These three scarce touch the outskirts of the life we have been viewing; a hot-bed of strange characters and incidents: Lord, how different from Europe or the Pallid States! Farewell. Heaven knows when this will get to you. I burn to be in Sydney and have news.
R.L.S.
In the Mountain, Apia, Samoa
Monday, November 2, 1890.
My Dear Colvin, – This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life that we lead now. Our place is in a deep cleft of Vaea Mountain, some six hundred feet above the sea, embowered in a forest, which is our strangling enemy, and which we combat with axes and dollars. I went crazy over outdoor work, and had at last to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board. Nothing is so interesting as weeding, clearing, and pathmaking; the over-sight of labourers becomes a disease; it is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does make you feel so well. To come down covered with mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience. And the strange thing that I mark is this: if I go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me: if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted. For near a fortnight I did not go beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work run out, and went down for the night to Apia; put in Sunday afternoon with our consul, ‘a nice young man’, dined with my friend H. J. Moors1 in the evening, went to church – no less – at the white and half-white church – I had never been before, and was much interested; the woman I sat next looked a full-blood native, and it was in the prettiest and readiest English that she sang the hymns; back to Moors’, where we yarned of the islands, being both wide wanderers, till bedtime; bed, sleep, breakfast, horse saddled; round to the mission, to get Mr Clarke2 to be my interpreter; over with him to the King’s whom I have not called on since my return; received by that mild old gentleman; have some interesting talk with him about Samoan superstitions and my land – the scene of a great battle in his (Malietoa Laupepa’s3) youth – the place where we have cleared the platform of his fort – the gully of the stream full of dead bodies – the fight rolled off up Vaea mountain-side; back with Clarke to the mission; had a bit of lunch and consulted over a queer point of missionary policy just arisen, about our new Town Hall and the balls there – too long to go into, but a quaint example of the intricate questions which spring up daily in the missionary path.
Then off up the hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close on noon) staring hot, the breeze strong and pleasant; the ineffable green country all around – 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 glistening 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 Jack up the steep path, till he is all as white as a shaving stick – Brown’s euxesis, wish I had some – past Tanugamanomo, 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 – come up to beg twenty dollars because he heard I was a Scotchman, offering to leave his portmanteau in pledge. Settle this, and on again; and here my house comes in view, and a war whoop fetches my wife and Henry (or Simelé), our Samoan boy, on the front balcony; and I am home again, and only sorry that I shall have to go down again to Apia this day week. I could, I would, dwell here unmoved, but there are things to be attended to.
Tuesday, 3rd. – I begin to see the whole scheme of letter-writing; you sit down every day and pour out an equable stream of twaddle.
This morning all my fears were fled, and all the trouble had fallen to the lot of Peni himself, who deserved it; my field was full of weeders and I am again able to justify the ways of God. All morning I worked at The South Seas, and finished the chapter I had stuck upon on Saturday. Fanny, awfully hove-to with rheumatics and injuries received upon the field of sport and glory, chasing pigs, was unable to go up and down stairs, so she sat upon the back verandah, and my work was chequered by her cries. ‘Paul, you take a spade to do that – dig a hole first. If you do that, you’ll cut your foot off! Here, you boy, what you do there? You no get work? You go find Simelé; he give you work. Peni, you tell this boy he go find Simelé: suppose Simelé no give him work, you tell him go ’way. I no want him here. That boy no good.’ – Peni (from the distance in reassuring tones), ‘All right, sir!’ – Fanny (after a long pause), ‘Peni, you tell that boy go find Simelé! I no want him stand here all day. He no do nothing.’ – Luncheon, beef, soda-scones, fried bananas, pine-apple in claret, coffee. Try to write a poem; no go. Play the flageolet. Then sneakingly off to farmering and pioneering. Four gangs at work on our place; a lively scene; axes crashing and smoke blowing; all the knives are out. But I rob the garden party of one without a stock, and you should see my hand – cut to ribbons. Now I want to do my path up the Vaituliga single-handed, and I want it to burst on the public complete. Hence, with devilish ingenuity, I begin it at different places; so that if you stumble on one section, you may not even then suspect the fullness of my labours.
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