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Vailima Letters Robert Louis Stevenson
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Vailima Letters




CHAPTER I



IN THE MOUNTAIN, APIA, SAMOA,
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND, 1890


MY DEAR COLVIN, - This is a hard and interesting and
beautiful life that we lead now. Our place is in a deep
cleft of Vaea Mountain, some six hundred feet above the sea,
embowered in forest, which is our strangling enemy, and which
we combat with axes and dollars. I went crazy over outdoor
work, and had at last to confine myself to the house, or
literature must have gone by the board. NOTHING is so
interesting as weeding, clearing, and path-making; the
oversight of labourers becomes a disease; it is quite an
effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does make you feel
so well. To come down covered with mud and drenched with
sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub
down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet
conscience. And the strange thing that I mark is this: If I
go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the
cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit
in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails
over my neglect and the day wasted. For near a fortnight I
did not go beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work
run out, and went down for the night to Apia; put in Sunday
afternoon with our consul, 'a nice young man,' dined with my
friend H. J. Moors in the evening, went to church - no less -
at the white and half-white church - I had never been before,
and was much interested; the woman I sat next LOOKED a full-
blood native, and it was in the prettiest and readiest
English that she sang the hymns; back to Moors', where we
yarned of the islands, being both wide wanderers, till bed-
time; bed, sleep, breakfast, horse saddled; round to the
mission, to get Mr. Clarke to be my interpreter; over with
him to the King's, whom I have not called on since my return;
received by that mild old gentleman; have some interesting
talk with him about Samoan superstitions and my land - the
scene of a great battle in his (Malietoa Laupepa's) youth -
the place which we have cleared the platform of his fort -
the gulley of the stream full of dead bodies - the fight
rolled off up Vaea mountain-side; back with Clarke to the
Mission; had a bit of lunch and consulted over a queer point
of missionary policy just arisen, about our new Town Hall and
the balls there - too long to go into, but a quaint example
of the intricate questions which spring up daily in the
missionary path.

Then off up the hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close on
noon) staring hot, the breeze very strong and pleasant; the
ineffable green country all round - gorgeous little birds (I
think they are humming birds, but they say not) skirmishing
in the wayside flowers. About a quarter way up I met a
native coming down with the trunk of a cocoa palm across his
shoulder; his brown breast glittering with sweat and oil:
'Talofa' - 'Talofa, alii - You see that white man? He speak
for you.' 'White man he gone up here?' - 'Ioe (Yes)' -
'Tofa, alii' - 'Tofa, soifua!' I put on Jack up the steep
path, till he is all as white as shaving stick - Brown's
euxesis, wish I had some - past Tanugamanono, a bush village
- see into the houses as I pass - they are open sheds
scattered on a green - see the brown folk sitting there,
suckling kids, sleeping on their stiff wooden pillows - then
on through the wood path - and here I find the mysterious
white man (poor devil!) with his twenty years' certificate of
good behaviour as a book-keeper, frozen out by the strikes in
the colonies, come up here on a chance, no work to be found,
big hotel bill, no ship to leave in - and come up to beg
twenty dollars because he heard I was a Scotchman, offering
to leave his portmanteau in pledge. Settle this, and on
again; and here my house comes in view, and a war whoop
fetches my wife and Henry (or Simele), our Samoan boy, on the
front balcony; and I am home again, and only sorry that I
shall have to go down again to Apia this day week. I could,
and would, dwell here unmoved, but there are things to be
attended to.

Never say I don't give you details and news. That is a
picture of a letter.

I have been hard at work since I came; three chapters of THE
WRECKER, and since that, eight of the South Sea book, and,
along and about and in between, a hatful of verses. Some day
I'll send the verse to you, and you'll say if any of it is
any good. I have got in a better vein with the South Sea
book, as I think you will see; I think these chapters will do
for the volume without much change. Those that I did in the
JANET NICOLL, under the most ungodly circumstances, I fear
will want a lot of suppling and lightening, but I hope to
have your remarks in a month or two upon that point. It
seems a long while since I have heard from you. I do hope
you are well. I am wonderful, but tired from so much work;
'tis really immense what I have done; in the South Sea book I
have fifty pages copied fair, some of which has been four
times, and all twice written, certainly fifty pages of solid
scriving inside a fortnight, but I was at it by seven a.m.
till lunch, and from two till four or five every day; between
whiles, verse and blowing on the flageolet; never outside.
If you could see this place! but I don't want any one to see
it till my clearing is done, and my house built. It will be
a home for angels.

