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The Manua Islands are only ninety miles from the island of Tutuila. This latter island is sometimes called Pago-Pago, after the village of Pago-Pago, which is on the southeast coast, and where the United States coaling station is situated. Either name is correct.

We were all of one night in sailing from the Manuas to Tutuila, and were calmed off the opening of Pago-Pago Bay for several hours in the morning. Then I set the engines in motion, and for a couple of hours we threaded up the narrow bay until it opened out into the prettiest land-locked harbour I have ever seen. Mountains were on every side. The village of Pago-Pago is set on the shores and up the mountainsides, with Governor Moore's residence on the highest point in the bay.

We sailed past the battleship Annapolis, the same ship that had given us such a pleasant reception in Papeete, Tahiti, one month before. We were expected, and the jackies and officers and the men stationed ashore were on the decks and lined up on the beach. The band, composed of Samoan (native) musicians, stood around the big flag-pole on the beach and played national airs while the flag was dipped in salute. It was a great day for us, and a p243 great day for the Annapolis, when the Snark came in the bay. Just imagine three hundred Americans away down here on a little island in the centre of the South Seas, seeing no one from home for months and months! Sometimes even a year goes by with no American visitors. The Snark had been expected for weeks, and the minute we were sighted a boat-load of officers came aboard with invitations for everyone on the yacht.

We had not dropped anchor when the officers came aboard, and so busy were we, shaking hands with fellow-countrymen, that Captain Y—— forgot to give orders to drop the anchor until we were so close to shore that it would have been dangerous to do so on account of the coral reef. I had stopped the engines, and we were drifting in, when the officers saw our danger, and then some half-dozen of the highest officers on the battleship Annapolis got out in their boat with a line to our bow, and worked like coolies to keep us off the shore. When I had gotten the engines to running, they guided us to a place of safety.

These officers, who never got their hands dirty on their own ship, finally, after the anchor had been dropped, went ashore to doctor hands that were blistered; but they never lost one grain of respect from their men, who were watching from ashore, unable to help because of not having a boat handy.

The battleship Annapolis is stationed here the year round. The two hundred men who compose her crew p244 live ashore in their own homes, while about one hundred men in command of the shore station have wives and families and nice little bungalows. Many of the sailors have Samoan wives, and many of them live what is known as Fas-Samoan, which means residing in grass houses and sleeping on grass mats thrown on the ground, and eating native foods. So far as I could see, they are the happiest lot of men in the world. Of course, life must have been very monotonous at first, but after they once got settled they formed a more contented colony than any persons of the same number in America. They have their clubs and baseball diamond; all the literature they care for they get every six weeks; they give balls and parties, and, as they are sure of their jobs, have nothing to worry over.

And it is certainly a pretty sight they make in their pure white uniforms. The Samoans that form the national guard are all dressed alike, in blue lava-lavas and white singlets. About one dozen of the chief officers have fine mansions. Governor Moore's is the finest of them all, and sits high above the rest. One officer owns an automobile, and many have motor-boats.

We lay in Pago-Pago Harbor one week. During this time we were living ashore with friends, that is, all but Tehei, who, not speaking English nor Samoan, preferred to remain aboard. We had been in the bay a couple of days when a big six-foot-one native came on board, and in excellent English said he was a Tahitian and that he had heard we had a Tahitian with p245 us. We called Tehei. The big man went up and spoke to Tehei in his own tongue; and Tehei was overjoyed to find someone he could talk to. The big Tahitian's name was Henry—a native of Rapa Island. He was then captain of a small trading schooner that plied in the Samoan group. He and Tehei became close friends, and on the day that we prepared to leave, Henry struck Jack for a job. As Henry was acquainted with the islands that we intended to visit next, Jack decided to hire him. Ernest, the French sailor, was discharged. Ernest had proved a disappointment, so we did not regret the change. Jack bought him a ticket for Auckland, New Zealand (for no one can remain in Samoa without one hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket), and he left on the steamer Nuvina. Henry, however, was a very good sailor, having spent twelve years in the South Seas and in Europe in the French navy. He spoke French, English, German, and all the principal South Sea languages. Weighing nearly two hundred pounds, and six feet one inch in height, he was a mountain of muscle; and he knew more about every part of the ship than any person I have ever seen.

