A VISIT TO APIA

On the 9th of June we sailed from Pago Pago for Apia, planning to return at the end of a week in order to be present at an official flag-raising which our patriotic friend, Chief Mauga, was preparing for. We found the breeze veering and uncertain as we beat out of the harbour late in the afternoon, but ample working room and the absence of strong currents in the entrance to this splendid bay made the direction of the wind of little moment. Beyond the shelter of the harbour walls the waves, driven by an unusually heavy Trade, were running tumultuously from the southeast in frothy hummocks of cotton wool. For a couple of miles, close-hauled, we stood straight out from the land, the yacht one moment burying her nose in a malignant curl of green, and the next tossing it skyward while a ton or two of solid water went bounding back along the deck and gurgled hoarsely out through the overworked scuppers. When the offing was sufficient sheets were slacked off and we headed down the coast on a broad reach, making good speed in spite of heavy rollings in the wrench of the quartering seas.

The west blazed for a few moments as the sun went down, to be quickly quenched by a curtain of black cloud that was thrown across the heavens in a final shifting of the scenery for the most spectacular exhibition of marine pyrotechnics that is to be seen in the whole length and breadth of the Seven Seas—a June night assault by the Pacific upon the "Iron Bound Coast" of Tutuila.

The "Iron Bound Coast" opens up beyond the first point west of the entrance to Pago Pago Bay and runs up the island for a half-dozen miles or more, squarely across the path of advancing lines of seas that have been charging to the attack and gathering weight, impetus and arrogance in a thousand miles of unbroken rush before the scourges of the Southeast Trade. Their repulse is sudden, sharp and decisive, and the beetle-browed, black-ribbed cliffs accomplish it without a change of expression. The waves have been beating their heads to pieces against these same frowning, impassive barriers for a million years, more or less, and yet they are never able to overcome their surprise, never stoical enough to hide their resentment, never capable of restraining their expostulations. And what floods of supplications, what varieties of protests they pour out! If you approach near enough, following the thundering crash against the cliff, they appeal to you from where they fall with sobs of anguish and groans of pain; if you gaze from afar they beckon you with high-flung distress flags of white foam, and if you pass in the darkness they signal their despair with ghostly bonfires of glowing spume and phantom rockets of phosphorescent spray.

It was such a display that we were treated to on the night of the 9th of June, and under a fortunate combination of circumstances that made it especially impressive. The seas about the Samoas are extraordinarily prolific of the animalculÆ whose presence makes sea water phosphorescent, and in May and June occur their periods of greatest activity. That this night was moonless and heavily overcast made the conditions especially favourable. Daylight and twilight had passed in swift transition, and the yacht was sailing in inky darkness as she rounded the point and opened up the Iron Bound Coast. For a moment the darkness held, and through it the imminent loom of the island was only a blur of darker opacity against the starless void above. Then a great splash of flame burst forth, and in an instant more the coast was picked out in lines of liquid fire, the reflections from which bathed the whole mountainside in fluttering waves of ghostly blue light. Here a great sea struck and erupted like a volcano set-piece, spreading out fan-wise and falling back in lines of vivid light; there a big blow-hole exploded in thunderous geysers of flame, and close by a smaller vent projected, as from the nozzle of a hose, a slender, gleaming stream of liquid fire. In places, where the rock ribs of the cliff broke evenly, the flashes burst out in regular spurts of pale flame like those from the broadside of a warship, and again, where submerged rocks and crooked elbows threw one wave back upon another, there appeared great welters of green light that churned and bubbled and swirled like liquid lava.

Like the film of a biograph the vivid panorama of flame slipped past, and by nine o'clock the ridge of Sail Rock Point had interposed and blotted out the last of it. Beyond, the island broke into hollow, smooth-beached bays, where submerged reefs clipped the claws of the breakers and dissolved them in broad patches of faint luminosity before they reached the shore. At ten o'clock, in order not to reach Apia before morning, jib and mainsail were taken in and the night run out under foresail and forestay-sail.

