TUTUILA: The American Harbour.

The island of Tutuila is the least visited and the most often seen of the Samoan group. A while ago the liners between San Francisco and the colonies passed by the east end; and several nights in the month, a bonfire burned for their guidance on the islet of Aunun. The course is now changed; Aunun is dark throughout the year, and the steamer passes, and the globetrotter has an opportunity to see, West Cape with its nobly islets and the village of Leone with its brown roofs, green breadfruit trees and black volcanic beach. To see and lose again. It is but a glimpse away; a tossing cutter receives the mail and a few passengers; the screw, which has scarce rested, turns again; Samoa sinks in the blue ocean, and the globetrotter returns to lose his money in the smokingroom or doze over a novel on deck.

On the morning of Tuesday, 2nd March, the Union Company's steamship Wainui drew near the place of call; sighted West Cape and Leono; and instead of bearing immediately to sea, held along the southern coast, steamed awhile by black broken cliffs, by cocoanut groves, by frequent villages, by flats of lave diversified with spouting blow holes, the geysers of the beach; and at last where the highlands begin to descend abruptly to the sea, turned to the north, entered between two wooded mountains, and was swallowed in the bowels of the land. Half an hour later, she issued forth again, and trimmed her course for Tonga and New Zealand. Her errand done; she has set on shore in the deep harbour of Pangopango a quantity of stores and luggage, a reliable Chinese cook, a land

surveyor, the American consul-general, known among natives as the American
Judge, and an elderly gentleman of notable temerity of person called (his own
name being unpronounceable by Polynesians) the Writer of Tales: Tusi-tala.
This is the same person who is now trying, about six o'clock of a sunny morn-
ing, and diverted by the chirrupping of many birds, to string together his
unimportant information for the reader's benefit.

The harbour of Pangopango (written, in Samoan spelling Pagopago) cuts
nearly through the narrow, steep and crooked isle. A single ridge divides it
from the other shore and the bay of Fangasa. A road, which is a good road for
Samoa but degenerates at last into a ladder of roots and rocks, carries you
through the midst of forests to the top; twenty feet in front the opposite de-
clivity plunges sheer, it seems you might roll a boulder on the roofs of the
unseen village at your feet, and through clouds of foliage, the sun shines upon
blue water, rock and leaping spray.

The basin, some half mile in width, lies so encased with mountains that the
breeze is frequently shut out. A draught enters by the sea mouth, squalls
burst in at times by the gullies of the mountain, but the main river of the
Trade scorns that craterlike depression and streams overhead. Day and night, the
scroll of tradewind cloud is unrolled across the sky, now high continents, now in
a thin drift of debris, singular shapes of things protracted and deformed, beasts
and trees, and heads and torsos of old marbles, hurried at high speed from hill
to hill, and changing, fainting and vanishing as they fly. Meanwhile the sur-
face of the harbour lies below unruffled, now of heavenly blue, now green like a
forest pool, bright in the shallows, dark in the midst with the reflected sides
of woody mountains. At times a flicker of silver twinkle and disappears on the

the ripple lapped at my feet; from the far shore which is opposite the harbour
mouth, a sullen plunge of surf was audible. Nowhere in the isles of the
Pacific, not even in this sheltered creek, shall a man escape entirely out of
hearing of the trepidation of the deep. The moon rode close at the zenith,
"excellently bright," but continually overwhelmed by the vast continental "carry"
of the Trade. Flashing from dusk to silver, and thrusting forth strange horns
and promontaries, the clouds sped with so impetuous a motion that the ear won-
dered they should pass in silence. Their level was not so high as seemed; the
Trade, although so strong in current is a shallow stream. Even as I gazed, a
cloud grounded on the summit of Pioa; it seemed to hang and gather there, and
darken as it hung; and I was scarce fled to shelter, ere the rain struck and
roared about the house. As the squall declined, I was aware of a sound, familiar
but unexpected at that place and time: that of a church bell ringing slowly at a
distance. I had not thought there was such an instrument on Tutuila; but I made
no doubt it was some holyday not observed by Protestants, and that the bell was
ringing in the dark from the farside of the harbour, whence the Catholic mission-
ary looks across upon his Mormon rivals from Salt Lake. I had a sharp mental
picture of the church all lighted up, the priest in his robes, and a scanty flock
gathered for the nocturnal celebration. All night the squalls succeeded; with
the decline of each, the bell began to sound again from the same distance; till
I perceived at last it was no more than an eavesdrop falling, closely by my ear,
on a tin pan. The morning dawned, mist was on the hills, a fresh accumulation of
rain imminent on Pioa, and the whole harbour gray and serious like a Scottish
loch. As I sat and wrote in my diary, the beat of the wooden drum from the next
village told me the protestants were gathering to worship, and I smiled at my last

