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It is said to have been so named from two men who came to seek a steersman for the king of Fiji. Nuu was the name of the one, and Tele the other. The union of their names became the name of the island. UPOLU. There are a number of diverse stories as to the origin of this name, as is the case with all these ancient legends. Their united names became the name of the island.
From Upolu, we had steered a north-westerly course, and it was on the fourth or fifth day after leaving it, that we had reached the island where the mutiny took place, and which Mr Erskine claimed as a discovery of his own. Its latitude and longitude had of course been calculated, but none of us learned the result, or at any rate remembered it.
Rivers had come down red; unknown fishes had been taken on the reef and found to be marked with menacing runes; a headless lizard crawled among chiefs in council; the gods of Upolu and Savaii made war by night, they swam the straits to battle, and, defaced by dreadful wounds, they had besieged the house of a medical missionary.
A man called Tutu and his wife Ila reached the island of Tutuila, and named it so by the union of their names. U and Polu reached Upolu, and hence the name of that island by uniting their names. Sa and Vaila reached Savaii, united their names also, and, for the sake of euphony, or, as they call euphony "lifting it easily," made it Savaii instead of Savaila.
The steamship Castor, recruiting labour for the Upolu plantations, was cut off there with all hands two years ago. I knew her captain well. The Germans sent a cruiser, shelled the bush, burned half a dozen villages, killed a couple of niggers and a lot of pigs, and and that was all. The niggers always were bad there, but they turned really bad forty years ago. That was when they cut off a whaler.
He was responsible for the salving of the Doncaster bought in at auction for five hundred dollars and clearing fifteen thousand after every expense was paid. He led me into the Savaii plantation and the cocoa venture on Upolu. We did not go seafaring so much as in the old days now. I was too well off.
This is the weather point of Upolu, and after leaving Lepa| the boat has a clear run of over sixty miles before the glorious trades to the lee end of the island that is, unless a stay is made at the populous towns of Falealilli, Sa|fata, Lafa|ga, and Falelatai, on the southern coast.
The mountains of Savaii, one of which is 4000 feet high, may be seen 50 miles off, and, on coming near, the stranger finds a lovely island, 150 miles in circumference, and covered with vegetation as far as the eye can reach. The mountains of Upolu and Tutuila rise 2000 and 3000 feet above the level of the sea, and present the same aspect of richness and fertility.
He quarrelled with the chief there and went off to the village called Palapala, where he met with Tavaetele, Great tropic bird, who had come from Aana on Upolu to seek taro plants. The Palapala people were generous, and presented the Upolu chief with 100,000 plants.
Selema took her seat on the foremost thwart, Manaia at the stern, and I in the centre, and then we pushed off, and using canoe paddles, made for the passage through the reef out into the open sea. When the dawn broke, we were half-way across the straits which divide Savai'i from Upolu, and only two leagues away we saw the clustering houses of Tufa on the iron-bound coast.
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