The smooth, green hills of Upolou were close at hand to the southwest at daybreak, and at seven o'clock, with jack hoisted for a pilot, we were off the entrance of Apia harbour. The passage to the bay is broad and straight, but, as that port was German at the time, the taking of a pilot was compulsory. That functionary came out promptly in response to our signal, and a half hour later left the yacht at anchor a quarter of a mile off the beach and a hundred yards from where, a broken-backed frame of rusting steel, the wreck of the ill-fated German warship, Adler, lay high up on the coral reef, just as it had been left by the waves in the great hurricane of 1889.

We heard from eye-witnesses the story of that hurricane when we went ashore in the afternoon; of how the powerful British Calliope, cheered by the doomed sailors in the shrouds of the American ships, forced her way in the teeth of the storm out through the passage to safety; of the destruction of the Olga and Adler and Eber, and Trenton and Vandalia and Nipsic; of the frightful loss of life; of the heroism of the natives in risking their lives in the mountainous surf and treacherous back-wash to save their late enemies, and a hundred other things closely or remotely bearing on that remarkable disaster. Told by men to whom the memory of the storm was still fresh and clear, with the theatre of the great tragedy opening before us, and countless souvenirs of one kind or another at hand to crystallize interest, the recitals were graphic in the extreme and made deep impression upon us of the Lurline, who had also had some experience of the way of the sea in its harsher moods.

At evening as we came down to the landing for our boat the Commodore's gaze wandered from the great pile of riven steel on the reef to where the yacht, a slender sliver of silver, swung slowly to her anchor in the ebbing tide. At that moment the last rays of the setting sun, striking through the gaunt ribs of the Adler's sinister skeleton, threw a frame of black shadows across the water to rest for an instant in dark blotches on Lurline's snowy side and break the gleaming lines of her standing rigging into rows of detached bars floating in space. Then the sun dipped behind the mountain and the outlines of reef and wreck and schooner began dimming under a veil of purple mist.

"I don't go much on signs myself," said the Commodore musingly as he seated himself in the stern-sheets of the waiting boat and took the yoke lines, "but I suppose there are a good many sailors who would worry about a coincidence like that. Funny thing, too, that just as it happened I was trying to figure out what kind of a chance our poor little Lurline, without steam or power of any description, would stand in a storm that could throw a ship like the Adler high and dry out of the water. And—hurricane season is coming on, you know—I'm still wondering a little, that's all."

Strangely enough, it was written that the question should, in a measure, be answered within the fortnight, though the demonstration, fortunately, was not to take place in a reef-encompassed harbour.

The Bay of Apia, like that of Papeete, is a typical South Pacific harbour; an open roadstead on the leeward side of the island, with a reef cutting it off from the sea and giving good protection in ordinary weathers. The only reason that there have not been other great disasters like that of 1889 is because there has never again chanced to be so many large ships in the harbour when a hurricane came along. The hurricanes still blow up every now and then, and, just as in that historic storm, all the shipping that cannot go to sea goes ashore. The bottom of Apia Bay is almost as thickly littered with trading schooner wreckage as with pink coral.

Lurline at anchor in Bay of Apia, Samoa

(At the summit of the mountain in the background Robert Louis Stevenson is buried)

"The London Missionary Society steamer John Williams lay near us"

The town of Apia, though picturesque—what South Pacific village is not so?—has scarcely the fascinating charm of Papeete with its crumbling sea-wall, its avenues of giant trees and its wealth of traditions. The business section of the town consists of a half mile straggle of galvanized iron stores following the line of the beach road, with numerous copra warehouses and several stubby piers breaking the sweep of the foreshore. The houses of the natives are scattered about through the cocotrees on the flat, while the European residences, bright blocks of white, dot the lower slopes of the mountain beyond. Government House, cool, spacious, inviting, stands apart from the others in the midst of its well-kept grounds, and higher still, through rifts of the encompassing verdure, glimpses may be had of the broad porticos of Villa Vailima, the old home of Robert Louis Stevenson, the loved Tusitala of the Samoans.