escaped labour is half miraculous. There were five in number who had grown
weary of good usage; under cloud of night, they fashioned a raft out of tim-
ber on the beach, and put to sea without food or compass. It must have blown
from the leeward, for the course of their random voyage lay due east; and the
raft was cast on shore near by the mouth of Pangopango harbour. At the time of
their landing, the refugees had a leader, a man from the Gilberts of great sta-
ture and courage; as long as he lived, they maintained a fierce front and raid-
ed the inhabited lowlands; but so soon as he was shot down, in the act of carry-
ing off the maid of a village, the survivor shrank into the forest. There, in
the rains, in the rude thickets, they await age and death. Stress of hunger
occasionally goads them from their woods to steal bananas; in all else, since
the death of the Gilbert Islander, they are quite harmless; but the fear of them
is not the least abated.

Long ago (say the natives) the houses were continuous round the harbour.
They are now shrunk into five hamlets; at night it is only here and there that a
light twinkle, in the morning only here and there that the smoke of cookery
drifts and dispenses in the forest. A path girdles the whole shore, a rude
enough causeway, which falls if you sit upon its margin, but makes passage easy.
The near hill climbs abruptly, making a profile of leaves upon the sky. The path,
as it follows on by promontory and recess, now plunges you in breathless heat,
now brings you forth in a broad draught of air. From the hottest corner of some
patch of cane, you may look a little way uphill and see palms whirling in the
breeze; from the bottom of some cove where the path is overhung with rocks and
foliage, you may look but a little forth and see the bushes toss and the lianas
stream on the next cape. A faint stir of human life animated the solitude. Far
out on the many tinted shoals, women wade and fish and you may hear them singing
at their occupation; as one strolls shoreward-- stands waiting, modelled in her
dripping kilt, and as you pass along the causeway, hails you with a salutation

and you see before you the heads and the open ocean. A beach curves toward the nearer headland, bordered by groves of palm; four scattered houses, one of them in ruins, mark the site of a decaying hamlet; and two streams meet the sea, inconsiderable runnels, easy to be overleaped, such as may reach maturity in so narrow an isle. The place is very desolate and very noisy with the wind and sea. The judge and I were one day joined upon this beach by a boy, an old ally and satellite, Maua his name, a slender, shrewd, gentlemanly creature whose pleasant eyes and manners had engaged us heretofore. Presently, at the far end of the beach, beyond the houses, we sat down; and with the common instinct of all ages and races of man, elderly whites and eight year old Samoan boy began to dig among the sand. Maua designed a ship in sections. It was our ship, he told us; and presently began to people it with our distinguished party. There was the judge by the helm; here the Measurer of Land; there the Writer of Tales. "And where is Maua himself?" we asked. The figure of Maua was added at the masthead, spying for some promised land. I was struck with a profund sense of the unity of man and man's romance and play; how often in past I had taken part in similar business, and on how many beaches of the world a similar scene was then enacting. Fate laughed at my conclusions even as I thought. For Maua began presently to model in relief, the human form was his subject, and he expounded his work as he went on with it to the Judge and the Writer of Tales. There are some tales not to be written; and the doings of Maua and his comments fall among the number. I wondered, and I was the more foolish. But a night or two before I had seen for the first time an indecent Samoan dance. The house was full of spectators, among the rest children of all ages, who began to join in the singing and beat time. It was singular to look round on all those shaven heads of children wagging and lit-

tle hands clapping the tatto; to hear the shrill young laughter rise ill-
favouredly; and to remember the jest they laughed at was the exposure of
their sisters. In such scenes Master Maua had graon up, and such experiences
made the child secure of sympathy from his elders.

We lingered in Pangopango with a purpose; we were there indeed to make history, which has always been the work of time. The admirable harbour, one of the few really good roadsteads in the whole extent of the South Seas, was long since ceded to the States; it remained to acquire upon its shores the necessary land for an establishment; and in this, which the Judge had come to settle, an unlooked-for difficulty rose. Swimming Point is a knoll, projecting into deepish water, clothed in thick bush, and after a common fashion, long the burial place of chieftans. These graves were the stumbling block in the beginning, and remained so till the end. And even after, even when the bargain was made, the land sold, the money counted, counsels were still divided and eloquence still flowed on the question of the ancestral relics.

