

was declared, war should have marked the country with burned houses and

severed heads.

II

There is another side to the medal of Samoan warfare. So soon as an

advantage is obtained, a new and (to us) horrible animal appears upon

the scene--the Head Hunter. Again and again we have reasoned with our

boys against this bestial practice; but reason and (upon this one point)

even ridicule are vain. They admit it to be indefensible; they allege

its imperative necessity. One young man, who had seen his father take a

head in the late war, spoke of the scene with shuddering revolt, and yet

said he must go and do likewise himself in the war which was to come.

How else could a man prove he was brave? and had not every country its

own customs?

Accordingly, as occasion offered, these same pleasing children, who had

just been drinking kava with their opponents, fell incontinently on the

dead and dying, and secured their grisly trophies. It should be said,

in fairness, that the Mataafas had no opportunity to take heads, but

that their chief, taught by the lesson of Fangalii, had forbidden the

practice. It is doubtful if he would have been obeyed, and yet his power

over his people was so great that the German plantation, where they lay

some time, and were at last defeated, had not to complain of the theft

of a single cocoa-nut. Hateful as it must always be to mutilate and

murder the disabled, there were in this day's affray in Vaitele

circumstances yet more detestable. Fifteen heads were brought in all to

Mulinuu. They were carried with parade in front of the fine house which

our late President built for himself before he was removed. Here, on the

verandah, the King sat to receive them, and utter words of course and

compliment to each successful warrior. They were _spolia opima_ in the

number. Leaupepe, Mataafa's nephew--or, as Samoans say, his son--had

fallen by the first wall, and whether from those sentiments of kindred

and friendship that so often unite the combatants in civil strife, or to

mark by an unusual formality the importance of the conquest, not only

his head but his mutilated body also was brought in. From the mat in

which the corpse was enveloped a bloody hand protruded, and struck a

chill in white eye-witnesses. It were to attribute to [Malietoa] Laupepa

sentiments entirely foreign to his race and training, if we were to

suppose him otherwise than gratified.

But it was not so throughout. Every country has its customs, say native

apologists, and one of the most decisive customs of Samoa ensures the

immunity of women. They go to the front, as our women of yore went to a

tournament. Bullets are blind; and they must take their risk of bullets,

but of nothing else. They serve out cartridges and water; they jeer the

faltering and defend the wounded. Even in this skirmish of Vaitele they

distinguished themselves on either side. One dragged her skulking

husband from a hole, and drove him to the front. Another, seeing her

lover fall, snatched up his gun, kept the head-hunters at bay, and drew

him unmutilated from the field. Such services they have been accustomed

to pay for centuries; and often, in the course of centuries, a bullet or

a spear must have despatched one of these warlike angels. Often enough,

too, the head-hunter, springing ghoul-like on fallen bodies, must have

decapitated a woman for a man. But, the case arising, there was an

established etiquette. So soon as the error was discovered the head was

buried, and the exploit forgotten. There had never yet, in the history

of Samoa, occurred an instance in which a man had taken a woman's head

and kept it and laid it at his monarch's feet.

Such was the strange and horrid spectacle, which must have immediately

shaken the heart of Laupepa, and has since covered the faces of his

party with confusion. It is not quite certain if there were three, or

only two: a recent attempt to reduce the number to one must be received

with caution as an afterthought; the admissions in the beginning were

too explicit, the panic of shame and fear had been too sweeping. There

is scarce a woman of our native friends in Apia who can speak upon the

subject without terror; scarce any man without humiliation. And the

shock was increased out of measure by the fact that the head--or one of

the heads--was recognised; recognised for the niece of one of the

greatest of court ladies; recognised for a Taupo-sa, or sacred maid of a

village from Savaii. It seemed incredible that she--who had been chosen

for virtue and beauty, who went everywhere attended by the fairest

maidens, and watched over by vigilant duennas, whose part it was, in

holiday costume, to receive guests, to make kava, and to be the leader

of the revels, should become the victim of a brutal rally in a cow-park,

and have her face exposed for a trophy to the victorious king.

In all this muttering of aversion and alarm, no word has been openly

said. No punishment, no disgrace, has been inflicted on the

perpetrators of the outrage. King, Consuls, and mission appear to have

held their peace alike. I can understand a certain apathy in whites.

Head-hunting, they say, is a horrid practice: and will not stop to

investigate its finer shades. But the Samoan himself does not hesitate;

for him the act is portentous; and if it go unpunished, and set a

fashion, its consequences must be damnable. This is not a breach of a

Christian virtue, of something half-learned by rote, and from

foreigners, in the last thirty years. It is a flying in the face of

their own native, instinctive, and traditional standard: tenfold more

ominous and degrading. And, taking the matter for all in all, it seems

to me that head-hunting itself should be firmly and immediately

suppressed. "How else can a man prove himself to be brave?" my friend

asked. But often enough these are but fraudulent trophies. On the morrow

of the fight at Vaitele, an Atua man discovered a body lying in the

bush: he took the head. A day or two ago a party was allowed to visit

Manono. The King's troops on shore, observing them put off from the

rebel island, leaped to the conclusion that this must be the wounded

going to Apia, launched off at once two armed boats and overhauled the

others--after heads. The glory of such exploits is not apparent; their

power for degradation strikes the eyes. Lieutenant Ulfsparre, our late

Swedish Chief of Police and Commander of the forces, told his men that

if any of them took a head his own hand should avenge it. That was

talking; I should like to see all in the same story--king, consuls, and

missionaries--included.

III

The three Powers have at last taken hold here in Apia. But they came the

day after the fair; and the immediate business on hand is very delicate.

This morning, 18th, Captain Bickford, followed by two Germans, sailed

for Manono. If he shall succeed in persuading Mataafa to surrender, all

may be well. If he cannot, this long train of blunders may end in--what

is so often the result of blundering in the field of politics--a horrid

massacre. Those of us who remember the services of Mataafa, his

unfailing generosity and moderation in the past, and his bereavement in

the present--as well as those who are only interested in a mass of men

and women, many of them our familiar friends, now pent up on an island,

and beleaguered by three warships and a Samoan army--await the issue

with dreadful expectation.

VIII

TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TIMES"

_Vailima, Apia, April_ 23, 1894.

Sir,--I last addressed you on the misconduct of certain officials here,

and I was so far happy as to have had my facts confirmed in every

particular with but one exception. That exception, the affair of the

dynamite, has been secretly smuggled away; you shall look in vain in

either Blue-book or White-book for any mention even of the charge; it is

gone like the conjurer's orange. I might have been tempted to inquire

into the reason of this conspiracy of silence, whether the idea was

conceived in the bosoms of the three Powers themselves, or whether in

the breasts of the three Consuls, because one of their number was

directly implicated. And I might have gone on to consider the moral

effect of such suppressions, and to show how very idle they were, and

how very undignified, in the face of a small and compact population,

where everybody sees and hears, where everybody knows, and talks, and

laughs. But only a personal question remained, which I judged of no

interest to the public. The essential was accomplished. Baron Senfft was

gone already. Mr. Cedercrantz still lingered among us in the character

(I may say) of a private citizen, his Court at last closed, only his

pocket open for the receipt of his salary, representing the dignity of

the Berlin Act by sitting in the wind on Mulinuu Point for several

consecutive months--a curious phantom or survival of a past age. The new

officials were not as yet, because they had not been created. And we

fell into our old estate of government by the three Consuls, as it was

in the beginning before the Berlin Act existed; as it seems it will be

till the end, after the Berlin Act has been swept away.

It was during the time of this triumvirate, and wholly at their

instigation and under their conduct, that Mataafa was defeated, driven

to Manono, and (three warships coming opportunely to hand) forced to

surrender. I have been called a partisan of this chief's, and I accept

the term. I thought him, on the whole, the most honest man in Samoa, not

excepting white officials. I ventured to think he had been hardly used

by the Treaty Powers; I venture to think so still. It was my opinion

that he should have been conjoined with Malietoa as Vice-King; and I

have seen no reason to change that opinion, except that the time for it

is past. Mataafa has played and lost; an exile, and stripped of his

titles, he walks the exiguous beach of Jaluit, sees the German flag over

his head, and yearns for the land wind of Upolu. In the politics of

Samoa he is no longer a factor; and it only remains to speak of the

manner in which his rebellion was suppressed and punished. Deportation

is, to the Samoan mind, the punishment next to death, and thirteen of

the chiefs engaged were deported with their leader. Twenty-seven others

were cast into the gaol. There they lie still; the Government makes

almost no attempt to feed them, and they must depend on the activity of

their families and the charity of pitying whites. In the meantime, these

very families are overloaded with fines, the exorbitant sum of more than

L6,600 having been laid on the chiefs and villages that took part with

Mataafa.

So far we can only complain that the punishments have been severe and

the prison commissariat absent. But we have, besides, to regret the

repeated scandals in connection with the conduct of the war, and we look

in vain for any sign of punishment. The Consuls had to employ barbarous

hands; we might expect outrages; we did expect them to be punished, or

at least disowned. Thus, certain Mataafa chiefs were landed, and landed

from a British man-of-war, to be shamefully abused, beaten, and struck

with whips along the main street of Mulinuu. There was no punishment,

there was even no inquiry; the three Consuls winked. Only one man was

found honest and bold enough to open his mouth, and that was my old

enemy, Mr. Cedercrantz. Walking in Mulinuu, in his character of

disinterested spectator, gracefully desipient, he came across the throng

of these rabblers and their victims. He had forgotten that he was an

official, he remembered that he was a man. It was his last public

appearance in Samoa to interfere; it was certainly his best. Again, the

Government troops in the field took the heads of girls, a detestable

felony even in Samoan eyes. They carried them in procession to Mulinuu,

and made of them an oblation to that melancholy effigy the King, who

(sore against his will) sat on the verandah of the Government building,

publicly to receive this affront, publicly to utter the words of

compliment and thanks which constitute the highest reward known to

Samoan bravery, and crowned as heroes those who should have been hanged

like dogs. And again the three Consuls unanimously winked. There was no

punishment, there was even no inquiry.

Lastly, there is the story of Manono. Three hours were given to Mataafa

to accept the terms of the ultimatum, and the time had almost elapsed

when his boats put forth, and more than elapsed before he came alongside

the _Katoomba_ and surrendered formally to Captain Bickford. In the dusk

of the evening, when all the ships had sailed, flames were observed to

rise from the island. Mataafa flung himself on his knees before Captain

Bickford, and implored protection for his women and children left

behind, and the captain put back the ship and despatched one of the

Consuls to inquire. The _Katoomba_ had been about seventy hours in the

islands. Captain Bickford was a stranger; he had to rely on the Consuls

implicitly. At the same time, he knew that the Government troops had

been suffered to land for the purpose of restoring order, and with the

understanding that no reprisals should be committed on the adherents of

Mataafa; and he charged the emissary with his emphatic disapproval,

threats of punishment on the offenders, and reminders that the war had

now passed under the responsibility of the three Powers. I cannot

condescend on what this Consul saw during his visit; I can only say what

he reported on his return. He reported all well, and the chiefs on the

Government side fraternising and making _ava_ with those on Mataafa's.