So far I wrote after my bit of dinner, some cold meat and
bananas, on arrival. Then out to see where Henry and some of
the men were clearing the garden; for it was plain there was
to be no work to-day indoors, and I must set in consequence
to farmering. I stuck a good while on the way up, for the
path there is largely my own handiwork, and there were a lot
of sprouts and saplings and stones to be removed. Then I
reached our clearing just where the streams join in one; it
had a fine autumn smell of burning, the smoke blew in the
woods, and the boys were pretty merry and busy. Now I had a
private design:-

[Map which cannot be reproduced]

The Vaita'e I had explored pretty far up; not yet the other
stream, the Vaituliga (g=nasal n, as ng in sing); and up
that, with my wood knife, I set off alone. It is here quite
dry; it went through endless woods; about as broad as a
Devonshire lane, here and there crossed by fallen trees; huge
trees overhead in the sun, dripping lianas and tufted with
orchids, tree ferns, ferns depending with air roots from the
steep banks, great arums - I had not skill enough to say if
any of them were the edible kind, one of our staples here! -
hundreds of bananas - another staple - and alas! I had skill
enough to know all of these for the bad kind that bears no
fruit. My Henry moralised over this the other day; how hard
it was that the bad banana flourished wild, and the good must
be weeded and tended; and I had not the heart to tell him how
fortunate they were here, and how hungry were other lands by
comparison. The ascent of this lovely lane of my dry stream
filled me with delight. I could not but be reminded of old
Mayne Reid, as I have been more than once since I came to the
tropics; and I thought, if Reid had been still living, I
would have written to tell him that, for, me, IT HAD COME
TRUE; and I thought, forbye, that, if the great powers go on
as they are going, and the Chief Justice delays, it would
come truer still; and the war-conch will sound in the hills,
and my home will be inclosed in camps, before the year is
ended. And all at once - mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the
spot - a strange thing happened. I saw a liana stretch
across the bed of the brook about breast-high, swung up my
knife to sever it, and - behold, it was a wire! On either
hand it plunged into thick bush; to-morrow I shall see where
it goes and get a guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I
know no more than - there it is. A little higher the brook
began to trickle, then to fill. At last, as I meant to do
some work upon the homeward trail, it was time to turn. I
did not return by the stream; knife in hand, as long as my
endurance lasted, I was to cut a path in the congested bush.

At first it went ill with me; I got badly stung as high as
the elbows by the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a
tough liana - a rotten trunk giving way under my feet; it was
deplorable bad business. And an axe - if I dared swing one -
would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass. Of a
sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps,
bushing out again; my body began to wonder, then my mind; I
raised my eyes and looked ahead; and, by George, I was no
longer pioneering, I had struck an old track overgrown, and
was restoring an old path. So I laboured till I was in such
a state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs could scarce have
found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned to the
stream; made my way down that stony track to the garden,
where the smoke was still hanging and the sun was still in
the high tree-tops, and so home. Here, fondly supposing my
long day was over, I rubbed down; exquisite agony; water
spreads the poison of these weeds; I got it all over my
hands, on my chest, in my eyes, and presently, while eating
an orange, A LA Raratonga, burned my lip and eye with orange
juice. Now, all day, our three small pigs had been adrift,
to the mortal peril of our corn, lettuce, onions, etc., and
as I stood smarting on the back verandah, behold the three
piglings issuing from the wood just opposite. Instantly I
got together as many boys as I could - three, and got the
pigs penned against the rampart of the sty, till the others
joined; whereupon we formed a cordon, closed, captured the
deserters, and dropped them, squeaking amain, into their
strengthened barracks where, please God, they may now stay!

