There, Robert Louis Stevenson is buried beneath flame trees and banyans. Stevenson arrived in Samoa in 1889, young, thin, and sick. The path is called Ala o le Alofa , the Road of Loving Hearts. Nearly a century later, the Road of Loving Hearts has been taken over by a group of American businessmen from Arizona. A large billboard announces triumphally that a Restoration Project is underway, one that will ready Stevenson's tomb and nearby mansion for the centenary anniversary of his death next December.
Critics call the plans vulgar and exploitative.
But what, softly spoken, underpins this criticism is quite simply that the men behind the scheme are all Mormons. The Latter-Day Saints have been working this corner of the South Pacific since 1888. These references represent the sum of the Mormons' claim to the people of Samoa. Sadly, science demonstrates that this is all so much bunk. The Mormon revelations, even when fleshed out by enthusiastic modern scholarship, do not stand up to any test except that of blind faith.