It may have been; at least it is strange. The burning of the island

proceeded, fruit-trees were cut down, women stripped naked; a scene of

brutal disorder reigned all night, and left behind it, over a quarter of

the island, ruin. If they fraternised with Mataafa's chieftains they

must have been singularly inconsistent, for, the next we learn of the

two parties, they were beating, spitting upon, and insulting them along

the highway. The next morning in Apia I asked the same Consul if there

had not been some houses burned. He told me no. I repeated the question,

alleging the evidence of officers on board the _Katoomba_ who had seen

the flames increase and multiply as they steamed away; whereupon he had

this remarkable reply--"O! huts, huts, huts! There isn't a house, a

frame house, on the island." The case to plain men stands thus:--The

people of Manono were insulted, their food-trees cut down, themselves

left houseless; not more than ten houses--I beg the Consul's pardon,

huts--escaped the rancour of their enemies; and to this day they may be

seen to dwell in shanties on the site of their former residences, the

pride of the Samoan heart. The ejaculation of the Consul was thus at

least prophetic; and the traveller who revisits to-day the shores of

the "Garden Island" may well exclaim in his turn, "Huts, huts, huts!"

The same measure was served out, in the mere wantonness of clan hatred,

to Apolima, a nearly inaccessible islet in the straits of the same name;

almost the only property saved there (it is amusing to remember) being a

framed portrait of Lady Jersey, which its custodian escaped with into

the bush, as it were the palladium and chief treasure of the

inhabitants. The solemn promise passed by Consuls and captains in the

name of the three Powers was thus broken; the troops employed were

allowed their bellyful of barbarous outrage. And again there was no

punishment, there was no inquiry, there was no protest, there was not a

word said to disown the act or disengage the honour of the three Powers.

I do not say the Consuls desired to be disobeyed, though the case looks

black against one gentleman, and even he is perhaps only to be accused

of levity and divided interest; it was doubtless important for him to be

early in Apia, where he combines with his diplomatic functions the

management of a thriving business as commission agent and auctioneer. I

do say of all of them that they took a very nonchalant view of their

duty.

I told myself that this was the government of the Consular Triumvirate.

When the new officials came it would cease; it would pass away like a

dream in the night; and the solid _Pax Romana_, of the Berlin General

Act would succeed. After all, what was there to complain of? The Consuls

had shown themselves no slovens and no sentimentalists. They had shown

themselves not very particular, but in one sense very thorough.

Rebellion was to be put down swiftly and rigorously, if need were with

the hand of Cromwell; at least it was to be put down. And in these

unruly islands I was prepared almost to welcome the face of

Rhadamanthine severity.

And now it appears it was all a mistake. The government by the Berlin

General Act is no more than a mask, and a very expensive one, for

government by the Consular Triumvirate. Samoa pays (or tries to pay)

L2,200 a year to a couple of helpers; and they dare not call their souls

their own. They take their walks abroad with an anxious eye on the three

Consuls, like two well-behaved children with three nurses; and the

Consuls, smiling superior, allow them to amuse themselves with the

routine of business. But let trouble come, and the farce is suspended.

At the whistle of a squall these heaven-born mariners seize the tiller,

and the L2,200 amateurs are knocked sprawling on the bilge. At the first

beat of the drum, the treaty officials are sent below, gently

protesting, like a pair of old ladies, and behold! the indomitable

Consuls ready to clear the wreck and make the deadly cutlass shine. And

their method, studied under the light of a new example, wears another

air. They are not so Rhadamanthine as we thought. Something that we can

only call a dignified panic presides over their deliberations. They have

one idea to lighten the ship. "Overboard with the ballast, the

main-mast, and the chronometer!" is the cry. In the last war they got

rid (first) of the honour of their respective countries, and (second) of

all idea that Samoa was to be governed in a manner consistent with

civilisation, or Government troops punished for any conceivable

misconduct. In the present war they have sacrificed (first) the prestige

of the new Chief Justice, and (second) the very principle for which they

had contended so vigorously and so successfully in the war before--that

rebellion was a thing to be punished.

About the end of last year, that war, a war of the Tupuas under Tamasese

the younger, which was a necessary pendant to the crushing of Mataafa,

began to make itself heard of in obscure grumblings. It was but a timid

business. One half of the Tupua party, the whole province of Atua, never

joined the rebellion, but sulked in their villages and spent the time in

indecisive eloquence and barren embassies. Tamasese, by a trick

eminently Samoan, "went in the high bush and the mountains," carrying a

gun like a private soldier--served, in fact, with his own troops

_incognito_--and thus, to Samoan eyes, waived his dynastic pretensions.

And the war, which was announced in the beginning with a long catalogue

of complaints against the King and a distinct and ugly threat to the

white population of Apia, degenerated into a war of defence by the

province of Aana against the eminently brutal troops of Savaii, in which

sympathy was generally and justly with the rebels. Savaii, raging with

private clan hatred and the lust of destruction, was put at free

quarters in the disaffected province, repeated on a wider scale the

outrages of Manono and Apolima, cut down the food-trees, stripped and

insulted the women, robbed the children of their little possessions,

burned the houses, killed the horses, the pigs, the dogs, the cats,

along one half of the seaboard of Aana, and in the prosecution of these

manly exploits managed (to the joy of all) to lose some sixty men

killed, wounded, and drowned.

Government by the Treaty of Berlin was still erect when, one fine

morning, in walked the three Consuls, totally uninvited, with a

proclamation prepared and signed by themselves, without any mention of

anybody else. They had awoke to a sense of the danger of the situation

and their own indispensable merits. The two children knew their day was

over; the nurses had come for them. Who can blame them for their

timidity? The Consuls have the ears of the Governments; they are the

authors of those despatches of which, in the ripeness of time,

Blue-books and White-books are made up; they had dismissed (with some

little assistance from yourself) MM. Cedercrantz and Senfft von Pilsach,

and they had strangled, like an illegitimate child, the scandal of the

dynamite. The Chief Justice and the President made haste to disappear

between decks, and left the ship of the State to the three volunteers.

There was no lack of activity. The Consuls went up to Atua, they went

down to Aana; the oarsmen toiled, the talking men pleaded; they are said

to have met with threats in Atua, and to have yielded to them--at

least, in but a few days' time they came home to us with a new treaty

of pacification. Of course, and as before, the Government troops were

whitewashed; the Savaii ruffians had been stripping women and killing

cats in the interests of the Berlin Treaty; there was to be no

punishment and no inquiry; let them retire to Savaii with their booty

and their dead. Offensive as this cannot fail to be, there is still some

slight excuse for it. The King is no more than one out of several chiefs

of clans. His strength resides in the willing obedience of the

Tuamasaga, and a portion--I have to hope a bad portion--of the island of

Savaii. To punish any of these supporters must always be to accept a

risk; and the golden opportunity had been allowed to slip at the moment

of the Mataafa war.

What was more original was the treatment of the rebels. They were under

arms that moment against the Government; they had fought and sometimes

vanquished; they had taken heads and carried them to Tamasese. And the

terms granted were to surrender fifty rifles, to make some twenty miles

of road, to pay some old fines--and to be forgiven! The loss of fifty

rifles to people destitute of any shadow of a gunsmith to repair them

when they are broken, and already notoriously short of ammunition, is a

trifle; the number is easy to be made up of those that are out of

commission; for there is not the least stipulation as to their value;

any synthesis of old iron and smashed wood that can be called a gun is

to be taken from its force. The road, as likely as not, will never be

made. The fines have nothing to say to this war; in any reasonably

governed country they should never have figured in the treaty; they had

been inflicted before, and were due before. Before the rebellion began,

the beach had rung with I know not what indiscreet bluster; the natives

were to be read a lesson; Tamasese (by name) was to be hanged; and after

what had been done to Mataafa, I was so innocent as to listen with awe.

And now the rebellion has come, and this was the punishment! There might

well have been a doubt in the mind of any chief who should have been

tempted to follow the example of Mataafa; but who is it that would not

dare to follow Tamasese?

For some reason--I know not what, unless it be fear--there is a strong

prejudice amongst whites against any interference with the bestial

practice of head-hunting. They say it would be impossible to identify

the criminals--a thing notoriously contrary to fact. A man does not take

a head, as he steals an apple, for secret degustation; the essence of

the thing is its publicity. After the girls' heads were brought into

Mulinuu I pressed Mr. Cusack-Smith to take some action. He proposed a

paper of protest, to be signed by the English residents. We made rival

drafts; his was preferred, and I have heard no more of it. It has not

been offered me to sign; it has not been published; under a paper-weight

in the British Consulate I suppose it may yet be found! Meanwhile, his

Honour Mr. Ide, the new Chief Justice, came to Samoa and took spirited

action. He engineered an ordinance through the House of Faipule,

inflicting serious penalties on any who took heads, and the papers at

the time applauded his success. The rebellion followed, the troops were

passing to the front, and with excellent resolution Mr. Ide harangued

the chiefs, reiterated the terms of the new law, and promised unfailing

vengeance on offenders. It was boldly done, and he stood committed

beyond possibility of retreat to enforce this his first important edict.

Great was the commotion, great the division, in the Samoan mind. "O! we

have had Chief Justices before," said a visitor to my house; "we know

what they are; I will take a head if I can get one." Others were more

doubtful, but thought none could be so bold as lay a hand on the

peculiar institution of these islands. Yet others were convinced. Savaii

took heads; but when they sent one to Mulinuu a messenger met them by

the convent gates from the King; he would none of it, and the trophy

must be ingloriously buried, Savaii took heads also, and Tamasese

accepted the presentation. Tuamasaga, on the other hand, obeyed the

Chief Justice and (the occasion being thrust upon them) contented

themselves with taking the dead man's ears. On the whole, about

one-third of the troops engaged, and our not very firm Monarch himself,

kept the letter of the ordinance. And it was upon this scene of partial,

but really cheering, success that the Consuls returned with their

general pardon! The Chief Justice was not six months old in the islands.

He had succeeded to a position complicated by the failure of his

predecessor. Personally, speaking face to face with the chiefs, he had

put his authority in pledge that the ordinance should be enforced. And

he found himself either forgotten or betrayed by the three Consuls.

These volunteers had made a liar of him; they had administered to him,

before all Samoa, a triple buffet. I must not wonder, though I may still

deplore, that Mr. Ide accepted the position thus made for him. There was

a deal of alarm in Apia. To refuse the treaty thus hastily and

shamefully cobbled up would have increased it tenfold. Already, since

the declaration of war and the imminence of the results, one of the

papers had ratted, and the white population were girding at the new

ordinance. It was feared besides that the native Government, though they

had voted, were secretly opposed to it. It was almost certain they would

try to prevent its application to the loyalist offenders of Savaii. The

three Consuls in the negotiations of the treaty had fully illustrated

both their want of sympathy with the ordinance and their want of regard

for the position of the Chief Justice. "In short, I am to look for no

support, whether physical or moral?" asked Mr. Ide; and I could make but

the one answer--"Neither physical nor moral." It was a hard choice; and

he elected to accept the terms of the treaty without protest. And the

next war (if we are to continue to enjoy the benefits of the Berlin Act)

will probably show us the result in an enlarged assortment of heads, and

the next difficulty perhaps prove to us the diminished prestige of the

Chief Justice. Mr. Ide announces his intention of applying the law in

the case of another war; but I very much fear the golden opportunity has

again been lost. About one-third of the troops believed him this time;

how many will believe him the next?

It will doubtless be answered that the Consuls were affected by the

alarm in Apia and actuated by the desire to save white lives. I am far

from denying that there may be danger; and I believe that the way we are

going is the best way to bring it on. In the progressive decivilisation

of these islands--evidenced by the female heads taken in the last war

and the treatment of white missionaries in this--our methods of pull

devil, pull baker, general indecision, and frequent (though always

dignified) panic are the best calculated in the world to bring on a

massacre of whites. A consistent dignity, a consistent and independent

figure of a Chief Justice, the enforcement of the laws, and above all,

of the laws against barbarity, a Consular board the same in the presence

as in the absence of warships, will be found our best defence.

Much as I have already occupied of your space, I would yet ask leave to

draw two conclusions.