Perhaps you may suppose the day now over; you are not the
head of a plantation, my juvenile friend. Politics
succeeded: Henry got adrift in his English, Bene was too
cowardly to tell me what he was after: result, I have lost
seven good labourers, and had to sit down and write to you to
keep my temper. Let me sketch my lads. - Henry - Henry has
gone down to town or I could not be writing to you - this
were the hour of his English lesson else, when he learns what
he calls 'long expessions' or 'your chief's language' for the
matter of an hour and a half - Henry is a chiefling from
Savaii; I once loathed, I now like and - pending fresh
discoveries - have a kind of respect for Henry. He does good
work for us; goes among the labourers, bossing and watching;
helps Fanny; is civil, kindly, thoughtful; O SI SIC SEMPER!
But will he be 'his sometime self throughout the year'?
Anyway, he has deserved of us, and he must disappoint me
sharply ere I give him up. - Bene - or Peni-Ben, in plain
English - is supposed to be my ganger; the Lord love him!
God made a truckling coward, there is his full history. He
cannot tell me what he wants; he dares not tell me what is
wrong; he dares not transmit my orders or translate my
censures. And with all this, honest, sober, industrious,
miserably smiling over the miserable issue of his own
unmanliness. - Paul - a German - cook and steward - a glutton
of work - a splendid fellow; drawbacks, three: (1) no cook;
(2) an inveterate bungler; a man with twenty thumbs,
continually falling in the dishes, throwing out the dinner,
preserving the garbage; (3) a dr-, well, don't let us say
that - but we daren't let him go to town, and he - poor, good
soul - is afraid to be let go. - Lafaele (Raphael), a strong,
dull, deprecatory man; splendid with an axe, if watched; the
better for a rowing, when he calls me 'Papa' in the most
wheedling tones; desperately afraid of ghosts, so that he
dare not walk alone up in the banana patch - see map. The
rest are changing labourers; and to-night, owing to the
miserable cowardice of Peni, who did not venture to tell me
what the men wanted - and which was no more than fair - all
are gone - and my weeding in the article of being finished!
Pity the sorrows of a planter.

I am, Sir, yours, and be jowned to you, The Planter,
R. L. S.


Tuesday 3rd


I begin to see the whole scheme of letter-writing; you sit
down every day and pour out an equable stream of twaddle.

This morning all my fears were fled, and all the trouble had
fallen to the lot of Peni himself, who deserved it; my field
was full of weeders; and I am again able to justify the ways
of God. All morning I worked at the South Seas, and finished
the chapter I had stuck upon on Saturday. Fanny, awfully
hove-to with rheumatics and injuries received upon the field
of sport and glory, chasing pigs, was unable to go up and
down stairs, so she sat upon the back verandah, and my work
was chequered by her cries. 'Paul, you take a spade to do
that - dig a hole first. If you do that, you'll cut your
foot off! Here, you boy, what you do there? You no get
work? You go find Simele; he give you work. Peni, you tell
this boy he go find Simele; suppose Simele no give him work,
you tell him go 'way. I no want him here. That boy no
good.' - PENI (from the distance in reassuring tones), 'All
right, sir!' - FANNY (after a long pause), 'Peni, you tell
that boy go find Simele! I no want him stand here all day.
I no pay that boy. I see him all day. He no do nothing.' -
Luncheon, beef, soda-scones, fried bananas, pine-apple in
claret, coffee. Try to write a poem; no go. Play the
flageolet. Then sneakingly off to farmering and pioneering.
Four gangs at work on our place; a lively scene; axes
crashing and smoke blowing; all the knives are out. But I
rob the garden party of one without a stock, and you should
see my hand - cut to ribbons. Now I want to do my path up
the Vaituliga single-handed, and I want it to burst on the
public complete. Hence, with devilish ingenuity, I begin it
at different places; so that if you stumble on one section,
you may not even then suspect the fulness of my labours.
Accordingly, I started in a new place, below the wire, and
hoping to work up to it. It was perhaps lucky I had so bad a
cutlass, and my smarting hand bid me stay before I had got up
to the wire, but just in season, so that I was only the
better of my activity, not dead beat as yesterday.

A strange business it was, and infinitely solitary; away
above, the sun was in the high tree-tops; the lianas noosed
and sought to hang me; the saplings struggled, and came up
with that sob of death that one gets to know so well; great,
soft, sappy trees fell at a lick of the cutlass, little tough
switches laughed at and dared my best endeavour. Soon,
toiling down in that pit of verdure, I heard blows on the far
side, and then laughter. I confess a chill settled on my
heart.