It was dush when we came to the village of Fangatonga to conclude this
affair. Lights were in all the houses, the evening hymn was singing, the dinner
ready but not yet eaten. An emissary was still scouring to raise money: Chile
dollars and half dollars, English shillings, American twenty cent pieces, the
maddening currency of the Islands. An hour later, we were summoned to the pre-
sence of the chiefs, and went, bearing the price in a bag. A samoan house is
oval in plan, and consists of a high-pitched roof of thatch, sustained by an
elegant frame of breadfruit and supported by many external pillars and on triple
roof-post in the midst. The spaces between the external pillars may be closed
with rude Venetian blinds, the slats of matting. The floor is of smoothed gravel,

the external boundary is demarked with a coaming of considerable stones. The
blinds in the house to which we were now led were mostly down, and it was close.
The fire had not been lit, and the dingle petroleum lamp scarce enabled us to
see the faces of the four chiefs and the two girls who squatted there upon the
mats, passing to and fro banana leaf cigarettes.

Four chiefs-- and these should have been five. Messengers were despatched
(or so it was pretended* to summon the fifth; he did not come, but you may be
sure we were supplied instead with civil excuses. We are here in the homeland
of excuses. When on of your boys hets news of the illness of a parent and asks
leave for a day, wring him by the hand, you will see him no more; this is the
elaborate Samoan way of giving warning, he is now going to be happy and lie on
the floor of a house for months. Whatever the chief might say, or his colleagues
say for him, the cautious foreigner could make but one deduction: the chief was
unwilling to appear: the suspicious foreigner was free to suppose that he did
not approve of the sale, or that the whole company was playing fast and loose and
secretly manufacturing a flaw in the bargain. The money was elaborately counted
out by Wenley Forster, the boat builder; and the four chiefs plunged in the mean-
while into their favourita diversion of public speaking. Solemnly they arrayed
their phrases, and repeated their arguments; solemnly they encouraged each other
with "belei"-- the Samoan "Hear!", the solemnity was indeed laughable if you re-
member their audience consisted of two girls and one interpreter. The ground of
the dispute was noteworthy. The bones were to be dug up from Swimming Point be-
fore tradition; but suppose they should now accept the purchase money, were they
not constructively selling the bones of their ancestors? This fine scruple pre-
vailed; the bargain was signed, but the moeny was handed over to a trustee, until

soared and dived without direction; and heat and seasickness ruled upon the
and water, excellent greenness of the impending woods; but the airs in the
narrow deck. The coast suffered beyond what I had previously thought possi-
narrow anchorage were light and fickle. We were a long while before we clear-
ted in a man; the interpreter was stricken silent; the judge-- but let us clear-
ed Goat Island; a long while in the outer bay, plying to and fro across the
great, oily swells, and the great, cool, languid gush of air that entered by
the harbourmouth. The fairway is here obstructed by a certain infamous reef
called the Whale Rock. It lies in three fathom water; so deep that all but
great flights of birds, contending in air and water for their common prey,
these also vanished. The day drew out like a thing intangible, the sun set,
In all the time of our lingering about the anchorage, Whale Rock had given no
the night fell, and no lend breeze came to our relief. The tides lay clean
sign, but lain close in its blue ambush and rival pilots had debated its pos-
ition. It was to give us a salute for our departure. We were on the starboard
retained or renewed all night their bowles of cloud. It raised there doubtless;
tack, heading about S E, when a very heavy swell was seen to heave up. Perhaps
doubtless it blew; perhaps thundered also, for now and then the clouds were
a cable's length ahead of the Nukunono, it tripped its submarine skirts upon
lighted up from within like paper lanterns and shone a pattern of shadows like
the reef and toppled in a gush of foam. The mountains echoed the report, the
sea rose like the sides of a bowl: the farewell gun was fired, thence forward
as before it was over an unbroken, rolling floor of blue that we pursued our way.

The breeze carried us outside, and varied a little, but still held; the
the booms clattered, the canvas flapped, the Nukunono was put from the one
blow holes along the coast were spouting high, the spray hung in the air and blew
up the mountains like a mist, and we had made an offing of some six or seven
miles, before we were startled by that ominous sound of flapping canvas. Pioa
reef, and there was tutuila blurred with a succession of fine rain showers; and
and Matafao, the deep harbour and the whole crooked isle were weaving a space
of weather of their own; Tutuila stood enrobed in winds and cross winds, the ex-
and the sea heaving under the same unmitigated blaze of day, and surrounded almost
piration of valleys, the suction of sunny hills. But all about it on the sea
the air slumbered utterly. The clouds stood round the horizon in long cold rows
of pillars, hills and statues, changeless as rock; the sun falmed overhead out
of a tract of emptyazure; the booms clattered, the canvas flapped, the schooner

soared and dived without direction; and heat and seasickness ruled upon the
narrow deck. The cook suffered beyond what I had previously thought possi-
ble in a man; the interpreter was stricken silent; the judge-- but let me
respect the ermine. Loia and the Writer of Tales were thenceforth cook and
steward: the rest of the excursion party quite erased.