Henry's ship was turned over to a Samoan captain, and amid the cheers of three hundred Americans and a salute from the big guns on the Annapolis, we shoved out of the harbour under Henry's steerage. He kept the wheel all night, and early next morning we dropped anchor in the harbour of the largest city in Polynesia: p246 Apia, Samoa. Several small schooners and a steamer were anchored close to us; and ahead, the white coral city that has been wrecked by revolutions and hurricanes a dozen times, until it now resembles an old European city with decayed castles. Between us, on the beach, lay the old hull of a German warship that had been wrecked here during a hurricane in 1889. The Germans had tried to dynamite it to pieces, but when they had broken nearly all the windows in the town and the old hull refused to budge, they decided to let it lie until it rusted away. But for twenty years it had defied rust and shown no sign of leaving its resting-place, and I don't believe the residents would allow it to be removed now, for it would not seem like Apia Harbor without that old hulk.

Apia has a population of about five thousand. About four hundred are Germans and Australians, and the rest are alien South Sea Islanders and native Samoans. Here the Germans have pursued the same policy as in all their larger possessions. They maintain a warship and a company of German soldiers on duty all the time. Their police system is entirely of natives, and they have a large standing army of native soldiers.

The city is built for about three miles around the bay. Most of the buildings are of white coral cement, showing up like white marble from the sea. Back from the sea are the native grass houses; in fact, a p247 native of any of the South Sea islands will never live in any other than a grass house, from choice. He may live in a white man's house if he is a chief of royal blood, but he will usually have a grass house in connection, to go to when he can no longer stand the coral one.

Apia is a half-way station for steamers bound to and from Australia and America. Several steamers from New Zealand pay monthly visits to obtain copra. These steamers usually stay in the harbour for several days; and as the ships cannot draw up to the wharves, they must lie out nearly a mile while the copra is loaded from barges. The natives with boats do a profitable business carrying people to and from ships; and they hire out as guides and take the tourists to Robert Louis Stevenson's old home, and through the largest cocoanut plantation in the world. And when a steamer is seen to drop anchor, the professional entertainers give a big dance. The hat is passed around, and the natives always make a good sum of money.

Apia, Papeete, and Suva, Fiji, are practically the only places in Polynesia where money has a value among the natives. At Apia, the natives know its value so well that they devise every scheme to obtain it, and have developed their money-getting qualities as perfectly as Americans. The best scheme is their semi-annual boat races. Twice a year natives come from all over the islands and enter their boats; betting stands spring up on the beach, and every native who p248 can dig up money will stake all he has on his favourite boat. At such regattas, there are usually excursion steamers from Australia and New Zealand.

Apia is a port of the most famous missionary steamer in the world, the Southern Cross. The steamer fits out every three months at Auckland and goes among the dark and little-known New Hebrides and Solomon Islands. Then she returns and puts such converts as she has found in a missionary school—later to be turned out as full-fledged missionaries and taken back to their homes, there either to backslide into a worse state of cannibalism than that of their fellows, or else to preach the word of God. When a savage from the Solomons does backslide, he is usually the most cannibalistic of his tribe.

Apia, Samoa, was the only real home that Robert Louis Stevenson ever knew. While a young man in Scotland, he was very seldom at home. He made walking trips over England and France, and came to America in the hold of an emigrant ship. After trying to settle down in California, he finally gave it up, and with his wife and her son, Lloyd Osbourne, he chartered the sailing-yacht Casco and spent several years cruising in the South Seas, at last settling down in Apia. About four miles back of the city he built his home on the side of a mountain, where he could command a view of the city and the surrounding bay. This home he named Vailima. Here, with his wife, and Lloyd Osbourne, his secretary, he lived the p249 last years of his life. It was here that he wrote several volumes of South Sea stories.