Being so dead alone, in a place where by rights none should
be beyond me, I was aware, upon interrogation, if those blows
had drawn nearer, I should (of course quite unaffectedly)
have executed a strategic movement to the rear; and only the
other day I was lamenting my insensibility to superstition!
Am I beginning to be sucked in? Shall I become a midnight
twitterer like my neighbours? At times I thought the blows
were echoes; at times I thought the laughter was from birds.
For our birds are strangely human in their calls. Vaea
mountain about sundown sometimes rings with shrill cries,
like the hails of merry, scattered children. As a matter of
fact, I believe stealthy wood-cutters from Tanugamanono were
above me in the wood and answerable for the blows; as for the
laughter, a woman and two children had come and asked Fanny's
leave to go up shrimp-fishing in the burn; beyond doubt, it
was these I heard. Just at the right time I returned; to
wash down, change, and begin this snatch of letter before
dinner was ready, and to finish it afterwards, before Henry
has yet put in an appearance for his lesson in 'long
explessions.'

Dinner: stewed beef and potatoes, baked bananas, new loaf-
bread hot from the oven, pine-apple in claret. These are
great days; we have been low in the past; but now are we as
belly-gods, enjoying all things.


WEDNESDAY. (HIST. VAILIMA RESUMED.)


A gorgeous evening of after-glow in the great tree-tops and
behind the mountain, and full moon over the lowlands and the
sea, inaugurated a night of horrid cold. To you effete
denizens of the so-called temperate zone, it had seemed
nothing; neither of us could sleep; we were up seeking extra
coverings, I know not at what hour - it was as bright as day.
The moon right over Vaea - near due west, the birds strangely
silent, and the wood of the house tingling with cold; I
believe it must have been 60 degrees! Consequence; Fanny has
a headache and is wretched, and I could do no work. (I am
trying all round for a place to hold my pen; you will hear
why later on; this to explain penmanship.) I wrote two
pages, very bad, no movement, no life or interest; then I
wrote a business letter; then took to tootling on the
flageolet, till glory should call me farmering.

I took up at the fit time Lafaele and Mauga - Mauga, accent
on the first, is a mountain, I don't know what Mauga means -
mind what I told you of the value of g - to the garden, and
set them digging, then turned my attention to the path. I
could not go into my bush path for two reasons: 1st, sore
hands; 2nd, had on my trousers and good shoes. Lucky it was.
Right in the wild lime hedge which cuts athwart us just
homeward of the garden, I found a great bed of kuikui -
sensitive plant - our deadliest enemy. A fool brought it to
this island in a pot, and used to lecture and sentimentalise
over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken charge
of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread
and life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting
like a weasel; clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to
a rock. As I fought him, I bettered some verses in my poem,
the WOODMAN; the only thought I gave to letters. Though the
kuikui was thick, there was but a small patch of it, and when
I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a hand-to-hand
skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this time,
close by, in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and
Mauga were digging. Suddenly quoth Lafaele, 'Somebody he
sing out.' - 'Somebody he sing out? All right. I go.' And
I went and found they had been whistling and 'singing out'
for long, but the fold of the hill and the uncleared bush
shuts in the garden so that no one heard, and I was late for
dinner, and Fanny's headache was cross; and when the meal was
over, we had to cut up a pineapple which was going bad, to
make jelly of; and the next time you have a handful of broken
blood-blisters, apply pine-apple juice, and you will give me
news of it, and I request a specimen of your hand of write
five minutes after - the historic moment when I tackled this
history. My day so far.

Fanny was to have rested. Blessed Paul began making a duck-
house; she let him be; the duck-house fell down, and she had
to set her hand to it. He was then to make a drinking-place
for the pigs; she let him be again - he made a stair by which
the pigs will probably escape this evening, and she was near
weeping. Impossible to blame the indefatigable fellow;
energy is too rare and goodwill too noble a thing to
discourage; but it's trying when she wants a rest. Then she
had to cook the dinner; then, of course - like a fool and a
woman - must wait dinner for me, and make a flurry of
herself. Her day so far. CETERA ADHUC DESUNT.


FRIDAY - I THINK.


I have been too tired to add to this chronicle, which will at
any rate give you some guess of our employment. All goes
well; the kuikui - (think of this mispronunciation having
actually infected me to the extent of misspelling! tuitui is
the word by rights) - the tuitui is all out of the paddock -
a fenced park between the house and boundary; Peni's men
start to-day on the road; the garden is part burned, part
dug; and Henry, at the head of a troop of underpaid
assistants, is hard at work clearing. The part clearing you
will see from the map; from the house run down to the stream
side, up the stream nearly as high as the garden; then back
to the star which I have just added to the map.