Towering above Vailima to the north is an abrupt-sided mountain, running up the slopes of which your glass reveals the scars of a roughly-graded path. Straight up it goes, without zigzag or spiral, until it disappears in the mists about the cloud-wreathed summit. If there were poles, it might be the clearing for a telegraph line to a signal station; if it was broader, a firebreak. It is neither of these utilitarian things, however, but the pathway to a shrine. Up that precarious flood-torn and creeper-hung foot-way was borne with tender care the man who understood and loved Samoa and the Samoans as no other has understood and loved them. You have discovered the path to Stevenson's tomb, for up there where the shifting draperies of the clouds have blown back to show a dull blur of grey through the wall of green that fronts the skyline, is where the "sailor home from the sea" is lying on the spot that he chose for his final resting place.

It is fitting that the way to a shrine should be a hard one, for to the man filled with the true passion of pilgrimage the pangs of the journey are a part of the reward for making it. The one who loves his Stevenson and his South Seas, will also love every stone upon which he stumbles, every creeper that rasps his cheek, every throb of his overworked heart, every ache in his racked muscles in that soul and body-trying climb to the summit of the mountain where the Master sleeps. I had seen pilgrims of one kind or another stumbling on their way many times previous to that stormy afternoon that I climbed the heights behind Vailima, but always without comprehending what it was that urged them forward. That day knowledge came, and when, in the year that followed, I met Nepalese and Burman plodding the dusty river road to Buddh-Gaya, or Turk and Arab trudging south from Damascus on the last leg of the Mecca Hadj, it was to greet them with the sympathetic smile that said, "I, too, know why."

Of the Great Ones of the earth, only Cecil John Rhodes, looking forth

sleeps as appropriately surrounded as does Stevenson. But Tusitala—I have seen the tears start to the eyes of the great Chiefs, Mataafa and Seumanu, at the mention of that name—has also the world he won at his feet, while on his tomb are words unparalleled in fitness by any epitaph ever graven, a verse as deathless as the fame of the gentle soul that sleeps beneath. Stevenson's self-composed epitaph, read from a printed page, is an unblemished jewel of verse, no more; read from the bronze tablet of the tomb by the climber of the Heights, to the requiems of the Trade-wind in the trees and the mutter of the distant surf, it is as though breathed by the spirit of the Master himself.

As a colonial experiment German Samoa—the islands of Upolou, Savaii, Manono and Apolima—was not a startling success. During the first four years of the militant Teutonic government disaffection became rife among the natives, agricultural production fell off and trade languished. Realizing that a change of policy was imperative, Emperor William sent out to Apia one of the most distinguished statesmen and scholars in the Fatherland, Dr. Solf, a former member of the Reichstag, and under his wise rÉgime much of the lost ground was regained. As far as might be in a German colony, the new Governor endeavoured to follow the plan so successfully adopted by the Americans in Tutuila, that of exercising a gentle supervision over the natives, directing them in matters of insular importance and leaving the Chiefs supreme in village affairs. This policy—the only one that can ever be successful with the high-spirited, liberty-loving Samoans—will be good as long as it lasts, but unfortunately it will take a man of no less breadth of character, humanity and imagination than Dr. Solf to maintain it, and such a governor is hardly likely to be forthcoming.

As the administrator of actual colonies, Germany's problem in her Samoan possessions is a more difficult one than that of the United States, which only exercises a protectorate over Tutuila and Manua. With extensive copra and cacao plantations under exploitation, German subjects in Samoa will never cease to chafe under the necessity of importing practically all of their labour from the Solomons, New Hebrides and other islands to the west, when there are thirty or forty thousand Samoans close at hand who spend their days in dreaming and their nights in singing and dancing. Of course, the Samoans never have performed regular labour, and can never be brought to do so, a fact, however, which the energetic and industrious Teuton finds it hard to understand. A governor of less force and breadth of vision than Dr. Solf will find it difficult to withstand the pressure of the planting interests for the inauguration of a policy that will, in some manner, make the Samoan more productive. One does not need a lifetime of acquaintance with the Samoan to know that the first step in this direction will mark the beginning of an era of discontent that nothing but a re-establishment of the broad, human rÉgime of Dr. Solf can bring to an end.

