The result of this first year's voyaging and residence among the Pacific Islands had been so encouraging a renewal of health, and so keen a zest added to life by the restored capacity for outdoor activity and adventure, that Stevenson determined to prolong his experiences in yet more remote archipelagoes of the same ocean. He started accordingly from Honolulu in June, 1889, on a trading schooner, the Equator, bound to the Gilberts, one of the least visited and most primitively mannered of all the island groups of the Western Pacific; emerged toward Christmas of the same year into semi-civilization again at Samoa; stayed there for six weeks, enchanted with the scenery and the people; bought a property, the future Vailima, on the mountain-side above Apia, with a view to making it, if not a home, at least a place of rest and call on later projected excursions among the islands; and began to make collections for his studies in recent Samoan history. In February he went on to Sydney to find his correspondence and consider future plans. It was during this stay at Sydney that his righteous indignation was aroused by the publication of a letter in depreciation of Father Damien, written by the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu. Here also he fell once more sharply ill, with a renewal of all his old symptoms, and the conclusion was forced upon him that he must make his home for the rest of his life in the tropics—though with occasional excursions, as he then thought, at least half-way homeward to places where it might be possible for friends from England to meet him. With a view to shaking off the effects of his fresh attack, he started with his party on a fresh sea voyage from Sydney, this time on a trading steamer, the Janet Nicoll, which took him by a very devious course among many remote islands during the months of April-August, 1890. During this journey he began to put into shape the notes for a comprehensive book on the South Seas—not one of incidents and impressions only, which was what his readers craved from him, but one of studious inquiry and research—which he had been compiling ever since he left San Francisco. On the return voyage of the Janet Nicoll he left her at New Caledonia, staying for some days at Noumea before he went on to Sydney, where he spent four or five weeks of later August and September; and in October he came to take up his abode for good on his Samoan property, where the work of clearing and planting had been going on busily during his absence.
The letters in the following section are selected from those which reached his correspondents in England and the United States at intervals, necessarily somewhat rare, during the first part of these voyages—that is, from the Marquesas, Paumotus, and the Tahitian and Hawaiian groups—down to June, 1889.
Yacht Casco, Anaho Bay, Nukahiva, Marquesas Islands. [July, 1888.]
My dear Colvin,—From this somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, I write to say how d'ye do. It is all a swindle: I chose these isles as having the most beastly population, and they are far better, and far more civilised than we. I know one old chief Ko-o-amua, a great cannibal in his day, who ate his enemies even as he walked home from killing 'em, and he is a perfect gentleman and exceedingly amiable and simple-minded: no fool, though.
The climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of the loveliest spots imaginable. Yesterday evening we had near a score natives on board; lovely parties. We have a native god; very rare now. Very rare and equally absurd to view.
This sort of work is not favourable to correspondence; it takes me all the little strength I have to go about and see, and then come home and note the strangeness around us. I shouldn't wonder if there came trouble here some day, all the same. I could name a nation[M] that is not beloved in certain islands—and it does not know it! Strange: like ourselves, perhaps, in India! Love to all and much to yourself.
R. L. S.
Yacht Casco, at sea, near the Paumotus, 7 a.m., September 6th, 1888.
My dear Charles [Baxter],—Last night as I lay under my blanket in the cockpit, courting sleep, I had a comic seizure. There was nothing visible but the southern stars, and the steersman there out by the binnacle lamp; we were all looking forward to a most deplorable landfall on the morrow, praying God we should fetch a tuft of palms which are to indicate the Dangerous Archipelago; the night was as warm as milk, and all of a sudden I had a vision of—Drummond Street. It came on me like a flash of lightning; I simply returned thither, and into the past. And when I remember all I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford's in the rain and the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never have a friend, far less a wife, and yet passionately hoped I might; how I hoped (if I did not take to drink) I should possibly write one little book, etc. etc. And then now—what a change! I feel somehow as if I should like the incident set upon a brass plate at the corner of that dreary thoroughfare for all students to read, poor devils, when their hearts are down. And I felt I must write one word to you. Excuse me if I write little: when I am at sea, it gives me a headache; when I am in port, I have my diary crying, 'Give, give.' I shall have a fine book of travels, I feel sure; and will tell you more of the South Seas after very few months than any other writer has done—except Herman Melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese. Good luck to you, God bless you.—Your affectionate friend,
R. L. S.