And first, Mataafa and Tamasese both made war. Both wars were presumably

dynastic in character, though the Tupua not rallying to Tamasese as he

had expected led him to cover his design. That he carried a gun himself,

and himself fired, will not seem to European ears a very important

alleviation. Tamasese received heads, sitting as a King, under whatever

name; Mataafa had forbidden the taking of heads--of his own accord, and

before Mr. Ide had taken office. Tamasese began with threats against the

white population; Mataafa never ceased to reassure them and to extend an

effectual protection to their property. What is the difference between

their cases? That Mataafa was an old man, already famous, who had served

his country well, had been appointed King of Samoa, had served in the

office, and had been set aside--not, indeed, in the text, but in the

protocols of the Berlin Act, by name? I do not grudge his good fortune

to Tamasese, who is an amiable, spirited, and handsome young man; and

who made a barbarous war, indeed, since heads were taken after the old

Samoan practice, but who made it without any of the savagery which we

have had reason to comment upon in the camp of his adversaries. I do not

grudge the invidious fate that has befallen my old friend and his

followers. At first I believed these judgments to be the expression of a

severe but equal justice. I find them, on further experience, to be mere

measures of the degree of panic in the Consuls, varying directly as the

distance of the nearest war-ship. The judgments under which they fell

have now no sanctity; they form no longer a precedent; they may

perfectly well be followed by a pardon, or a partial pardon, as the

authorities shall please. The crime of Mataafa is to have read strictly

the first article of the Berlin Act, and not to have read at all (as how

should he when it has never been translated?) the insidious protocol

which contains its significance; the crime of his followers is to have

practised clan fidelity, and to have in consequence raised an _imperium

in imperio_, and fought against the Government. Their punishment is to

be sent to a coral atoll and detained there prisoners. It does not sound

much; it is a great deal. Taken from a mountain island, they must

inhabit a narrow strip of reef sunk to the gunwale in the ocean. Sand,

stone, and cocoa-nuts, stone, sand, and pandanus, make the scenery.

There is no grass. Here these men, used to the cool, bright mountain

rivers of Samoa, must drink with loathing the brackish water of the

coral. The food upon such islands is distressing even to the omnivorous

white. To the Samoan, who has that shivering delicacy and ready disgust

of the child or the rustic mountaineer, it is intolerable. I remember

what our present King looked like, what a phantom he was, when he

returned from captivity in the same place. Lastly, these fourteen have

been divorced from their families. The daughter of Mataafa somehow broke

the _consigne_ and accompanied her father; but she only. To this day

one of them, Palepa, the wife of Faamuina, is dunning the authorities in

vain to be allowed to join her husband--she a young and handsome woman,

he an old man and infirm. I cannot speak with certainty, but I believe

they are allowed no communication with the prisoners, nor the prisoners

with them. My own open experience is brief and conclusive--I have not

been suffered to send my friends one stick of tobacco or one pound of

_ava_. So much to show the hardships are genuine. I have to ask a pardon

for these unhappy victims of untranslated protocols and inconsistent

justice. After the case of Tamasese, I ask it almost as of right. As for

the other twenty-seven in the gaol, let the doors be opened at once.

They have showed their patience, they have proved their loyalty long

enough. On two occasions, when the guards deserted in a body, and again

when the Aana prisoners fled, they remained--one may truly

say--voluntary prisoners. And at least let them be fed! I have paid

taxes to the Samoan Government for some four years, and the most

sensible benefit I have received in return has been to be allowed to

feed their prisoners.

Second, if the farce of the Berlin Act is to be gone on with, it will be

really necessary to moderate among our five Sovereigns--six if we are to

count poor Malietoa, who represents to the life the character of the

Hare and Many Friends. It is to be presumed that Mr. Ide and Herr

Schmidt were chosen for their qualities; it is little good we are likely

to get by them if, at every wind of rumour, the three Consuls are to

intervene. The three Consuls are paid far smaller salaries, they have no

right under the treaty to interfere with the government of autonomous

Samoa, and they have contrived to make themselves all In all. The King

and a majority of the Faipule fear them and look to them alone, while

the legitimate adviser occupies a second place, if that. The misconduct

of MM. Cedercrantz and Senfft von Pilsach was so extreme that the

Consuls were obliged to encroach; and now when these are gone the

authority acquired in the contest remains with the encroachers. On their

side they have no rights, but a tradition of victory, the ear of the

Governments at home, and the _vis viva_ of the war-ships. For the poor

treaty officials, what have they but rights very obscurely expressed and

very weakly defended by their predecessors? Thus it comes about that

people who are scarcely mentioned in the text of the treaty are, to all

intents and purposes, our only rulers.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

IX

TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TIMES"

_Vailima, Samoa, May_ 22, 1894.

Sir,--I told you in my last that the Consuls had tinkered up a treaty of

peace with the rebels of Aana. A month has gone by, and I would not

weary readers your with a story so intricate and purposeless. The

Consuls seem to have gone backward and forward, to and fro. To periods

of agitated activity, comparable to that of three ants about a broken

nest, there succeeded seasons in which they rested from their labours

and ruefully considered the result. I believe I am not overstating the

case when I say that this treaty was at least twice rehandled, and the

date of submission changed, in the interval. And yesterday at length we

beheld the first-fruits of the Consular diplomacy. A boat came in from

Aana bearing the promised fifty stand of arms--in other words, a talking

man, a young chief, and some boatmen in charge of a boat-load of broken

ironmongery. The Government (well advised for once) had placed the

Embassy under an escort of German blue-jackets, or I think it must have

gone ill with the Ambassadors.

So much for Aana and the treaty. With Atua, the other disaffected

province, we have been and are on the brink of war. The woods have been

patrolled, the army sent to the front, blood has been shed. It consists

with my knowledge that the loyalist troops marched against the enemy

under a hallucination. One and all believed, a majority of them still

believe, that the war-ships were to follow and assist them. Who told

them so? If I am to credit the rumours of the natives, as well as the

gossip of official circles, a promise had been given to this effect by

the Consuls, or at least by one of the Consuls. And when I say that a

promise had been given, I mean that it had been sold. I mean that the

natives had to buy it by submissions.

Let me take an example of these submissions. The native Government

increased the salary of Mr. Gurr, the natives' advocate. It was not a

largesse; it was rather an act of tardy justice, by which Mr. Gurr

received at last the same emoluments as his predecessor in the office.

At the same time, with a bankrupt treasury, all fresh expenses are and

must be regarded askance. The President, acting under a so-called

Treasury regulation, refused to honour the King's order. And a friendly

suit was brought, which turned on the validity of this Treasury

regulation. This was more than doubtful. The President was a treaty

official; hence bound by the treaty. The three Consuls had been acting

for him in his absence, using his powers and no other powers whatever

under the treaty; and the three Consuls so acting had framed a

regulation by which the powers of the President were greatly extended.

This was a vicious circle with a vengeance. But the Consuls, with the

ordinary partiality of parents for reformed offspring, regarded the

regulation as the apple of their eye. They made themselves busy in its

defence, they held interviews, it is reported they drew pleas; and it

seemed to all that the Chief Justice hesitated. It is certain at least

that he long delayed sentence. And during this delay the Consuls showed

their power. The native Government was repeatedly called together, and

at last forced to rescind the order in favour of Mr. Gurr. It was not

done voluntarily, for the Government resisted. It was not done by

conviction, for the Government had taken the first opportunity to

restore it. If the Consuls did not appear personally in the affair--and

I do not know that they did not--they made use of the President as a

mouthpiece; and the President delayed the deliberations of the

Government until he should receive further instructions from the

Consuls. Ten pounds is doubtless a considerable affair to a bankrupt

Government. But what were the Consuls doing in this matter of inland

administration? What was their right to interfere? What were the

arguments with which they overcame the resistance of the Government? I

am either very much misinformed, or these gentlemen were trafficking in

a merchandise which they did not possess, and selling at a high price

the assistance of the war-ships over which (as now appears) they have no

control.

Remark the irony of fate. This affair had no sooner been settled, Mr.

Gurr's claims cut at the very root, and the Treasury regulation

apparently set beyond cavil, than the Chief Justice pulled himself

together, and, taking his life in his right hand, delivered sentence in

the case. Great was the surprise. Because the Chief Justice had balked

so long, it was supposed he would never have taken the leap. And here,

upon a sudden, he came down with a decision flat against the Consuls and

their Treasury regulation. The Government have, I understand, restored

Mr. Gurr's salary in consequence. The Chief Justice, after giving us all

a very severe fright, has reinstated himself in public opinion by this

tardy boldness; and the Consuls find their conduct judicially condemned.

It was on a personal affront that the Consuls turned on Mr. Cedercrantz.

Here is another affront, far more galling and public! I suppose it is

but a coincidence that I should find at the same time the clouds

beginning to gather about Mr. Ide's head. In a telegram, dated from

Auckland, March 30, and copyrighted by the Associated Press, I find the

whole blame of the late troubles set down to his account. It is the work

of a person worthy of no trust. In one of his charges, and in one only,

he is right. The Chief Justice fined and imprisoned certain chiefs of

Aana under circumstances far from clear; the act was, to say the least

of it, susceptible of misconstruction, and by natives will always be

thought of as an act of treachery. But, even for this, it is not

possible for me to split the blame justly between Mr. Ide and the three

Consuls. In these early days, as now, the three Consuls were always too

eager to interfere where they had no business, and the Chief Justice was

always too patient or too timid to set them in their place. For the rest

of the telegram no qualification is needed. "The Chief Justice was

compelled to take steps to disarm the natives." He took no such steps;

he never spoke of disarmament except publicly and officially to disown

the idea; it was during the days of the Consular triumvirate that the

cry began. "The Chief Justice called upon Malietoa to send a strong

force," etc.; the Chief Justice "disregarded the menacing attitude

assumed by the Samoans," etc.--these are but the delusions of a fever.

The Chief Justice has played no such part; he never called for forces;

he never disregarded menacing attitudes, not even those of the Consuls.

What we have to complain of in Mr. Ide and Mr. Schmidt is strangely

different. We complain that they have been here since November, and the

three Consuls are still allowed, when they are not invited, to interfere

in the least and the greatest; that they have been here for upwards of

six months, and government under the Berlin Treaty is still

overridden--and I may say overlaid--by the government of the Consular

triumvirate.

This is the main fountain of our present discontents. This it is that we

pray to be relieved from. Out of six Sovereigns, exercising incongruous

rights or usurpations on this unhappy island, we pray to be relieved of

three. The Berlin Treaty was not our choice; but if we are to have it at

all, let us have it plain. Let us have the text, and nothing but the

text. Let the three Consuls who have no position under the treaty cease

from troubling, cease from raising war and making peace, from passing

illegal regulations in the face of day, and from secretly blackmailing

the Samoan Government into renunciations of its independence.

Afterwards, when we have once seen it in operation, we shall be able to

judge whether government under the Berlin Treaty suits or does not suit

our case.--I am, Sir, etc.,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

X

FROM THE "DAILY CHRONICLE," _March_ 18, 1895.

[Subjoined is the full text of the late Robert Louis Stevenson's last

letter to Mr. J. F. Hogan, M.P. Apart from its pathetic interest as

one of the final compositions of the distinguished novelist, its

eloquent terms of pleading for his exiled friend Mataafa, and the

light it sheds on Samoan affairs, make it a very noteworthy and

instructive document.--ED. _D.C._]

_Vailima, Oct._ 7, 1894.

J. F. HOGAN, ESQ., M.P.

Dear Sir,--My attention was attracted the other day by the thoroughly

pertinent questions which you put in the House of Commons, and which the

Government failed to answer. It put an idea in my head that you were

perhaps the man who might take up a task which I am almost ready to give

up. Mataafa is now known to be my hobby. People laugh when they see any

mention of his name over my signature, and the _Times_, while it still

grants me hospitality, begins to lead the chorus. I know that nothing

can be more fatal to Mataafa's cause than that he should be made

ridiculous, and I cannot help feeling that a man who makes his bread by

writing fiction labours under the disadvantage of suspicion when he

touches on matters of fact. If I were even backed up before the world by

one other voice, people might continue to listen, and in the end

something might be done. But so long as I stand quite alone, telling the

same story, which becomes, apparently, not only more tedious, but less

credible by repetition, I feel that I am doing nothing good, possibly

even some evil.

Now, sir, you have shown by your questions in the House, not only that

you remember Mataafa, but that you are instructed in his case, and this

exposes you to the trouble of reading this letter.

Mataafa was made the prisoner of the three Powers. He had been guilty of

rebellion; but surely rather formally than really. He was the appointed

King of Samoa. The treaty set him aside, and he obeyed the three Powers.

His successor--or I should rather say his successor's advisers and

surroundings--fell out with him. He was disgusted by the spectacle of

their misgovernment. In this humour he fell to the study of the Berlin

Act, and was misled by the famous passage, "His successor shall be duly

elected according to the laws and customs of Samoa." It is to be noted

that what I will venture to call the infamous Protocol--a measure

equally of German vanity, English cowardice, and American _incuria_--had

not been and _has never yet been_ translated into the Samoan language.

They feared light because their works were darkness. For what he did

during what I can only call his candidature, I must refer you to the

last chapter of my book. It was rebellion to the three Powers; to him it

was not rebellion. The troops of the King attacked him first. The sudden

arrival and sudden action of Captain Bickford concluded the affair in

the very beginning. Mataafa surrendered. He surrendered to Captain

Bickford. He was brought back to Apia on Captain Bickford's ship. I

shall never forget the Captain pointing to the British ensign and

saying, "Tell them they are safe under that." And the next thing we

learned, Mataafa and his chiefs were transferred to a German war-ship

and carried to the Marshalls.

Who was responsible for this? Who is responsible now for the care and

good treatment of these political prisoners? I am far from hinting that

the Germans actually maltreat him. I know even that many of the Germans

regard him with respect. But I can only speak of what I know here. It is

impossible to send him or any of his chiefs either a present or a

letter. I believe the mission (Catholic) has been allowed some form of

communication. On the same occasion I sent down letters and presents.

They were refused; and the officer of the deck on the German war-ship

had so little reticence as to pass the remark, "O, you see, you like

Mataafa; we don't." In short, communication is so completely sundered

that for anything we can hear in Samoa, they may all have been hanged at

the yard-arm two days out.

To take another instance. The high chief Faamoina was recently married

to a young and pleasing wife. She desired to follow her husband, an old

man, in bad health, and so deservedly popular that he had been given the

by-name of "_Papalagi Mativa_," or "Poor White Man," on account of his

charities to our countrymen. She was refused. Again and again she has

renewed her applications to be allowed to rejoin him, and without the

least success.

It has been decreed by some one, I know not whom, that Faamoina must

have no one to nurse him, and that his wife must be left in the

anomalous and dangerous position which the Treaty Powers have made for

her. I have wearied myself, and I fear others, by my attempts to get a

passage for her or to have her letters sent. Every one sympathises. The

German ships now in port are loud in expressions of disapproval and

professions of readiness to help her. But to whom can we address

ourselves? Who is responsible? Who is the unknown power that sent

Mataafa in a German ship to the Marshalls, instead of in an English ship

to Fiji? that has decreed since that he shall receive not even

inconsiderable gifts and open letters? and that keeps separated Faamoina

and his wife?

Now, dear sir, these are the facts, and I think that I may be excused

for being angry. At the same time, I am well aware that an angry man is

a bore. I am a man with a grievance, and my grievance has the misfortune

to be very small and very far away. It is very small, for it is only the

case of under a score of brown-skinned men who have been dealt with in

the dark by I know not whom. And I want to know. I want to know by whose

authority Mataafa was given over into German hands. I want to know by

whose authority, and for how long a term of years, he is condemned to

the miserable exile of a low island. And I want to know how it happens

that what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander in

Samoa?--that the German enemy Mataafa has been indefinitely exiled for

what is after all scarce more than constructive rebellion, and the

German friend Tamasese, for a rebellion which has lasted long enough to

threaten us with famine, and was disgraced in its beginning by ominous

threats against the whites, has been punished by a fine of fifty rifles?

True, I could sympathise with the German officers in their

embarrassment. Here was the son of the old King whom they had raised,

and whom they had deserted. What an unenviable office was theirs when

they must make war upon, suppress, and make a feint of punishing, this

man to whom they stood bound by a hereditary alliance, and to whose

father they had already failed so egregiously! They were loyal all

round. They were loyal to their Tamasese, and got him off with his fine.

And shall I not be a little loyal to Mataafa? And will you not help me?

He is now an old man, very piously inclined, and I believe he would

enter at least the lesser orders of the Church if he were suffered to

come back. But I do not even ask so much as this, though I hope it. It

would be enough if he were brought back to Fiji, back to the food and

fresh water of his childhood, back into the daylight from the darkness

of the Marshalls, where some of us could see him, where we could write

to him and receive answers, where he might pass a tolerable old age. If

you can help me to get this done, I am sure that you will never regret

it. In its small way, this is another case of Toussaint L'Ouverture, not

so monstrous if you like, not on so large a scale, but with

circumstances of small perfidy that make it almost as odious.

I may tell you in conclusion that, circumstances co-operating with my

tedious insistence, the last of the Mataafa chiefs here in Apia has been

liberated from gaol. All this time they stayed of their own free will,

thinking it might injure Mataafa if they escaped when others did. And

you will see by the enclosed paper how these poor fellows spent the

first hours of their liberty.[12] You will see also that I am not the

firebrand that I am sometimes painted, and that in helping me, if you

shall decide to do so, you will be doing nothing against the peace and

prosperity of Samoa.

With many excuses for having occupied so much of your valuable time, I

remain, yours truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_P.S._--On revisal, I observe some points: in the first place, I do not

believe Captain Bickford was to blame; I suspect him to have been a

victim. I have been told, but it seems incredible, that he underwent an

examination about Mataafa's daughter having been allowed to accompany

him. Certainly he liked his job little, and some of his colleagues less.

R. L. S.

_Oct._ 9.

Latest intelligence. We have received at last a letter from Mataafa. He

is well treated and has good food; only complains of not hearing from

Samoa. This has very much relieved our minds. But why were they

previously left in the dark?

R. L. S.

FOOTNOTE:

[12] _i.e._ in building a section of a new road to Mr. Stevenson's

house. The paper referred to is a copy of the _Samoa Times_,

containing a report of the dinner given by Mr. Stevenson at Vailima

to inaugurate this new road.

LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE

I

TO MISS B...

_Vailima Plantation [Spring_, 1892].

Dear Friend,[13]--Please salute your pupils in my name, and tell them

that a long, lean, elderly man who lives right through on the underside

of the world, so that down in your cellar you are nearer him than the

people in the street, desires his compliments.

This man lives on an island which is not very long and is extremely

narrow. The sea beats round it very hard, so that it is difficult to get

to shore. There is only one harbour where ships come, and even that is

very wild and dangerous; four ships of war were broken there a little

while ago, and one of them is still lying on its side on a rock clean

above water, where the sea threw it as you might throw your fiddle-bow

upon the table. All round the harbour the town is strung out: it is

nothing but wooden houses, only there are some churches built of stone.

They are not very large, but the people have never seen such fine

buildings. Almost all the houses are of one story. Away at one end of

the village lives the king of the whole country. His palace has a

thatched roof which rests upon posts; there are no walls, but when it

blows and rains, they have Venetian blinds which they let down between

the posts, making all very snug. There is no furniture, and the king and

the queen and the courtiers sit and eat on the floor, which is of

gravel: the lamp stands there too, and every now and then it is upset.

These good folk wear nothing but a kilt about their waists, unless to go

to church or for a dance on the New Year or some great occasion. The

children play marbles all along the street; and though they are

generally very jolly, yet they get awfully cross over their marbles, and

cry and fight just as boys and girls do at home. Another amusement in

country places is to shoot fish with a little bow and arrow. All round

the beach there is bright shallow water, where the fishes can be seen

darting or lying in shoals. The child trots round the shore, and

whenever he sees a fish, lets fly an arrow, and misses, and then wades

in after his arrow. It is great fun (I have tried it) for the child, and

I never heard of it doing any harm to the fishes, so what could be more

jolly?

The road to this lean man's house is uphill all the way, and through

forests; the trees are not so much unlike those at home, only here and

there some very queer ones are mixed with them--cocoa-nut palms, and

great trees that are covered with bloom like red hawthorn but not near

so bright; and from them all thick creepers hang down like ropes, and

ugly-looking weeds that they call orchids grow in the forks of the

branches; and on the ground many prickly things are dotted, which they

call pine-apples. I suppose every one has eaten pine-apple drops.

On the way up to the lean man's house you pass a little village, all of

houses like the king's house, so that as you ride by you can see

everybody sitting at dinner, or, if it is night, lying in their beds by

lamplight; because all the people are terribly afraid of ghosts, and

would not lie in the dark for anything. After the village, there is only

one more house, and that is the lean man's. For the people are not very

many, and live all by the sea, and the whole inside of the island is

desert woods and mountains. When the lean man goes into the forest, he

is very much ashamed to own it, but he is always in a terrible fright.

The wood is so great, and empty, and hot, and it is always filled with

curious noises: birds cry like children, and bark like dogs; and he can

hear people laughing and felling trees; and the other day (when he was

far in the woods) he heard a sound like the biggest mill-wheel possible,

going with a kind of dot-and-carry-one movement like a dance. That was

the noise of an earthquake away down below him in the bowels of the

earth; and that is the same thing as to say away up toward you in your

cellar in Kilburn. All these noises make him feel lonely and scared, and

he doesn't quite know what he is scared of. Once when he was just about

to cross a river, a blow struck him on the top of his head, and knocked

him head-foremost down the bank and splash into the water. It was a nut,

I fancy, that had fallen from a tree, by which accident people are

sometimes killed. But at the time he thought it was a Black Boy.

"Aha," say you, "and what is a Black Boy?" Well, there are here a lot of

poor people who are brought to Samoa from distant islands to labour for

the Germans. They are not at all like the king and his people, who are

brown and very pretty: for these are black as negroes and as ugly as

sin, poor souls, and in their own land they live all the time at war,

and cook and eat men's flesh. The Germans make them work; and every now

and then some run away into the Bush, as the forest is called, and build

little sheds of leaves, and eat nuts and roots and fruits, and dwell

there by themselves. Sometimes they are bad, and wild, and people

whisper to each other that some of them have gone back to their horrid

old habits, and catch men and women in order to eat them. But it is very

likely not true; and the most of them are poor, half-starved, pitiful

creatures, like frightened dogs. Their life is all very well when the

sun shines, as it does eight or nine months in the year. But it is very

different the rest of the time. The wind rages then most violently. The

great trees thrash about like whips; the air is filled with leaves and

branches flying like birds; and the sound of the trees falling shakes

the earth. It rains, too, as it never rains at home. You can hear a

shower while it is yet half a mile away, hissing like a shower-bath in

the forest; and when it comes to you, the water blinds your eyes, and

the cold drenching takes your breath away as though some one had struck

you. In that kind of weather it must be dreadful indeed to live in the

woods, one man alone by himself. And you must know that if the lean man

feels afraid to be in the forest, the people of the island and the Black

Boys are much more afraid than he; for they believe the woods to be

quite filled with spirits; some like pigs, and some like flying things;

but others (and these are thought the most dangerous) in the shape of

beautiful young women and young men, beautifully dressed in the island

manner with fine kilts and fine necklaces, and crosses of scarlet seeds

and flowers. Woe betide him or her who gets to speak with one of these!

They will be charmed out of their wits, and come home again quite silly,

and go mad and die. So that the poor runaway Black Boy must be always

trembling, and looking about for the coming of the demons.

Sometimes the women-demons go down out of the woods into the villages;

and here is a tale the lean man heard last year: One of the islanders

was sitting in his house, and he had cooked fish. There came along the

road two beautiful young women, dressed as I told you, who came into his

house, and asked for some of his fish. It is the fashion in the islands

always to give what is asked, and never to ask folks' names. So the man

gave them fish, and talked to them in the island jesting way. Presently

he asked one of the women for her red necklace; which is good manners

and their way: he had given the fish, and he had a right to ask for

something back. "I will give it you by and by," said the woman, and she

and her companion went away; but he thought they were gone very

suddenly, and the truth is they had vanished. The night was nearly come,

when the man heard the voice of the woman crying that he should come to

her, and she would give the necklace. He looked out, and behold! she was

standing calling him from the top of the sea, on which she stood as you

might stand on the table. At that, fear came on the man; he fell on his

knees and prayed, and the woman disappeared.

It was said afterward that this was once a woman, indeed, but she should

have died a thousand years ago, and has lived all that while as an evil

spirit in the woods beside the spring of a river. Sau-mai-afe[14] is her

name, in case you want to write to her.

Ever your friend (for whom I thank the stars),

TUSITALA (Tale-writer).

II

TO MISS B...

_Vailima Plantation, 14 Aug._ 1892.

... The lean man is exceedingly ashamed of himself, and offers his

apologies to the little girls in the cellar just above. If they will be

so good as to knock three times upon the floor, he will hear it on the

other side of his floor, and will understand that he is forgiven.

I left you and the children still on the road to the lean man's house,

where a great part of the forest has now been cleared away. It comes

back again pretty quick, though not quite so high; but everywhere,

except where the weeders have been kept busy, young trees have sprouted

up, and the cattle and the horses cannot be seen as they feed. In this

clearing there are two or three houses scattered about, and between the

two biggest I think the little girls in the cellar would first notice a

sort of thing like a gridiron on legs, made of logs of wood. Sometimes

it has a flag flying on it, made of rags of old clothes. It is a fort

(as I am told) built by the person here who would be much the most

interesting to the girls in the cellar. This is a young gentleman of

eleven years of age, answering to the name of Austin. It was after

reading a book about the Red Indians that he thought it more prudent to

create this place of strength. As the Red Indians are in North America,

and this fort seems to me a very useless kind of building, I anxiously

hope that the two may never be brought together. When Austin is not

engaged in building forts, nor on his lessons, which are just as

annoying to him as other children's lessons are to them, he walks

sometimes in the Bush, and if anybody is with him, talks all the time.

When he is alone I don't think he says anything, and I dare say he feels

very lonely and frightened, just as the Samoan does, at the queer noises

and the endless lines of the trees.

He finds the strangest kinds of seeds, some of them bright-coloured like

lollipops, or really like precious stones; some of them in odd cases

like tobacco-pouches. He finds and collects all kinds of little shells,

with which the whole ground is scattered, and that, though they are the

shells of land creatures like our snails, are of nearly as many shapes

and colours as the shells on our sea-beaches. In the streams that come

running down out of our mountains, all as clear and bright as

mirror-glass, he sees eels and little bright fish that sometimes jump

together out of the surface of the brook in a spray of silver, and

fresh-water prawns which lie close under the stones, looking up at him

through the water with eyes the colour of a jewel. He sees all kinds of

beautiful birds, some of them blue and white, and some of them coloured

like our pigeons at home; and these last, the little girls in the cellar

may like to know, live almost entirely on wild nutmegs as they fall ripe

off the trees. Another little bird he may sometimes see, as the lean man

saw him only this morning: a little fellow not so big as a man's hand,

exquisitely neat, of a pretty bronzy black like ladies' shoes, who

sticks up behind him (much as a peacock does) his little tail, shaped

and fluted like a scallop-shell.

Here there are a lot of curious and interesting things that Austin sees

all round him every day; and when I was a child at home in the old

country I used to play and pretend to myself that I saw things of the

same kind--that the rooms were full of orange and nutmeg trees, and the

cold town gardens outside the windows were alive with parrots and with

lions. What do the little girls in the cellar think that Austin does? He

makes believe just the other way; he pretends that the strange great

trees with their broad leaves and slab-sided roots are European oaks;

and the places on the road up (where you and I and the little girls in

the cellar have already gone) he calls old-fashioned, far-away European

names, just as if you were to call the cellar-stairs and the corner of

the next street--if you could only manage to pronounce their

names--Upolu and Savaii. And so it is with all of us, with Austin, and

the lean man, and the little girls in the cellar; wherever we are, it is

but a stage on the way to somewhere else, and whatever we do, however

well we do it, it is only a preparation to do something else that shall

be different.

But you must not suppose that Austin does nothing but build forts, and

walk among the woods, and swim in the rivers. On the contrary, he is

sometimes a very busy and useful fellow; and I think the little girls in

the cellar would have admired him very nearly as much as he admired

himself, if they had seen him setting off on horseback, with his hand on

his hip, and his pocket full of letters and orders, at the head of quite

a procession of huge white cart-horses with pack-saddles, and big, brown

native men with nothing on but gaudy kilts. Mighty well he managed all

his commissions; and those who saw him ordering and eating his

single-handed luncheon in the queer little Chinese restaurant on the

beach, declare he looked as if the place, and the town, and the whole

archipelago belonged to him.

But I am not going to let you suppose that this great gentleman at the

head of all his horses and his men, like the king of France in the old

rhyme, would be thought much of a dandy on the streets of London. On the

contrary, if he could be seen with his dirty white cap and his faded

purple shirt, and his little brown breeks that do not reach his knees,

and the bare shanks below, and the bare feet stuck in the

stirrup-leathers--for he is not quite long enough to reach the irons--I

am afraid the little girls and boys in your part of the town might be

very much inclined to give him a penny in charity. So you see that a

very big man in one place might seem very small potatoes in another,

just as the king's palace here (of which I told you in my last) would be

thought rather a poor place of residence by a Surrey gipsy. And if you

come to that, even the lean man himself, who is no end of an important

person, if he were picked up from the chair where he is now sitting, and

slung down, feet foremost, in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross, would

probably have to escape into the nearest shop, or take the risk of being

mobbed. And the ladies of his family, who are very pretty ladies, and

think themselves uncommon well-dressed for Samoa, would (if the same

thing were to be done to them) be extremely glad to get into a cab....

TUSITALA.

III

UNDER COVER TO MISS B...

_Vailima, 4th Sept. 1892._

Dear Children in the Cellar,--I told you before something of the Black

Boys who come here to work on the plantations, and some of whom run away

and live a wild life in the forests of the island.[15] Now I want to

tell you of one who lived in the house of the lean man. Like the rest of

them here, he is a little fellow, and when he goes about in old battered

cheap European clothes, looks very small and shabby. When first he came

he was as lean as a tobacco-pipe, and his smile (like that of almost all

the others) was the sort that half makes you wish to smile yourself, and

half wish to cry. However, the boys in the kitchen took him in hand and

fed him up. They would set him down alone to table, and wait upon him

till he had his fill, which was a good long time to wait. The first

thing we noticed was that his little stomach began to stick out like a

pigeon's breast; and then the food got a little wider spread, and he

started little calves to his legs; and last of all, he began to get

quite saucy and impudent. He is really what you ought to call a young

man, though I suppose nobody in the whole wide world has any idea of his

age; and as far as his behaviour goes, you can only think of him as a

big little child with a good deal of sense.

When Austin built his fort against the Indians, Arick (for that is the

Black Boy's name) liked nothing so much as to help him. And this is very

funny, when you think that of all the dangerous savages in this island

Arick is one of the most dangerous. The other day, besides, he made

Austin a musical instrument of the sort they use in his own country--a

harp with only one string. He took a stick about three feet long and

perhaps four inches round. The under side he hollowed out in a deep

trench to serve as sounding-box; the two ends of the upper side he made

to curve upward like the ends of a canoe, and between these he stretched

the single string. He plays upon it with a match or a little piece of

stick, and sings to it songs of his own country, of which no person here

can understand a single word, and which are, very likely, all about

fighting with his enemies in battle, and killing them, and, I am sorry

to say, cooking them in a ground-oven, and eating them for supper when

the fight is over.

For Arick is really what you call a savage, though a savage is a very

different sort of a person, and very much nicer than he is made to

appear in little books. He is the kind of person that everybody smiles

to, or makes faces at, or gives a smack as he goes by; the sort of

person that all the girls on the plantation give the best seat to and

help first, and love to decorate with flowers and ribbons, and yet all

the while are laughing at him; the sort of person who likes best to play

with Austin, and whom Austin, perhaps (when he is allowed), likes best

to play with. He is all grins and giggles and little steps out of

dances, and little droll ways to attract people's attention and set them

laughing. And yet, when you come to look at him closely, you will find

that his body is all covered with _scars_! This happened when he was a

child. There was war, as is the way in these wild islands, between his

village and the next, much as if there were war in London between one

street and another; and all the children ran about playing in the middle

of the trouble, and, I dare say, took no more notice of the war than you

children in London do of a general election. But sometimes, at general

elections, English children may get run over by processions in the

street; and it chanced that as little Arick was running about in the

Bush, and very busy about his playing, he ran into the midst of the

warriors on the other side. These speared him with a poisoned spear; and

his own people, when they had found him, in order to cure him of the

poison scored him with knives that were probably made of fish-bone.

This is a very savage piece of child-life; and Arick, for all his good

nature, is still a very savage person. I have told you how the Black

Boys sometimes run away from the plantations, and live alone in the

forest, building little sheds to protect them from the rain, and

sometimes planting little gardens for food; but for the most part living

the best they can upon the nuts of the trees and the yams that they dig

with their hands out of the earth. I do not think there can be anywhere

in the world people more wretched than these runaways. They cannot

return, for they would only return to be punished; they can never hope

to see again their own people--indeed, I do not know what they can hope,

but just to find enough yams every day to keep them from starvation. And

in the wet season of the year, which is our summer and your winter, when

the rain falls day after day far harder and louder than the loudest

thunder-plump that ever fell in England, and the room is so dark that

the lean man is sometimes glad to light his lamp to write by, I can

think of nothing so dreary as the state of these poor runaways in the

houseless bush. You are to remember, besides, that the people of the

island hate and fear them because they are cannibals; sit and tell

tales of them about their lamps at night in their own comfortable

houses, and are sometimes afraid to lie down to sleep if they think

there is a lurking Black Boy in the neighbourhood. Well, now, Arick is

of their own race and language, only he is a little more lucky because

he has not run away; and how do you think that he proposed to help them?

He asked if he might not have a gun. "What do you want with a gun,

Arick?" was asked. He answered quite simply, and with his nice,

good-natured smile, that if he had a gun he would go up into the High

Bush and shoot Black Boys as men shoot pigeons. He said nothing about

eating them, nor do I think he really meant to; I think all he wanted

was to clear the plantation of vermin, as gamekeepers at home kill

weasels or rats.