Dr. Solf was the Governor of German Samoa at the time of our visit to Apia, and our meetings with him were among the pleasantest features of our stay. We found him all that our naval friends in Tutuila had claimed, quite the biggest figure among South Pacific executives, and it was with no surprise and much pleasure that we heard of his subsequent elevation to the post of Colonial Secretary, next to that of Prime Minister the most important portfolio in the gift of Emperor William.[1]

Outside of his political activities, Dr. Solf had long been prominent in German yachting circles, and on one of his calls aboard Lurline he appeared in the uniform of an officer of the Kiel Yacht Club.

An especially pleasing coincidence of our visit to Apia was the arrival there, on the day following our own, of the auxiliary schooner yacht, La Carabine, of Melbourne, with her owner, Sir Rupert Clark, and his brother, Lieutenant Ralph Clark, R.N., aboard. Sir Rupert is the eldest son of the famous philanthropist, the late Sir William Clark, and in addition to being the richest man in the Commonwealth and its most prominent racing figure, is also distinguished as being one of the only two Australian baronets. His brother, Lieutenant Clark, for some years the Navigating Officer of the flagship of the British Australian Squadron, resigned his commission to sail La Carabine on the cruise on which she was then embarked.

La Carabine we found to be a stoutly built schooner of fifty tons' register constructed in Auckland especially for sailing in Polynesia and Micronesia. Her heavy channels and running bowsprit marked her at once as British, while her stubby foremasts and huge lifeboats suggested the trader rather than the yacht. She was equipped with gasoline engines capable of driving her five knots an hour in a smooth sea. The yacht took her name from Sir Rupert's famous racer, La Carabine, winner of the classic Melbourne Cup of a year or two previously.

The Clarks had already visited several ports in the Tongan group, and from Samoa were planning to cruise for some months among the wild and little-known islands of the New Hebrides, Solomons and New Britain archipelagos. In many of these islands money has no value whatever, a contingency which had been provided against by stocking a barter room on La Carabine similar to those of the regular traders. Here were carried prints, knives, guns, jewelry, tinned meats and tobacco, which were to be exchanged for pigs, fish, fowls and curios. Nor was the matter of defence neglected. Just forward of the house a swivel had been set in the deck and the installation completed to greet the first "cutting-out" party with a hail of bullets from a vicious-looking little Maxim set thereon. The gun was served by an old man-of-war's man shipped with the crew for that purpose. We never heard whether or not occasion ever arose for its serious use. At any rate, as Clark put it, the fact that so many labour schooners had been attacked recently made its presence "a comfort if not a necessity."

A number of very pleasant affairs were arranged for the joint pleasure of the two yachting parties, especially enjoyable proving picnics at Vailima and Papa-seea, the Sliding Rock, teas on several of the large plantations and at the Consulates, a dinner at Government House, and a couple of siva-sivas at Chief Seamanu-Tafu's. The latter were directed by the chief's daughter, Vau, the taupo of Apia, a young woman of fine face and figure and of considerable quickness of wit as well, if the manner in which she put our good friend Clark to the blush one afternoon may be taken as a criterion.

Vau and her handmaidens were off to tea on La Carabine, preliminary to a swimming party at Papa-seea. Governor Solf, Dr. Clarence Fahnstock, of the New York Yacht Club, on his way home from the Tongas, and a couple of us from the Lurline were also present. The talk turned to the reforms, political, economic and industrial, lately instituted in New Zealand. Clark, in expatiating on the stringent prohibition laws in force in that colony, made the statement that a man once convicted of drunkenness in a New Zealand hotel forfeited his right to register at any other hostelry in the country. Upon hearing which Vau looked up from the fashion supplement of a Sydney illustrated weekly in which she had been engrossed and, with just enough twinkle in her dark eyes to belie the innocence of expression that sat upon the rest of her face, cooed sweetly, "So you have now to stay with frens, Sir Ruper', when you go Nu-zelan?"