For a while the face of the ocean was enlivened by shoals of bonito and
great flights of birds, contending in air and water for their common prey,
these also vanished. The day drew out like a thing interminable, the sun set,
the night fell, and no land breeze came to our relief. The island lay clean
and sharp along the starry heaven; only Matafao and Pioa, the two chief peaks,
retained or renewed all night their cowls of cloud. It rained there doubtless;
doubtless it blew; perhaps thundered also, for now and then the clouds were
lighted up from within like paper lanterns and showed a pattern of shadows like
the tracery of the mountains on the moon. All night I was up and down; I had
yarns with the mate in the middle of the watch; in the morning watch the captain
and I pledged each other in vile tea; and still it was the same senseless tale--
the booms clattered, the canvas flapped, the Nukunono was put from the one tack
to the other and made nothing. The moon rose very late, a ragged end of a moon,
brown on the one side like burned paper. Presently after the day broke, the sun
rose; and there was Tutuila blurred with a succession of fine rain showers; and
the mouth of Pangopango vomiting vapours like the doorway of a burning chamber;
and the sea heaving under the same unmitigated blaze of day, and surrounded along
the horizon by the same series of windless clouds.

All morning the schooner was being put upon the other tack, and making
nought. All morning we sagged heavily westward. The set of the tide is east-

erly, men say; there was no set for us. The mouth of Pangopango closed,
Matafao insensibly slipped by; and the cocoanut groves, and the hamlets and
the blowholes on the beach slipped by. By noon, we had been seven and twenty
hours upon the voyage, and were ten miles farther from our destination. Des-
pair began to fall on the ship's company. The giddy, aimless plunges of the
schooner, the blaze of the sun, the idle clatter of calms so hateful to the sea-
fared, the sickness of those who were sick, the unwelcome tasks that fell on
those who were not, were all elements in our decision. And the Nukunono was
kept away-- if there were anything to keep her away from-- on the return to Pango-
pango.

I had hitherto admired the constance of the judge; I was now to wonder at
the hopefulness of the captain. We made some easting indeed, and recovered our
original place opposite the harbour mouth and looking in. But all efforts to
draw near were vain. The isle sat framed in crystal, like a clock under a case,
now clear from end to end, now wearing a whiff of cloud: her own world of weather,
on whose margin we hung and tossed defying our approach. When eight bells came
round again, it was decided to evacuate the Nukunono. The skiff (which was not
much larger than a garden barrow) was tossed overboard by strength of arm; two
hands manned it; the cook (for whose life we had begun to entertain fears) was
tumbled after and lay in the stern sheets like a broken doll. The skiff dwindled
slowly to a spot, the spot suddenly faded in the waste of blue sea; and we lay,
and bobbed, and clattered, and were sun-cured on the dirty deck, and watched the
changeless peaks of the island and the changeless peaks of the clouds.

The sun went down at last, an alleviation anxiously expected. It sank with

much pomp of colour. Strange arrows of blue radiated from the place of set-
ting like the spokes of some vast, tireless wheel. At first they were many;
one by one they faded and disappeared; but the last lingered long behind its
fellows, and grew more darkly blue upon a sky of a richer crimson. The sea
heaved multicoloured, flecked with fire and azure. The outline of the isle
was extraordinary sharp and slender on the fading sky: like a scroll punched
from sheet iron. Behind it there arose at intervals, incredible, tall isola-
ted clouds: cardboard characters, Punch and Judy, rampant heraldic monsters,
perforated minarets: shapes absurd and awful, a puppet show for gods, display-
ed in that solemn and bright theatre of the end of day. No sensible wind accom-
panied these changes; but the new and huge shapes of cloud swelled silently into
being without apparent cause, and seemed to come and go with the colours of the
sunset.

The dusk began to fall, and we ran up a light in the fore rigging. From
the far-away coast, lights appeared like responded signals: a few transient
lights of fishers

(Rest of the manuscript-- probably one page-- missing).

Printed in the New York Sun, December 13, 1891.

Another draft of this same article, an entirely different version, published by
the Bibliophile Society in Robert Louis Stevenson Hitherto Unpublished Prose
Writings.