My long, silent contests in the forest have had a strange
effect on me. The unconcealed vitality of these vegetables,
their exuberant number and strength, the attempts - I can use
no other word - of lianas to enwrap and capture the intruder,
the awful silence, the knowledge that all my efforts are only
like the performance of an actor, the thing of a moment, and
the wood will silently and swiftly heal them up with fresh
effervescence; the cunning sense of the tuitui, suffering
itself to be touched with wind-swayed grasses and not minding
- but let the grass be moved by a man, and it shuts up; the
whole silent battle, murder, and slow death of the contending
forest; weigh upon the imagination. My poem the WOODMAN
stands; but I have taken refuge in a new story, which just
shot through me like a bullet in one of my moments of awe,
alone in that tragic jungle:-


THE HIGH WOODS OF ULUFANUA.

1. A South Sea Bridal.
2. Under the Ban.
3. Savao and Faavao.
4. Cries in the High Wood.
5. Rumour full of Tongues.
6. The Hour of Peril.
7. The Day of Vengeance.


It is very strange, very extravagant, I daresay; but it's
varied, and picturesque, and has a pretty love affair, and
ends well. Ulufanua is a lovely Samoan word, ulu=grove;
fanua=land; grove-land - 'the tops of the high trees.'
Savao, 'sacred to the wood,' and Faavao, 'wood-ways,' are the
names of two of the characters, Ulufanua the name of the
supposed island.

I am very tired, and rest off to-day from all but letters.
Fanny is quite done up; she could not sleep last night,
something it seemed like asthma - I trust not. I suppose
Lloyd will be about, so you can give him the benefit of this
long scrawl. Never say that I CAN'T write a letter, say that
I don't. - Yours ever, my dearest fellow,
R. L. S.


LATER ON FRIDAY.


The guid wife had bread to bake, and she baked it in a pan,
O! But between whiles she was down with me weeding sensitive
in the paddock. The men have but now passed over it; I was
round in that very place to see the weeding was done
thoroughly, and already the reptile springs behind our heels.
Tuitui is a truly strange beast, and gives food for thought.
I am nearly sure - I cannot yet be quite, I mean to
experiment, when I am less on the hot chase of the beast -
that, even at the instant he shrivels up his leaves, he
strikes his prickles downward so as to catch the uprooting
finger; instinctive, say the gabies; but so is man's impulse
to strike out. One thing that takes and holds me is to see
the strange variation in the propagation of alarm among these
rooted beasts; at times it spreads to a radius (I speak by
the guess of the eye) of five or six inches; at times only
one individual plant appears frightened at a time. We tried
how long it took one to recover; 'tis a sanguine creature; it
is all abroad again before (I guess again) two minutes. It
is odd how difficult in this world it is to be armed. The
double armour of this plant betrays it. In a thick tuft,
where the leaves disappear, I thrust in my hand, and the bite
of the thorns betrays the topmost stem. In the open again,
and when I hesitate if it be clover, a touch on the leaves,
and its fine sense and retractile action betrays its identity
at once. Yet it has one gift incomparable. Rome had virtue
and knowledge; Rome perished. The sensitive plant has
indigestible seeds - so they say - and it will flourish for
ever. I give my advice thus to a young plant - have a strong
root, a weak stem, and an indigestible seed; so you will
outlast the eternal city, and your progeny will clothe
mountains, and the irascible planter will blaspheme in vain.
The weak point of tuitui is that its stem is strong.


SUPPLEMENTARY PAGE.


Here beginneth the third lesson, which is not from the
planter but from a less estimable character, the writer of
books.

I want you to understand about this South Sea Book. The job
is immense; I stagger under material. I have seen the first
big TACHE. It was necessary to see the smaller ones; the
letters were at my hand for the purpose, but I was not going
to lose this experience; and, instead of writing mere
letters, have poured out a lot of stuff for the book. How
this works and fits, time is to show. But I believe, in
time, I shall get the whole thing in form. Now, up to date,
that is all my design, and I beg to warn you till we have the
whole (or much) of the stuff together, you can hardly judge -
and I can hardly judge. Such a mass of stuff is to be
handled, if possible without repetition - so much foreign
matter to be introduced - if possible with perspicuity - and,
as much as can be, a spirit of narrative to be preserved.
You will find that come stronger as I proceed, and get the
explanations worked through. Problems of style are (as yet)
dirt under my feet; my problem is architectural, creative -
to get this stuff jointed and moving. If I can do that, I
will trouble you for style; anybody might write it, and it
would be splendid; well-engineered, the masses right, the
blooming thing travelling - twig?

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