And Clark, the suave, the debonair, the cool-headed; Clark, for years the endlessly-angled-for catch of two hemispheres; Clark, who took the coveted Melbourne Cup without the flicker of an eyelash, blushed and stammered like a dÉbutante in an effort to explain. Finally, judging the temper of the company unpropitious, he gave up his ill-advised effort to save his reputation and took his revenge an hour later by pushing Vau, with all her finery, over the brink of Papa-seea.

Maid of honour to the Taupo of Apia

A Samoan Sunset

The London Missionary Society steamer, John Williams, came in and lay near us for a few days before we left Apia. John Williams was the pioneer missionary of the famous London society in the South Pacific, and since his death in the early years of the last century at the hands of New Hebridean natives every ship of that organization has borne his name. For more than fifty years these were schooners, and as each was piled up on a reef in turn, its name, with the number next in line affixed, was passed on to its successor. This continued until steamers finally supplanted schooners, when the serial system of nomenclature was dropped. The present John Williams, the thirtieth or thereabouts, of the name, is a Clyde-built steamer of something over 3,000 tons. It has unusually graceful lines and is able to do better than sixteen knots an hour if required. Its principal duties are the provisioning of the mission stations scattered throughout the southwest Pacific and the carrying on of a most lucrative trading business which the Society—fighting the devil with fire—carries on in opposition to its arch enemies, the real traders.

John Williams proved a most unsociable craft, sullenly refusing to meet any of the timidly tentative advances of either of the visiting yachts. The solemn, black-coated figures in the stern sheets of its boats would pass La Carabine and Lurline with averted eyes, evidently classifying us, with all the rest of the whites, as instruments of the world, the flesh and the devil sent to demoralize their work with the simple native.

Before leaving Apia we discharged our Chino-Malayan cook, Harrick Siah, whom we had signed on at Honolulu, shipping in his place one Andrew Clark, a Jamaican mulatto. Clark had married a Samoan girl the week previously, only to have her elope the next day with the native missionary who performed the ceremony, taking with her the accumulated savings of the unlucky cook's last year of voyaging. Being thus cast "on the beach," as they put it in the South Seas, nothing was left for him but to ship again. Now it chanced that Siah, who was but five feet two in height, had been able to walk erect in the galley's five feet three of headroom, as had also his diminutive Japanese predecessor; Clark's five feet nine required something more than six inches of reefing to swing in the clear, and even then his head ran afoul of occasional hooks and pipes and other projections. The poor fellow stuck manfully to his job, but within a fortnight the reef-points of his neck became so firmly tied that, even after he had been an hour or two ashore, we would see him on the streets or in the market with hunched shoulders, drawn-in neck and a furtive look of fear in his shifting eyes.

On June 13th we received word that Chief Mauga's flag-raising at Pago Pago, a function at which we had promised to endeavour to be present, had been scheduled for one o'clock of the 15th, in order that the officers and men of the Wheeling, which was to sail that afternoon for Bremerton, might participate. This necessitated our leaving on the 14th, just as we were getting comfortably settled down to a full enjoyment of hospitable Apia. A whistling east wind on the starboard beam carried us out of the passage at a rattling gait, but only to come squarely ahead as we trimmed in for Tutuila. All afternoon, against a rising wind and sea, we sailed in short tacks up the coast of Upolou, and by nine P. M., with double reefs in mainsail and foresail, just managed to clear Albatross Rock, five miles east of the windward end of the island.

At daybreak Tutuila showed dimly, a point forward of the port beam. Reefs were shaken out at eight o'clock, but the tiresome beating continued until we had doubled Sail Rock Point at one-thirty. From there we made fair wind of it down the coast and into the harbour. When the anchor was let go at four o'clock Mauga's "Stars and Stripes" had been flapping in the breeze for close to three hours, and the Wheeling, with a 300-foot "Homeward Bound" pennant streaming from her main, had just cast off her mooring lines and was backing into the stream.