An affair which might be deemed worthy of a note of a few lines in any general history has been here expanded to the size of a volume or large pamphlet.  The smallness of the scale, and the singularity of the manners and events and many of the characters, considered, it is hoped that, in spite of its outlandish subject, the sketch may find readers.  It has been a task of difficulty.  Speed was essential, or it might come too late to be of any service to a distracted country.  Truth, in the midst

The story I have to tell is still going on as I write; the characters are alive and active; it is a piece of contemporary history in the most exact sense.  And yet, for all its actuality and the part played in it by mails and telegraphs and iron war-ships, the ideas and the manners of the native actors date back before the Roman Empire.  They are Christians, church-goers, singers of hymns at family worship, hardy cricketers; their books are printed in London by Spottiswoode, Trübner, or the Trac

The huge majority of Samoans, like other God-fearing folk in other countries, are perfectly content with their own manners.  And upon one condition, it is plain they might enjoy themselves far beyond the average of man.  Seated in islands very rich in food, the idleness of the many idle would scarce matter; and the provinces might continue to bestow their names among rival pretenders, and fall into war and enjoy that a while, and drop into peace and enjoy that, in a manner highly to be envied. 

You ride in a German plantation and see no bush, no soul stirring; only acres of empty sward, miles of cocoa-nut alley: a desert of food.  In the eyes of the Samoan the place has the attraction of a park for the holiday schoolboy, of a granary for mice.  We must add the yet more lively allurement of a haunted house, for over these empty and silent miles there broods the fear of the negrito cannibal.  For the Samoan besides, there is something barbaric, unhandsome, and absurd in the idea of thus

September ’87 to August ’88 So Tamasese was on the throne, and Brandeis behind it; and I have now to deal with their brief and luckless reign.  That it was the reign of Brandeis needs not to be argued: the policy is throughout that of an able, over-hasty white, with eyes and ideas.  But it should be borne in mind that he had a double task, and must first lead his sovereign, before he could begin to drive their common subjects.  Meanwhile, he himself was exposed (if all tales be true) to much dic

September 1888 The revolution had all the character of a popular movement.  Many of the high chiefs were detained in Mulinuu; the commons trooped to the bush under inferior leaders.  A camp was chosen near Faleula, threatening Mulinuu, well placed for the arrival of recruits and close to a German plantation from which the force could be subsisted.  Manono came, all Tuamasanga, much of Savaii, and part of Aana, Tamasese’s own government and titular seat.  Both sides were arming.  It was a brave d

September-November 1888 Brandeis had held all day by Mulinuu, expecting the reported real attack.  He woke on the 13th to find himself cut off on that unwatered promontory, and the Mataafa villagers parading Apia.  The same day Fritze received a letter from Mataafa summoning him to withdraw his party from the isthmus; and Fritze, as if in answer, drew in his ship into the small harbour close to Mulinuu, and trained his port battery to assist in the defence.  From a step so decisive, it might be

November 1888 When Brandeis and Tamasese fled by night from Mulinuu, they carried their wandering government some six miles to windward, to a position above Lotoanuu.  For some three miles to the eastward of Apia, the shores of Upolu are low and the ground rises with a gentle acclivity, much of which waves with German plantations.  A barrier reef encloses a lagoon passable for boats: and the traveller skims there, on smooth, many-tinted shallows, between the wall of the breakers on the one hand,

November-December 1888 For Becker I have not been able to conceal my distaste, for he seems to me both false and foolish.  But of his successor, the unfortunately famous Dr. Knappe, we may think as of a good enough fellow driven distraught.  Fond of Samoa and the Samoans, he thought to bring peace and enjoy popularity among the islanders; of a genial, amiable, and sanguine temper, he made no doubt but he could repair the breach with the English consul.  Hope told a flattering tale.  He awoke to

December 1888 to March 1889 Knappe, in the Adler , with a flag of truce at the fore, was entering Laulii Bay when the Eber brought him the news of the night’s reverse.  His heart was doubtless wrung for his young countrymen who had been butchered and mutilated in the dark woods, or now lay suffering, and some of them dying, on the ship.  And he must have been startled as he recognised his own position.  He had gone too far; he had stumbled into war, and, what was worse, into defeat; he had throw

March 1889 The so-called harbour of Apia is formed in part by a recess of the coast-line at Matautu, in part by the slim peninsula of Mulinuu, and in part by the fresh waters of the Mulivai and Vaisingano.  The barrier reef—that singular breakwater that makes so much of the circuit of Pacific islands—is carried far to sea at Matautu and Mulinuu; inside of these two horns it runs sharply landward, and between them it is burst or dissolved by the fresh water.  The shape of the enclosed anchorage m

1889-1892 With the hurricane, the broken war-ships, and the stranded sailors, I am at an end of violence, and my tale flows henceforth among carpet incidents.  The blue-jackets on Apia beach were still jealously held apart by sentries, when the powers at home were already seeking a peaceable solution.  It was agreed, so far as might be, to obliterate two years of blundering; and to resume in 1889, and at Berlin, those negotiations which had been so unhappily broken off at Washington in 1887.  Th