IN COMING from the Fijis to Apia, the capital of Western Samoa, our ship crossed the date line, and when we sailed over the 180th meridian, east longitude, we went from one day into the day before. I felt some satisfaction in getting back one of the many days I have lost in going across the Pacific in the opposite direction.
It was delightful sailing along the Equator. We had nothing but sunshine, and such glorious sunshine! As we coasted the island of Savaii, the largest of the Samoan group, the air was fresh and the wind strong enough to make it cool and pleasant. The sea was steel blue, with silvery whitecaps dancing upon it, between us and the shore, and the sky was full of white, smoky clouds.
The volcanic island of Savaii in its thick cloak of verdure makes one think of the Hawaiian Islands. As we passed along its shores it seemed a great hill shaped like a horseshoe, with the ends of the shoe sloping down to the water.
Going on we soon reached Upolu, on the north coast of which Apia is situated. Both Upolu and Savaii now belong to the Territory of Western Samoa, which has been created from what was formerly German Samoa and is now administered by New Zealand under a mandate from the League of Nations. The United States owns Tutuila, Manua, and some of the smaller islands of the group.
When Germany and the United States came to their agreement about the division of the Samoas in 1899, the Germans, in their greed for land, were glad to take the two biggest islands. But out here it is thought that we got the best of the bargain. Both Savaii and Upolu together are not so large as Rhode Island, and much of Savaii has been so recently subject to volcanic action as to be unfit for cultivation. Savaii is forty-eight miles long and twenty-five miles wide, and Upolu is a good deal smaller. Both islands are mountainous and well watered. Like Tutuila, they have been built up by volcanoes and are for the most part surrounded by coral reefs.
As I came into the harbour of Apia the tide was low, and I could see a great garden of coral rising out of the water. Here and there along the shore were groves of coconut trees, and, farther up the mountains, plantations of cacao. Amid the green jungle on the hills I noticed patches of chocolate brown, where the ground had been cleared for cacao plantations. Just back of Apia gleamed the white villa where Robert Louis Stevenson lived, and above it rose mountain after mountain of different shades of green or blue, covered with vegetation and canopied by masses of fleecy clouds. Here the shadows turned the sea to green, and there to navy blue, while upon the land they made a mass of light and dark patches of velvet on the green crops and the still deeper green forest. Close to the water’s edge were what from our steamer looked like vast cornfields. These the captain said were coconut orchards, containing tens of thousands of trees loaded with millions of nuts.
As they grow older the Samoan girls lose their beautiful figures but never part with their sweet dispositions and their love for ornaments and flowers. The women marry in their ’teens, and large families are the rule.
The chief product and export of Samoa is copra, the meat of the coconut. Dried and packed in sacks, it is shipped abroad for use in making soaps, toilet preparations, and “nut” butters.