The other day he was sent on an errand to the German company where many

of the Black Boys live. It was very late when he came home. He had a

white bandage round his head, his eyes shone, and he could scarcely

speak for excitement. It seems some of the Black Boys who were his

enemies at home had attacked him, one with a knife. By his own account,

he had fought very well; but the odds were heavy. The man with the knife

had cut him both in the head and back; he had been struck down; and if

some Black Boys of his own side had not come to the rescue, he must

certainly have been killed. I am sure no Christmas-box could make any of

you children so happy as this fight made Arick. A great part of the next

day he neglected his work to play upon the one-stringed harp and sing

songs about his great victory. To-day, when he is gone upon his holiday,

he has announced that he is going back to the German firm to have

another battle and another triumph. I do not think he will go, all the

same, or I should be uneasy; for I do not want to have my Arick killed;

and there is no doubt that if he begins this fight again, he will be

likely to go on with it very far. For I have seen him once when he saw,

or thought he saw, an enemy.

It was one of those dreadful days of rain, the sound of it like a great

waterfall, or like a tempest of wind blowing in the forest; and there

came to our door two runaway Black Boys seeking refuge. In such weather

as that my enemy's dog (as Shakespeare says) should have had a right to

shelter. But when Arick saw the two poor rogues coming with their empty

stomachs and drenched clothes, one of them with a stolen cutlass in his

hand, through that world of falling water, he had no thought of any pity

in his heart. Crouching behind one of the pillars of the verandah, to

which he clung with his two hands, his mouth drew back into a strange

sort of smile, his eyes grew bigger and bigger, and his whole face was

just like the one word MURDER in big capitals.

But I have told you a great deal too much about poor Arick's savage

nature, and now I must tell you of a great amusement he had the other

day. There came an English ship of war into the harbour, and the

officers good-naturedly gave an entertainment of songs and dances and a

magic lantern, to which Arick and Austin were allowed to go. At the door

of the hall there were crowds of Black Boys waiting and trying to peep

in, as children at home lie about and peep under the tent of a circus;

and you may be sure Arick was a very proud person when he passed them

all by, and entered the hall with his ticket.

I wish I knew what he thought of the whole performance; but a friend of

the lean man, who sat just in front of Arick, tells me what seemed to

startle him most. The first thing was when two of the officers came out

with blackened faces, like minstrels, and began to dance. Arick was sure

that they were really black, and his own people, and he was wonderfully

surprised to see them dance in this new European style.

But the great affair was the magic lantern. The hall was made quite

dark, which was very little to Arick's taste. He sat there behind my

friend, nothing to be seen of him but eyes and teeth, and his heart was

beating finely in his little scarred breast. And presently there came

out of the white sheet that great big eye of light that I am sure all

you children must have often seen. It was quite new to Arick; he had no

idea what would happen next, and in his fear and excitement he laid hold

with his little slim black fingers like a bird's claw on the neck of the

friend in front of him. All through the rest of the show, as one picture

followed another on the white sheet, he sat there grasping and

clutching, and goodness knows whether he were more pleased or

frightened.

Doubtless it was a very fine thing to see all those bright pictures

coming out and dying away again, one after another; but doubtless it was

rather alarming also, for how was it done? At last when there appeared

upon the screen the head of a black woman (as it might be his own mother

or sister), and this black woman of a sudden began to roll her eyes, the

fear or the excitement, whichever it was, rung out of him a loud,

shuddering sob. I think we all ought to admire his courage when, after

an evening spent in looking at such wonderful miracles, he and Austin

set out alone through the forest to the lean man's house. It was late at

night and pitch dark when some of the party overtook the little white

boy and the big black boy, marching among the trees with their lantern.

I have told you this wood has an ill name, and all the people of the

island believe it to be full of evil spirits; it is a pretty dreadful

place to walk in by the moving light of a lantern, with nothing about

you but a curious whirl of shadows, and the black night above and

beyond. But Arick kept his courage up, and I dare say Austin's too, with

a perpetual chatter, so that the people coming after heard his voice

long before they saw the shining of the lantern.

TUSITALA.

IV

TO AUSTIN STRONG

_Vailima, November_ 2, 1892.

My dear Austin,--First and foremost I think you will be sorry to hear

that our poor friend Arick has gone back to the German firm. He had not

been working very well, and we had talked of sending him off before; but

remembering how thin he was when he came here, and seeing what fat

little legs and what a comfortable little stomach he had laid on in the

meanwhile, we found we had not the heart. The other day, however, he set

up chat to Henry, the Samoan overseer, asking him who he was and where

he came from, and refusing to obey his orders. I was in bed in the

workmen's house, having a fever. Uncle Lloyd came over to me, told me of

it, and I had Arick sent up. I told him I would give him another chance.

He was taken out and asked to apologise to Henry, but he would do no

such thing. He preferred to go back to the German firm. So we hired a

couple of Samoans who were up here on a visit to the boys and packed him

off in their charge to the firm, where he arrived safely, and a receipt

was given for him like a parcel.[16]

Sunday last the _Alameda_ returned. Your mother was off bright and early

with Palema, for it is a very curious thing, but is certainly the case,

that she was very impatient to get news of a young person by the name

of Austin. Mr. Gurr lent a horse for the Captain--it was a pretty big

horse, but our handsome Captain, as you know, is a very big Captain

indeed. Now, do you remember Misifolo--a tall, thin Hovea boy that came

shortly before you left? He had been riding up this same horse of Gurr's

just the day before, and the horse threw him off at Motootua corner, and

cut his hip. So Misifolo called out to the Captain as he rode by that

that was a very bad horse, that it ran away and threw people off, and

that he had best be careful; and the funny thing is, that the Captain

did not like it at all. The foal might as well have tried to run away

with Vailima as that horse with Captain Morse, which is poetry, as you

see, into the bargain; but the Captain was not at all in that way of

thinking, and was never really happy until he had got his foot on ground

again. It was just then that the horse began to be happy too, so they

parted in one mind. But the horse is still wondering what kind of piece

of artillery he had brought up to Vailima last Sunday morning. So far it

was all right. The Captain was got safe off the wicked horse, but how

was he to get back again to Apia and the _Alameda_?

Happy thought--there was Donald, the big pack-horse! The last time

Donald was ridden he had upon him a hair-pin and a pea--by which I

mean--(once again to drop into poetry) you and me. Now he was to have a

rider more suited to his size. He was brought up to the door--he looked

a mountain. A step-ladder was put alongside of him. The Captain

approached the step-ladder, and he looked an Alp. I wasn't as much

afraid for the horse as I was for the step-ladder, but it bore the

strain, and with a kind of sickening smash that you might have heard at

Monterey, the Captain descended to the saddle. Now don't think that I am

exaggerating, but at the moment when that enormous Captain settled down

upon Donald, the horse's hind-legs gave visibly under the strain. What

the couple looked like, one on top of t'other, no words can tell you,

and your mother must here draw a picture.

--Your respected Uncle,

O TUSITALA.

V

TO AUSTIN STRONG

_Vailima, November_ 15, 1892.

My dear Austin,--The new house is begun. It stands out nearly half way

over towards Pineapple Cottage--the lower floor is laid and the uprights

of the wall are set up; so that the big lower room wants nothing but a

roof over its head. When it rains (as it does mostly all the time) you

never saw anything look so sorry for itself as that room left outside.

Beyond the house there is a work-shed roofed with sheets of iron, and in

front, over about half the lawn, the lumber for the house lies piled. It

is about the bringing up of this lumber that I want to tell you.

For about a fortnight there were at work upon the job two German

overseers, about a hundred Black Boys, and from twelve to twenty-four

draught-oxen. It rained about half the time, and the road was like

lather for shaving. The Black Boys seemed to have had a new rig-out.

They had almost all shirts of scarlet flannel, and lavalavas, the Samoan

kilt, either of scarlet or light blue. As the day got warm they took off

the shirts; and it was a very curious thing, as you went down to Apia on

a bright day, to come upon one tree after another in the empty forest

with these shirts stuck among the branches like vermilion birds.

I observed that many of the boys had a very queer substitute for a

pocket. This was nothing more than a string which some of them tied

about their upper arms and some about their necks, and in which they

stuck their clay pipes; and as I don't suppose they had anything else to

carry, it did very well. Some had feathers in their hair, and some long

stalks of grass through the holes in their noses. I suppose this was

intended to make them look pretty, poor dears; but you know what a Black

Boy looks like, and these Black Boys, for all their blue, and their

scarlet, and their grass, looked just as shabby, and small, and sad, and

sorry for themselves, and like sick monkeys as any of the rest.

As you went down the road you came upon them first working in squads of

two. Each squad shouldered a couple of planks and carried them up about

two hundred feet, gave them to two others, and walked back empty-handed

to the places they had started from. It wasn't very hard work, and they

didn't go about it at all lively; but of course, when it rained, and the

mud was deep, the poor fellows were unhappy enough. This was in the

upper part about Trood's. Below, all the way down to Tanugamanono, you

met the bullock-carts coming and going, each with ten or twenty men to

attend upon it, and often enough with one of the overseers near. Quite a

far way off through the forest you could hear the noise of one of these

carts approaching. The road was like a bog, and though a good deal wider

than it was when you knew it, so narrow that the bullocks reached quite

across it with the span of their big horns. To pass by, it was necessary

to get into the bush on one side or the other. The bullocks seemed to

take no interest in their business; they looked angry and stupid, and

sullen beyond belief; and when it came to a heavy bit of the road, as

often as not they would stop.

As long as they were going, the Black Boys walked in the margin of the

bush on each side, pushing the cart-wheels with hands and shoulders, and

raising the most extraordinary outcry. It was strangely like some very

big kind of bird. Perhaps the great flying creatures that lived upon the

earth long before man came, if we could have come near one of their

meeting-places, would have given us just such a concert.

When one of the bullamacows[17] stopped altogether the fun was highest.

The bullamacow stood on the road, his head fixed fast in the yoke,

chewing a little, breathing very hard, and showing in his red eye that

if he could get rid of the yoke he would show them what a circus was.

All the Black Boys tailed on to the wheels and the back of the cart,

stood there getting their spirits up, and then of a sudden set to

shooing and singing out. It was these outbursts of shrill cries that it

was so curious to hear in the distance. One such stuck cart I came up to

and asked what was the worry. "Old fool bullamacow stop same place," was

the reply. I never saw any of the overseers near any of the stuck carts;

you were a very much better overseer than either of these.

While this was going on, I had to go down to Apia five or six different

times, and each time there were a hundred Black Boys to say

"Good-morning" to. This was rather a tedious business; and, as very few

of them answered at all, and those who did, only with a grunt like a

pig's, it was several times in my mind to give up this piece of

politeness. The last time I went down, I was almost decided; but when I

came to the first pair of Black Boys, and saw them looking so comic and

so melancholy, I began the business over again. This time I thought more

of them seemed to answer, and when I got down to the tail-end where the

carts were running, I received a very pleasant surprise, for one of the

boys, who was pushing at the back of a cart, lifted up his head, and

called out to me in wonderfully good English, "You good man--always say

'Good-morning.'" It was sad to think that these poor creatures should

think so much of so small a piece of civility, and strange that

(thinking so) they should be so dull as not to return it.

UNCLE LOUIS.

VI

TO AUSTIN STRONG

_June_ 18, 1893.

Respected Hopkins,[18]--This is to inform you that the Jersey cow had an

elegant little cow-calf Sunday last. There was a great deal of

rejoicing, of course; but I don't know whether or not you remember the

Jersey cow. Whatever else she is, the Jersey cow is _not_ good-natured,

and Dines, who was up here on some other business, went down to the

paddock to get a hood and to milk her. The hood is a little wooden board

with two holes in it, by which it is hung from her horns. I don't know

how he got it on, and I don't believe _he_ does. Anyway, in the middle

of the operation, in came Bull Bazett, with his head down, and roaring

like the last trumpet. Dines and all his merry men hid behind trees in

the paddock, and skipped. Dines then got upon a horse, plied his spurs,

and cleared for Apia. The next time he is asked to meddle with our cows,

he will probably want to know the reason why. Meanwhile, there was the

cow, with the board over her eyes, left tied by a pretty long rope to a

small tree in the paddock, and who was to milk her? She roared,--I was

going to say like a bull, but it was Bazett who did that, walking up

and down, switching his tail, and the noise of the pair of them was

perfectly dreadful.

