Page:Vailima Letters - Stevenson, Colvin - 1894.djvu/29

VAILIMA LETTERS 3

Then off up the hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close on noon) staring hot, the breeze very strong and pleasant; the ineffable green country all round — gorgeous little birds (I think they are humming birds, but they say not) skirmishing in the wayside flowers. About a quarter way up I met a native coming down with the trunk of a cocoa palm across his shoulder; his brown breast glittering with sweat and oil: ' Talofa ' — ' Talofa, alii — You see that white man? He speak for you.' 'White man he gone up here?' — 'Ioe (Yes)' — 'Tofa, alii' — 'Tofa, soifua!' I put on Jack up the steep path, till he is all as white as shaving stick — Brown's euxesis, wish I had some — past Tanu- gamanono, a bush village — see into the houses as I pass — they are open sheds scattered on a green — see the brown folk sitting there, suckling kids, sleeping on their stiff wooden pillows — then on through the wood path — and here I find the mysterious white man (poor devil!) with his twenty years' certificate of good behaviour as a book-keeper, frozen out by the strikes in the colonies, come up here on a chance, no work to be found, big hotel bill, no ship to leave in — and come up to beg twenty dollars because he heard I

genial contact with all sorts and conditions of men made him keen to detect deficiencies in men and methods, and apt in useful sug- gestion.' The above is the testimony of the Mr. Clarke here mentioned (Rev. W. E. Clarke of the London Missionary Society). This gentleman was from the first one of the most valued friends of Mr. Stevenson and his family in Samoa, and, when the end came, read the funeral service beside his grave on Mount Vaea.