Stevenson lost no time in making friends with the natives: it was the delight of his life to entertain them at his home. He would take part in their sports; and one chief, who had taken a fancy to him, lived at Vailima, and at certain hours every day he taught Stevenson the Samoan language, while Stevenson taught the chief English. At the top of the mountain, Stevenson built a little pagoda, where he went nearly every day to write. A narrow path had been cut up to the summit through jungles of bananas and guavas, and he would toil for hours in reaching the top. The natives had so much confidence in him that all their troubles and differences were brought to him for settlement. Except in the mornings, which he spent in writing, his time was entirely taken up with the Samoans.

Those who have read many of his works will notice that his characters are almost all big, strong, healthy people—just the opposite of Stevenson, who was always a thin, sickly man. In fact, people who knew him say that he had no use at all for a puny person.

The last year of his life was practically spent in bed, where he wrote his best stories. Along toward the end, the natives would gather in a body and stand around the house in silence, awaiting news of his illness. The last few days there were hundreds and hundreds of natives outside the house, awaiting the end, p250 and when it came, early one morning in 1894, the natives set up the death chant, which spread along their lines until the whole island was wailing at once. Work suspended throughout the island until after the funeral.

Stevenson had requested that he be buried at the summit of the mountain. His coffin was carried by chiefs, while other natives with big knives blazed a road ahead for the procession, through the jungles and to the top.

Of course, the Snark's crew made a visit to Vailima, and then on up to the top, to the grave—nearly ten miles of toil.

At Apia, the German government boasts of the best outfitted observatory in Oceania. Here are all the latest astronomical instruments in charge of ten expert astronomers. It is a splendid set of instruments they have, but—as a native remarked—what is the use of them in Samoa, where there are no cable connections, and should the astronomers see a comet coming toward the earth, they would be so long in letting the greater portion of the people know that there would be no time to dodge!

Apia was the scene of slavery for many years. The schooners would leave here and go among the Solomons and Fiji Islands and steal the natives—blackbird them, as they call it. The natives were then brought to Apia and sold to planters and slave traders, until the German government put a stop to this illegal p251 traffic; but even now, about five hundred blacks a year are brought into these islands, and while the dealers can always give a satisfactory recruiting paper for each native, it is doubtful if the natives ever knew what kind of papers they were signing.

It was in Apia that we learned an interesting piece of Tehei's history. One day while I was walking down the beach road in company with him, a white woman stepped up, and throwing her arms around him, nearly smothered him with her embraces. I thought she was insane, until she started talking with him in his native tongue; and then, turning to me, she told me that Tehei was once sailing in a pearl-lugger among the Taumotu Islands, in a boat captained and owned by her brother. A hurricane had surprised the small crew, and the boat was blown to pieces. The crew was drowned—all but Tehei, who, clinging to a hatch-cover, was washed ashore on one of the reefs where pearlers were at work, and a few months later returned to his home in an open boat that he had worked for while on the reef. He made his way nearly four hundred miles in this open boat, with only a luggersail for power. Tehei had never told of this adventure, but we afterward heard several remarkable exploits of his among the pearling islands.

Apia is full of interesting characters—old beach-combers and retired black-birders, captains and runaway sailors, and ticket-of-leave men from Australia. I know of one man, one of the greatest business men p252 in the town, who is an escaped convict from the French penal settlement in New Caledonia.

The climate here is perfect. With a big wide sandy beach running for miles round the bay, Apia would be an ideal pleasure resort if the steamship connections were better, and if it were nearer to civilisation.

The entire crew of the Snark lived ashore while in Apia, although each one took turn-about staying on board at night. Everything possible was done to make our stay pleasant. Charley Roberts, a race-horse owner, who was ruled off the turf, first in England, then in America, then in Australia, and finally in New Zealand, had come to Apia that he might race horses undisturbed. He had two thoroughbreds shipped from New Zealand; and two aged horses were matched against Charley's thoroughbreds every few weeks; bills were gotten out telling of the big meet, and then the four horses would pull off race after race, always with the same result. Roberts' mind was wholly centred on this sport while we were there. Horses were his one passion. And as he had means, his relatives in Australia were content to have him race horses in Samoa. He got up a special race for us; in fact, he is always glad to have a meet. Anyone going to Apia should have Charley call a meeting of the Apia Turf Association—it would be heartily enjoyed all around.

After two weeks in Apia, we slowly sailed out of the p253 harbour late in the afternoon. Charley Roberts and some friends went out with us as far as they dared, and loaded us down with wines, and, most important of all, eggs.

It was just sundown on one of the most perfect of South Sea evenings that we cleared the island of Upolu and headed for the island of Savaii, only twenty-five miles away. As it became darker, the sky ahead grew red, and as we approached the island we could clearly see tongues of fire issuing from the mouth of the big crater, and gradually small threads of fire running down the mountainside—threads that grew into glowing torrents as we came closer, until by midnight we were sailing up the coast of an island that seemed to be literally aflame. The crater of the volcano is twenty-five miles inland, and about ten thousand feet high, the land sloping gradually down to the sea, where it ends in an abrupt precipice, one hundred feet high. For miles and miles, red-hot sputtering lava rolled into the sea, sending up clouds of vapour. Two miles from the seashore, we could read print plainly. As we were getting into the lee of the land, where the wind was likely to drop any minute, Jack told me to start the engines; then we slid along the shore, edging in as far as possible. The air got hot and sultry, and steam was rising from the water all about us. Jack stationed the cook in the bow with a thermometer, and every few minutes he would cry the temperature, until p254 the water was nearly at boiling-point; then we were afraid to go in farther on account of the thousand gallons of gasolene aboard.

Henry, our new Kanaka sailor, knew this coast well, and was to take us to a certain village where he was known, but at nearly two o'clock in the morning we were still skirting the rivers of lava, and the village was not in sight. By the light of the boiling lava we could see ruined villages and hundreds of thousands of naked cocoanut trees, stripped of their foliage and standing straight and threadbare in the fiery glow, like trimmed poles. Henry finally managed to distinguish the village he was taking us to, but it was dead and deserted. The lava was all-destructive. We could get no closer than a mile to the shore, and then steamed on up the coast, hoping to find some place that had not been seared by the fires. We would get nearly to the shore, only to see a reeking stream of lava, further back and creeping down to the sea. Then on we would go again. Everyone else in the boat was awestruck by such wholesale destruction; they were leaning over the rail in wonder, without any idea of the possibility of the engine's stopping, but my heart was in my mouth all the time, for the wind had dropped, and had the engines ever stopped, it would have been all up with us—nothing could have kept us away from those cascades of lava. But luck was certainly with us. The engine ran smoothly, and as the first streaks of day lighted the east, we sighted a village p255 that was unharmed and showing signs of human occupation. Henry pronounced this place to be Matautu, and we decided to anchor. After things were safely stowed, everyone went to sleep on deck, after a hard night's work.

It was late in the afternoon before anyone awoke. As we felt like going ashore after our rest, Jack and Mrs. London and myself set out in the launch. We came to a deserted beach. There were no natives in sight, although we could hear the hum of voices back in the village. As the beach ran out so far in a gradual slope, we were forced to anchor the launch out several hundred yards, and wade ashore. We walked up the beach to the village, whence we had heard the voices, and found several hundred natives before a small church, all praying that the lava would not come down and destroy their village. Two young girls in the centre of the group were dressed in gala array of feathers and tapa cloths of gay colours, and each was carrying an ornamental club. They simply stood in the centre, taking no part in the ceremonies. They were the first to see us, and quietly motioning to the assembly, spoke a few words. The crowd dispersed, all going away talking in quiet tones, but even if we could not understand, it was easy to guess that they were still supplicating for the eruption to cease; and their quiet manner left no doubt that they had supreme confidence in the potency of prayer.

The two girls who had first sighted us were called, p256 in the Samoan language, taupou girls. Each village in Samoa has its taupou girl, only one to the village, who upholds the honour of that village, entertains the guests, and otherwise makes herself agreeable. She controls the feasts and functions, and in fact has more power than anyone, excepting the chief. As she is really the most virtuous woman in the village, she is made the highest dignitary at all religious gatherings, although taking no part in them.

All the villages for twenty miles up the coast had been destroyed and the people had fled to Matautu. There were about twenty taupou girls gathered here. As Jack said, they looked like girls out of a job, for when they leave their own village, they lose power. Certainly they had not shown much power in letting the lava destroy their homes. Only the Matautu taupou girls seemed to be still in favour. These girls attached themselves to Mrs. London and showed us over the village. But such a woe-begone village! On all sides the red-hot lava was creeping down, though they had managed to divert the flow by building stone walls; but they knew that unless the volcano twenty-five miles away quieted down, their homes were doomed. It was dark when we prepared to go back to the Snark. We were stopped just as we got to the launch by a white man, calling to us on the beach. We went back and found a big, jolly Irishman, waiting for us in company with a tall German.

The Irishman was Dick Williams, the governor of p257 the island, and the German was the agent of an Apia trading concern. We went back with the governor to his house, and learned that he had been away all day helping the volcano sufferers. He invited us to stay ashore all night, promising to show us a better view of the eruption the next day. So, after a crowd of Kanakas had carried the launch up on the beach, we went to nicely furnished grass houses that the governor owned, and next morning, after a bath on the beach, we started for the lava flows with the two white men as guides. We walked miles between two flows of lava—hot lava that scorched our hair. At one place, we passed the frame of a grass house set between the walls of an old church. The owner had thought that on account of its being near a church of God it would not be ruined, and his goods would be safe. We walked over beds of lava that had cooled for several days and that, encrusted, would bear our weight; but we knew what lay beneath, for here and there, where there were fissures in the cooled crust, spits of steam and bubbling jets of lava flowed outward into the air. At one place, we found a remarkable thing—a small churchyard that had been unmolested by the flow. It looked as if the stream had parted and gone around the graveyard and joined into one stream after the place had been passed. We went on farther to a fresh lava stream that had just broken out. Close by was a large frame house, the home of the former governor of Savaii, now deserted. Here a p258 mass of lava, about three feet in thickness and several hundred yards wide, was slowly coming toward the house; red and glowing, it was advancing about an inch a minute. With long sticks we gathered the lava and pressed coins into it, to keep for souvenirs. As we returned by way of the church graveyard, we stood in the plot marvelling at such a miracle—that the molten destruction had parted at this burial place!—and we ceased to look upon the Kanaka who had built his house inside the churchyard as a joke: he had sufficient reason, after seeing the graveyard saved, to believe that his own home would be preserved.

As we came to the edge of the village, we skirted a fresh flow of lava, creeping up on a church. Inside the place were crowds of natives, all praying at once that the church be saved. They were coughing and wiping their eyes from the effects of the sulphur fumes that were enveloping them. We stood and watched this sad sight. Soon the people filed out, slowly, forlornly, and we stood by to see the end. In half an hour the first of the lava struck the building, and soon was running in the doors, setting fire to everything inflammable. Next morning when I looked for the church I found only a mass of ruins.

We lived ashore five days, and on the last day I rode nearly twenty-five miles, trying to reach the leeward side of the crater, but the barefoot native guide turned back after it grew too hot for his unprotected flesh, and I got only to within half a mile of the crater, p259 but near enough to see the awful yawning hole, nearly a mile across, emitting thousands and thousands of tons of liquid death every minute. I sat on the charred log of a cocoanut tree and wondered where it all came from. Certainly, wherever it was formed, there was no dearth of material. I afterward saw many volcanoes, but none of them had the impressive magnificence of this.

We left the harbour in the afternoon of the fifth day; our two taupou-girl friends came aboard to say good-bye, and as we looked over to their village and asked them to tell good-bye to our friends ashore whom we had not been able to see, they turned their eyes shoreward and burst into tears, for already a narrow stream of lava had broken through their village, and it would be only a matter of a few days when they would be living in another village, shorn of power, and their own pretty homes would be in ashes under the lava.

So it was that we up-anchored and set out for the Fijis, where we were to lose our last and final captain. p260