Palema went up to the Bush to call Lloyd; and Lloyd came down in one of

his know-all-about-it moods. "It was perfectly simple," he said. "The

cow was hooded; anybody could milk her. All you had to do was to draw

her up to the tree, and get a hitch about it." So he untied the cow, and

drew her up close to the tree, and got a hitch about it right enough.

And then the cow brought her intellect to bear on the subject, and

proceeded to walk round the tree to get the hitch off.

[Illustration]

Now, this is geometry, which you'll have to learn some day. The tree is

the centre of two circles. The cow had a "radius" of about two feet, and

went leisurely round a small circle; the man had a "radius" of about

thirty feet, and either he must let the cow get the hitch unwound, or

else he must take up his two feet to about the height of his eyes, and

race round a big circle. This was racing and chasing.

The cow walked quietly round and round the tree to unwind herself; and

first Lloyd, and then Palema, and then Lloyd again, scampered round the

big circle, and fell, and got up again, and bounded like a deer, to keep

her hitched.

It was funny to see, but we couldn't laugh with a good heart; for every

now and then (when the man who was running tumbled down) the cow would

get a bit ahead; and I promise you there was then no sound of any

laughter, but we rather edged away toward the gate, looking to see the

crazy beast loose, and charging us. To add to her attractions, the board

had fallen partly off, and only covered one eye, giving her the look of

a crazy old woman in a Sydney slum. Meanwhile, the calf stood looking

on, a little perplexed, and seemed to be saying: "Well, now, is this

life? It doesn't seem as if it was all it was cracked up to be. And this

is my mamma? What a very impulsive lady!"

All the time, from the lower paddock, we could hear Bazett roaring like

the deep seas, and if we cast our eye that way, we could see him

switching his tail, as a very angry gentleman may sometimes switch his

cane. And the Jersey would every now and then put up her head, and low

like the pu[19] for dinner. And take it for all in all, it was a very

striking scene. Poor Uncle Lloyd had plenty of time to regret having

been in such a hurry; so had poor Palema, who was let into the business,

and ran until he was nearly dead. Afterward Palema went and sat on a

gate, where your mother sketched him, and she is going to send you the

sketch. And the end of it? Well, we got her tied again, I really don't

know how; and came stringing back to the house with our tails between

our legs. That night at dinner, the Tamaitai[20] bid us tell the boys to

be very careful "not to frighten the cow." It was too much; the cow had

frightened us in such fine style that we all broke down and laughed like

mad.

General Hoskyns, there is no further news, your Excellency, that I am

aware of. But it may interest you to know that Mr. Christian held his

twenty-fifth birthday yesterday--a quarter of a living century old;

think of it, drink of it, innocent youth!--and asked down Lloyd and

Daplyn to a feast at one o'clock, and Daplyn went at seven, and got

nothing to eat at all. Whether they had anything to drink, I know

not--no, not I; but it's to be hoped so. Also, your uncle Lloyd has

stopped smoking, and he doesn't like it much. Also, that your mother is

most beautifully gotten up to-day, in a pink gown with a topaz stone in

front of it; and is really looking like an angel, only that she isn't

like an angel at all--only like your mother herself.

Also that the Tamaitai has been waxing the floor of the big room, so

that it shines in the most ravishing manner; and then we insisted on

coming in, and she wouldn't let us, and we came anyway, and have made

the vilest mess of it--but still it shines.

Also, that I am, your Excellency's obedient servant,

UNCLE LOUIS.

VII

TO AUSTIN STRONG

My Dear Hutchinson,--This is not going to be much of a letter, so don't

expect what can't be had. Uncle Lloyd and Palema made a malanga[21] to

go over the island to Siumu, and Talolo was anxious to go also; but how

could we get along without him? Well, Misifolo, the Maypole, set off on

Saturday, and walked all that day down the island to beyond Faleasiu

with a letter for Iopu; and Iopu and Tali and Misifolo rose very early

on the Sunday morning, and walked all that day up the island, and came

by seven at night--all pretty tired, and Misifolo most of all--to

Tanugamanono.[22] We at Vailima knew nothing at all about the marchings

of the Saturday and Sunday, but Uncle Lloyd got his boys and things

together and went to bed.

A little after five in the morning I awoke and took the lantern, and

went out of the front door and round the verandahs. There was never a

spark of dawn in the east, only the stars looked a little pale; and I

expected to find them all asleep in the workhouse. But no! the stove was

roaring, and Talolo and Fono, who was to lead the party, were standing

together talking by the stove, and one of Fono's young men was lying

asleep on the sofa in the smoking-room, wrapped in his lavalava. I had

my breakfast at half-past five that morning, and the bell rang before

six, when it was just the grey of dawn. But by seven the feast was

spread--there was lopu coming up, with Tali at his heels, and Misifolo

bringing up the rear--and Talolo could go the malanga.

Off they set, with two guns and three porters, and Fono and Lloyd and

Palema and Talolo himself with best Sunday-go-to-meeting lavalava rolled

up under his arm, and a very sore foot; but much he cared--he was

smiling from ear to ear, and would have gone to Siumu over red-hot

coals. Off they set round the corner of the cook-house, and into the

bush beside the chicken-house, and so good-bye to them.

But you should see how Iopu has taken possession! "Never saw a place in

such a state!" is written on his face. "In my time," says he, "we didn't

let things go ragging along like this, and I'm going to show you

fellows." The first thing he did was to apply for a bar of soap, and

then he set to work washing everything (that had all been washed last

Friday in the regular course). Then he had the grass cut all round the

cook-house, and I tell you but he found scraps, and odds and ends, and

grew more angry and indignant at each fresh discovery.

"If a white chief came up here and smelt this, how would you feel?" he

asked your mother. "It is enough to breed a sickness!"

And I dare say you remember this was just what your mother had often

said to himself; and did say the day she went out and cried on the

kitchen steps in order to make Talolo ashamed. But Iopu gave it all out

as little new discoveries of his own. The last thing was the cows, and I

tell you he was solemn about the cows. They were all destroyed, he said,

nobody knew how to milk except himself--where he is about right. Then

came dinner and a delightful little surprise. Perhaps you remember that

long ago I used not to eat mashed potatoes, but had always two or three

boiled in a plate. This has not been done for months, because Talolo

makes such admirable mashed potatoes that I have caved in. But here came

dinner, mashed potatoes for your mother and the Tamaitai, and then

boiled potatoes in a plate for me!

And there is the end of the Tale of the return of Iopu, up to date. What

more there may be is in the lap of the gods, and, Sir, I am yours

considerably,

UNCLE LOUIS.

VIII

TO AUSTIN STRONG

My Dear Hoskyns,--I am kept away in a cupboard because everybody has the

influenza; I never see anybody at all, and never do anything whatever

except to put ink on paper up here in my room. So what can I find to

write to you?--you, who are going to school, and getting up in the

morning to go bathing, and having (it seems to me) rather a fine time of

it in general?

You ask if we have seen Arick? Yes, your mother saw him at the head of a

gang of boys, and looking fat, and sleek, and well-to-do. I have an idea

that he misbehaved here because he was homesick for the other Black

Boys, and didn't know how else to get back to them. Well, he has got

them now, and I hope he likes it better than I should.

I read the other day something that I thought would interest so great a

sea-bather as yourself. You know that the fishes that we see, and catch,

go only a certain way down into the sea. Below a certain depth there is

no life at all. The water is as empty as the air is above a certain

height. Even the shells of dead fishes that come down there are crushed

into nothing by the huge weight of the water. Lower still, in the places

where the sea is profoundly deep, it appears that life begins again.

People fish up in dredging-buckets loose rags and tatters of creatures

that hang together all right down there with the great weight holding

them in one, but come all to pieces as they are hauled up. Just what

they look like, just what they do or feed upon, we shall never find out.

Only that we have some flimsy fellow-creatures down in the very bottom

of the deep seas, and cannot get them up except in tatters. It must be

pretty dark where they live, and there are no plants or weeds, and no

fish come down there, or drowned sailors either, from the upper parts,

because these are all mashed to pieces by the great weight long before

they get so far, or else come to a place where perhaps they float. But I

dare say a cannon sometimes comes careering solemnly down, and circling

about like a dead leaf or thistle-down; and then the ragged fellows go

and play about the cannon and tell themselves all kinds of stories about

the fish higher up and their iron houses, and perhaps go inside and

sleep, and perhaps dream of it all like their betters.

Of course you know a cannon down there would be quite light. Even in

shallow water, where men go down with a diving-dress, they grow so light

that they have to hang weights about their necks, and have their boots

loaded with twenty pounds of lead--as I know to my sorrow. And with all

this, and the helmet, which is heavy enough of itself to any one up here

in the thin air, they are carried about like gossamers, and have to take

every kind of care not to be upset and stood upon their heads. I went

down once in the dress, and speak from experience. But if we could get

down for a moment near where the fishes are, we should be in a tight

place. Suppose the water not to crush us (which it would), we should

pitch about in every kind of direction; every step we took would carry

us as far as if we had seven-league boots; and we should keep flying

head over heels, and top over bottom, like the liveliest clowns in the

world.

Well, sir, here is a great deal of words put down upon a piece of paper,

and if you think that makes a letter, why, very well! And if you don't,

I can't help it. For I have nothing under heaven to tell you.

So, with kindest wishes to yourself, and Louie, and Aunt Nellie, believe

me, your affectionate

UNCLE LOUIS.

Now here is something more worth telling you. This morning at six

o'clock I saw all the horses together in the front paddock, and in a

terrible ado about something. Presently I saw a man with two buckets on

the march, and knew where the trouble was--the cow! The whole lot

cleared to the gate but two--Donald, the big white horse, and my Jack.

They stood solitary, one here, one there. I began to get interested, for

I thought Jack was off his feed. In came the man with the bucket and all

the ruck of curious horses at his tail. Right round he went to where

Donald stood (D) and poured out a feed, and the majestic Donald ate it,

and the ruck of common horses followed the man. On he went to the second

station, Jack's (J. in the plan), and poured out a feed, and the fools

of horses went in with him to the next place (A in the plan). And behold

as the train swung round, the last of them came curiously too near Jack;

and Jack left his feed and rushed upon this fool with a kind of outcry,

and the fool fled, and Jack returned to his feed; and he and Donald ate

theirs with glory, while the others were still circling round for fresh

feeds.

[Illustration]

Glory be to the name of Donald and to the name of Jack, for they had

found out where the foods were poured, and each took his station and

waited there, Donald at the first of the course for his, Jack at the

second station, while all the impotent fools ran round and round after

the man with his buckets!

R. L. S.

IX

TO AUSTIN STRONG

Vailima.

My Dear Austin,--Now when the overseer is away[23] I think it my duty to

report to him anything serious that goes on on the plantation.

Early the other afternoon we heard that Sina's foot was very bad, and

soon after that we could have heard her cries as far away as the front

balcony. I think Sina rather enjoys being ill, and makes as much of it

as she possibly can; but all the same it was painful to hear the cries;

and there is no doubt she was at least very uncomfortable. I went up

twice to the little room behind the stable, and found her lying on the

floor, with Tali and Faauma and Talolo all holding on different bits of

her. I gave her an opiate; but whenever she was about to go to sleep one

of these silly people would be shaking her, or talking in her ear, and

then she would begin to kick about again and scream.

