"No stranger hand touched him.... Those who loved him carried him to his last home; even the coffin was the work of an old friend. The grave was dug by his own men."
Tusitala had left them, and his friends in the South Seas had lost a faithful friend and companion, a wise and just master.
His family and friends the world over had lost not only these but far more. His life had been a chivalrous one with all the best that chivalry stands for, "loyalty, honesty, generosity, courage, courtesy, and self-devotion; to impute no unworthy motives and to bear no grudges; to bear misfortune with cheerfulness and without a murmur; to strike hard for the right and to take no mean advantage; to be gentle to women and kind to all that are weak; to be rigorous with oneself and very lenient to others—these ... were the traits that distinguished Stevenson."
"They do not make life easy as he frequently found."
His resting-place on the crest of Væa Mountain is covered by a tomb of gray stone. On one side is inscribed in English the verses he had written for his own requiem:
| A 1850 | ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON | Ω 1894 |
| "Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie, Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. "This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill." |
The tomb of Stevenson on Væa Mountain
On the other side, written in Samoan and surrounded by carvings of thistles, his native flowers, and the hibiscus flowers, emblem of the South, are the words from the Bible: