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In the preceding pages extracts have frequently been culled from writers of the past: in the literature of the present day Charles Kingsley's graphic account of Trinidad and its cacao and sugar plantations in "At Last" should be read in extenso. Another very interesting episode of modern date is the introduction of the cacao into the Samoan Islands in the Pacific by Robert Louis Stevenson. Writing to Sidney Colvin, on December 7, 1891, in one of his "Vailima Letters," he says: "When I was filling baskets all Saturday, in my dull, mulish way, perhaps the slowest worker there, surely the most particular, and the only one that never looked up or knocked off, I could not but think I should have been sent on exhibition as an example to young literary men. 'Here is how to learn to write' might be the motto. You should have seen us; the veranda was like an Irish bog, our hands and faces were bedaubed with soil, and Faauma was supposed to have struck the right note when she remarked (
For a long time I had not been well, and so I was sent off in the steamer to this place, though I went with a heavy heart, for I thought Louis did not look well. I have been to the botanical gardens, which are in charge of a pleasant young man from Kew, and have secured four boxes of plants for Vailima.
Haggard has agreed to take him though he seems very reluctant to leave Vailima. "October 28. Paul left us some time ago to be overseer on a German plantation. Before he left, in his blundering desire to do all he could for me, he transplanted a lot of my plants, all wrong, and in fact did all the damage he well could in so short a time.
The days sped happily by, until Thanksgiving, November 29, 1894, which was celebrated with an elaborate dinner at Vailima. Mrs.
The manaia and his young men came up, danced in front of us, and then, taking the poles from their attendants, laid three large turtles before us, calling out that they were a humble offering from the men of Vaiee to the great and glorious and beautiful lady of Vailima.
So you can sleep at the village and come and see me during the day." His eyes lit up with that and the first smile of the day overspread his face, showing the whitest teeth imaginable. It was not long before he was perfectly at home in Vailima.
In his excessive regard for style even so great a master as Robert Louis Stevenson robbed his work of much of the spontaneity and natural charm found, for example, in his Vailima Letters.
It was in the hurricane season, too, and there were days when they sat in momentary fear lest their frail dwelling should be carried away by the fury of the storm or crushed beneath some falling giant of the forest. From the day of their arrival at Vailima, in September, 1890, Mrs.
Of course the episode, with all the dramatic possibilities attached to it, appealed to the romantic imaginations of the two Stevensons, and, after the king's departure, they spent the evening in making up a harrowing tale about what would have happened if she had killed him. Among the notable visitors to Vailima was the Italian artist Pieri Nerli, who came to paint Mr.
'Silk and sacking, that is what we are, she was informed, to which she would reply obstinately, 'Well, then, I prefer sacking. 'But if he had been your son? 'But he is not. 'You wish he were? 'I dinna deny but what I could have found room for him. That was when some podgy red-sealed blue-crossed letter arrived from Vailima, inviting me to journey thither.
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