The Holland trip fell through, but it suggested
foreign travel. Stevenson and my brother had been
abroad together in vacations. The former wrote
to his mother from Frankfort 1872: "Simpson and
I seem to get on very well together; we suit each
other capitally, and it is an awful joke to be living
(two would-be advocates and one a baronet) in
this supremely mean abode." Both were blessed
with good tempers and easy to live with, and, if of
different bents of mind, agreed to differ; so they
journeyed amicably together. R. L. S., mounte-
bankish, fancy in dress, was, if possible, more notice-
able abroad, at least more troublesome. In Britain
he was classed as a foreigner or a poor actor; across
the Channel he was classed as a spy, and "the

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police everywhere,” he complained, “but in his
native city, at him looked askance.” Walter in his
schoolroom days had been noted and praised for
keeping himself always trig and tidy, and when
he took walks abroad with his brother advocate
Louis Stevenson, the contrast in dress and appear-
ance between the two was accentuated. Sir Walter
was fair as a Norseman, always shaven and shorn,
spruce and well groomed. He was unmistakably
British, and his face was his passport. Though he
suffered from his friend’s bizarre taste, his losing
money and luggage, as a rule, never did he com-
plain but patiently helped Louis out of his many
misfortunes. For some summers, fond of the sea,
Sir Walter and another advocate had shared a
schooner, *The Heron*, which they mostly worked
themselves, and yachted on the West Coast. In
1874 R. L. S. was their guest, and the ill-health of
which he complained improved or vanished when,
with Simpson for skipper, he served his apprentice-
ship as a hand and roughed it. At one place waiting
for favourable winds, for something to do on shore,
they watched the Oban-bound steamer disgorge
her passengers. Stevenson proposed that 1s. per
head should be paid by the other two for any arriv-
ing visitor whom they could shake hands with.
Charles Baxter then tried to claim acquaintance
with several new-comers, but, despite all his com-
manding presence, bland assurance of manner,
he could not wring a handshake from one of his

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imagined friends who were luggage-laden with bags and umbrellas. R.L.S., not to be behindhand, glided forward, bowing and smiling to perturbed passengers and tried to coax them to greet him; but with his strange appearance in his ragamuffin attire he was scowled at, threatened with the one policeman, and told to go away. Suddenly my brother, who had been watching with amusement his friends' bold, fruitless efforts, rose, alert, from his seat on a belaying-pin, with a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, and stepped up to the gangway. He had spied a large family he knew, about to disembark, and, casting his shyness to the winds, wrung each of them ecstatically by the hand. "There are eight girls, father and mother, a governess," said Charles Baxter in a sad tone of voice to R.L.S. "Look! he is carrying the basket with the cat the cook had, and I believe he is going to shake hands with all the servants." By the time Walter had piloted his friends ashore, packed them all into a waiting omnibus and helped the servants with their bundles, he found he had won 15s. from each of his friends, who pretended to be in-consolable and wrathful at his luck. R.L.S. said he would invent no more games for idle afternoons.

It was a hardy life, but the weather, one or two seasons in succession, was damp and stormy; so by the library fire R.L.S. and he planned to sail further south and try and reach more sunbright climes. In the summer, for years, my brothers had

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kept canoes at Granton and sailed and paddled on
the Forth. R. L. S. had taken passage on a double
canoe with the Bart. They coasted up to the Hawes
Inn, Queensferry, famed in the *Antiquary*. R. L. S.
liked the four-in-hand oldcoach that lumbered out
with Her Majesty's mails for Dunfermline to Que-
ensferry before the days of the Forth Bridge. But
he was also mightily pleased with this sea mode
of travel, so when *The Heron* was abandoned and
the skating party to Holland fell through, the two
dilettante advocates, with an inclination to skim
over foreign waters, bethought themselves of a
canoetrip abroad and trusted to having more sun-
shine and less damp than they had encountered
along the mist-shrouded shores of Scotland. They
started in 1876 on their tour. R. L. S., like a child,
knew no fear, always ready to adventure. He had
had comparatively no experience of canoeing, but
hopefully bold at Antwerp Docks, he tells simply:
"The *Cigarette* went off in a splash and a bubble
of small breaking water. Next moment the *Are-
thusa* was after her." How they fared on this "In-
land Voyage," readers of R. L. S. know full well.

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