Palema and Aunt Maggie took horse and went down to Apia after the

doctor. Right on their heels off went Mitaele on Musu to fetch Tauilo,

Talolo's mother. So here was all the island in a bustle over Sina's

foot. No doctor came, but he told us what to put on. When I went up at

night to the little room, I found Tauilo there, and the whole plantation

boxed into the place like little birds in a nest. They were sitting on

the bed, they were sitting on the table, the floor was full of them, and

the place as close as the engine-room of a steamer. In the middle lay

Sina, about three parts asleep with opium; two able-bodied work-boys

were pulling at her arms, and whenever she closed her eyes calling her

by name, and talking in her ear. I really didn't know what would become

of the girl before morning. Whether or not she had been very ill before,

this was the way to make her so, and when one of the work-boys woke her

up again, I spoke to him very sharply, and told Tauilo she must put a

stop to it.

Now I suppose this was what put it into Tauilo's head to do what she

did next. You remember Tauilo, and what a fine, tall, strong, Madame

Lafarge sort of person she is? And you know how much afraid the natives

are of the evil spirits in the wood, and how they think all sickness

comes from them? Up stood Tauilo, and addressed the spirit in Sina's

foot, and scolded it, and the spirit answered and promised to be a good

boy and go away. I do not feel so much afraid of the demons after this.

It was Faauma told me about it. I was going out into the pantry after

soda-water, and found her with a lantern drawing water from the tank.

"Bad spirit he go away," she told me.

"That's first-rate," said I. "Do you know what the name of that spirit

was? His name was _tautala_ (talking)."

"O, no!" she said; "his name is _Tu_."

You might have knocked me down with a straw. "How on earth do you know

that?" I asked.

"Heerd him tell Tauilo," she said.

As soon as I heard that I began to suspect Mrs. Tauilo was a little bit

of a ventriloquist; and imitating as well as I could the sort of voice

they make, asked her if the bad spirit did not talk like that. Faauma

was very much surprised, and told me that was just his voice.

Well, that was a very good business for the evening. The people all went

away because the demon was gone away, and the circus was over, and Sina

was allowed to sleep. But the trouble came after. There had been an evil

spirit in that room and his name was Tu. No one could say when he might

come back again; they all voted it was Tu much; and now Talolo and Sina

have had to be lodged in the Soldier Room.[24] As for the little room by

the stable, there it stands empty; it is too small to play soldiers in,

and I do not see what we can do with it, except to have a nice brass

name-plate engraved in Sydney, or in "Frisco," and stuck upon the door

of it--_Mr. Tu._

So you see that ventriloquism has its bad side as well as its good

sides; and I don't know that I want any more ventriloquists on this

plantation. We shall have _Tu_ in the cook-house next, and then _Tu_ in

Lafaele's, and _Tu_ in the workman's cottage; and the end of it all will

be that we shall have to take the Tamaitai's room for the kitchen, and

my room for the boys' sleeping-house, and we shall all have to go out

and camp under umbrellas.

Well, where you are there may be schoolmasters, but there is no such

thing as Mr. _Tu_!

Now, it's all very well that these big people should be frightened out

of their wits by an old wife talking with her mouth shut; that is one of

the things we happen to know about. All the old women in the world might

talk with their mouths shut, and not frighten you or me, but there are

plenty of other things that frighten us badly. And if we only knew about

them, perhaps we should find them no more worthy to be feared than an

old woman talking with her mouth shut. And the names of some of these

things are Death, and Pain, and Sorrow.

UNCLE LOUIS.

X

TO AUSTIN STRONG

_Jan._ 27, 1893.

Dear General Hoskyns,--I have the honour to report as usual. Your giddy

mother having gone planting a flower-garden, I am obliged to write with

my own hand, and, of course, nobody will be able to read it. This has

been a very mean kind of a month. Aunt Maggie left with the influenza.

We have heard of her from Sydney, and she is all right again; but we

have inherited her influenza, and it made a poor place of Vailima. We

had Talolo, Mitaele, Sosimo, Iopu, Sina, Misifolo, and myself, all sick

in bed at the same time; and was not that a pretty dish to set before

the king! The big hall of the new house having no furniture, the sick

pitched their tents in it,--I mean their mosquito-nets,--like a military

camp. The Tamaitai and your mother went about looking after them, and

managed to get us something to eat. Henry, the good boy! though he was

getting it himself, did housework, and went round at night from one

mosquito-net to another, praying with the sick. Sina, too, was as good

as gold, and helped us greatly. We shall always like her better. All the

time--I do not know how they managed--your mother found the time to come

and write for me; and for three days, as I had my old trouble on, and

had to play dumb man, I dictated a novel in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet.

But now we are all recovered, and getting to feel quite fit. A new

paddock has been made; the wires come right up to the top of the hill,

pass within twenty yards of the big clump of flowers (if you remember

that) and by the end of the pineapple patch. The Tamaitai and your

mother and I all sleep in the upper story of the new house; Uncle Lloyd

is alone in the workman's cottage; and there is nobody at all at night

in the old house, but ants and cats and mosquitoes. The whole inside of

the new house is varnished. It is a beautiful golden-brown by day, and

in lamplight all black and sparkle. In the corner of the hall the new

safe is built in, and looks as if it had millions of pounds in it; but I

do not think there is much more than twenty dollars and a spoon or two;

so the man that opens it will have a great deal of trouble for nothing.

Our great fear is lest we should forget how to open it; but it will look

just as well if we can't. Poor Misifolo--you remember the thin boy, do

you not?--had a desperate attack of influenza; and he was in a great

taking. You would not like to be very sick in some savage place in the

islands, and have only the savages to doctor you? Well, that was just

the way he felt. "It is all very well," he thought, "to let these

childish white people doctor a sore foot or a toothache, but this is

serious--I might die of this! For goodness' sake let me get away into a

draughty native house, where I can lie in cold gravel, eat green

bananas, and have a real grown-up, tattooed man to raise spirits and say

charms over me." A day or two we kept him quiet, and got him much

better. Then he said he _must_ go. He had had his back broken in his own

islands, he said; it had come broken again, and he must go away to a

native house and have it mended. "Confound your back!" said we; "lie

down in your bed." At last, one day, his fever was quite gone, and he

could give his mind to the broken back entirely. He lay in the hall; I

was in the room alone; all morning and noon I heard him roaring like a

bull calf, so that the floor shook with it. It was plainly humbug; it

had the humbugging sound of a bad child crying; and about two of the

afternoon we were worn out, and told him he might go. Off he set. He was

in some kind of a white wrapping, with a great white turban on his head,

as pale as clay, and walked leaning on a stick. But, O, he was a glad

boy to get away from these foolish, savage, childish white people, and

get his broken back put right by somebody with some sense. He nearly

died that night, and little wonder! but he has now got better again, and

long may it last! All the others were quite good, trusted us wholly, and

stayed to be cured where they were. But then he was quite right, if you

look at it from his point of view; for, though we may be very clever, we

do not set up to cure broken backs. If a man has his back broken we

white people can do nothing at all but bury him. And was he not wise,

since that was his complaint, to go to folks who could do more?

Best love to yourself, and Louie, and Aunt Nellie, and apologies for so

dull a letter from your respectful and affectionate

UNCLE LOUIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] The lady to whom the first three of these letters are addressed

"used to hear" (writes Mr. Lloyd Osbourne) "so frequently of the

'boys' in Vailima, that she wrote and asked Mr. Stevenson for news of

them, as it would so much interest her little girls. In the tropics,

for some reason or other that it is impossible to understand,

servants and work-people are always called 'boys,' though the years

of Methuselah may have whitened their heads, and great-grandchildren

prattle about their knees. Mr. Stevenson was amused to think that his

'boys,' who ranged from eighteen years of age to threescore and ten,

should be mistaken for little youngsters; but he was touched to hear

of the sick children his friend tried so hard to entertain, and

gladly wrote a few letters to them. He would have written more but

for the fact that his friend left the home, being transferred

elsewhere."

[14] Come-a-thousand.

[15] The German company, from which we got our black boy Arick, owns

and cultivates many thousands of acres in Samoa, and keeps at least a

thousand black people to work on its plantations. Two schooners are

always busy in bringing fresh batches to Samoa, and in taking home to

their own islands the men who have worked out their three years' term

of labour. This traffic in human beings is called the "labour trade,"

and is the life's blood, not only of the great German company, but of

all the planters in Fiji, Queensland, New Caledonia, German New

Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides. The difference

between the labour trade, as it is now carried on under Government

supervision, and the slave trade is a great one, but not great enough

to please sensitive people. In Samoa the missionaries are not allowed

by the company to teach these poor savages religion, or to do

anything to civilise them and raise them from their monkey-like

ignorance. But in other respects the company is not a bad master, and

treats its people pretty well. The system, however, is one that

cannot be defended and must sooner or later be suppressed.--[L.O.]

[16] When Arick left us and went back to the German company, he had

grown so fat and strong and intelligent that they deemed he was made

for better things than for cotton-picking or plantation work, and

handed him over to their surveyor, who needed a man to help him. I

used often to meet him after this, tripping at his master's heels

with the theodolite, or scampering about with tapes and chains like a

kitten with a spool of thread. He did not look then as though he were

destined to die of a broken heart, though that was his end not so

many months afterward. The plantation manager told me that Arick and

a New Ireland boy went crazy with home-sickness, and died in the

hospital together.--[L.O.]

[17] "Bullamacow" is a word that always amuses the visitor to Samoa.

When the first pair of cattle was brought to the islands and the

natives asked the missionaries what they must call these strange

creatures, they were told that the English name was a "bull and a

cow." But the Samoans thought that "a bull and a cow" was the name of

each of the animals, and they soon corrupted the English words into

"bullamacow," which has remained the name for beef or cattle ever

since.--[L.O.]

[18] In the letters that were sent to Austin Strong you will be

surprised to see his name change from Austin to Hoskyns, and from

Hopkins to Hutchinson. It was the penalty Master Austin had to pay

for being the particular and bosom friend of each of the one hundred

and eighty bluejackets that made up the crew of the British

man-of-war _Curacoa_; for, whether it was due to some bitter memories

of the Revolutionary war, or to some rankling reminiscences of 1812,

that even friendship could not altogether stifle (for Austin was a

true American boy), they annoyed him by giving him, each one of them,

a separate name.--[L.O.]

[19] The big conch-shell that was blown at certain hours every

day.--[L.O.]

[20] Mrs. R. L. S., as she is called in Samoan, "the lady."--[L.O.]

[21] A visiting party.

[22] Talolo was the Vailima cook; Sina, his wife; Tauilo, his mother;

Mitaele and Sosimo, his brothers. Lafaele, who was married to Faauma,

was a middle-aged Futuna Islander, and had spent many years of his

life on a whale-ship, the captain of which had kidnapped him when a

boy. Misifolo was one of the "house-maids." Iopu and Tali, man and

wife, had long been in our service, but had left it after they had

been married some time; but, according to Samoan ideas, they were

none the less members of Tusitala's family, because, though they were

no longer working for him, they still owed him allegiance. "Aunt

Maggie" is Mr. Stevenson's mother; Palema, Mr. Graham

Balfour.--[L.O.]

[23] While Austin was in Vailima many little duties about the

plantation fell to his share, so that he was often called the

"overseer"; and small as he was, he sometimes took charge of a couple

of big men, and went into town with the pack-horses. It was not all

play, either, for he had to see that the barrels and boxes did not

chafe the horses' backs, and that they were not allowed to come home

too fast up the steep road.--[L.O.]

[24] A room set apart to serve as the theatre for an elaborate

war-game, which was one of Mr. Stevenson's favourite recreations.

END OF VOL. XVIII

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