The Grave. STEVENSON’S SHRINE THE RECORD OF A PILGRIMAGE By LAURA STUBBS BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY INCORPORATED 1903  ...

“The first love, the first sunrise, the first South Sea Island, are memories apart and touch a virginity of sense.” “My soul went down with these moorings whence no windlass may extract nor any diver fish it up.” Robert Louis Stevenson. I, a lover of the man, personally unknown to me, save through the potency of his pen, journeyed across the world in order to visit his grave, and to get into direct touch with his surroundings. The voyage to the Antipodes does not come within the compass of this

We entered the land-locked harbour of Vavau in all the glory of a moon scarcely past the full. And what a contrast to the islands from which we had just parted! On every side of us towered mountains, broken, rugged, height upon height, peak above peak. In every crevice of the mountain the forest harboured, and everywhere flourished the feathery palm, that Giraffe of Vegetables, as Stevenson so humorously describes it, nestling, crowding, climbing to the summit. It was midnight before we anchored

Vailima is only about three miles from Apia, but the road ascends the whole way, and in this land “where it is always afternoon” one does not care for much exertion; so a carriage was engaged to drive us thither, and we had John Chinaman for coachman. That morning the captain and a fellow-passenger had urged us not to attempt the ascent of Mount Veea. “Go and see the house by all means, but the grave is impossible for ladies.” “Only last trip,” said the captain, “two of our passengers, both comp

The Aftermath The object of my journey was attained. Samoa, with its mist-swept mountains, its sun-lit waterfalls, its gleaming “etherial musky highlands,” lay behind me, dim as a dream, a pictured memory of the past; and yet I had not done with the Islands. At two, if not three, of the Fijian group, we were to ship copra and sugar; and report had said that the Fiji Islands were more lovely than the Samoan. So I add a valedictory chapter—an epilogue in fact—contenting myself with the very briefe