Vailima Letters | Page 4

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 Simele), 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, and would, dwell here
unmoved, but there are things to be attended to.
Never say I don't give you details and news. That is a picture of a letter.
I have been hard at work since I came; three chapters of THE
WRECKER, and since that, eight of the South Sea book, and, along
and about and in between, a hatful of verses. Some day I'll send the
verse to you, and you'll say if any of it is any good. I have got in a
better vein with the South Sea book, as I think you will see; I think
these chapters will do for the volume without much change. Those that
I did in the JANET NICOLL, under the most ungodly circumstances, I
fear will want a lot of suppling and lightening, but I hope to have your
remarks in a month or two upon that point. It seems a long while since I
have heard from you. I do hope you are well. I am wonderful, but tired
from so much work; 'tis really immense what I have done; in the South
Sea book I have fifty pages copied fair, some of which has been four
times, and all twice written, certainly fifty pages of solid scriving inside
a fortnight, but I was at it by seven a.m. till lunch, and from two till
four or five every day; between whiles, verse and blowing on the
flageolet; never outside. If you could see this place! but I don't want
any one to see it till my clearing is done, and my house built. It will be
a home for angels.
So far I wrote after my bit of dinner, some cold meat and bananas, on
arrival. Then out to see where Henry and some of the men were
clearing the garden; for it was plain there was to be no work to-day
indoors, and I must set in consequence to farmering. I stuck a good
while on the way up, for the path there is largely my own handiwork,
and there were a lot of sprouts and saplings and stones to be removed.
Then I reached our clearing just where the streams join in one; it had a
fine autumn smell of burning, the smoke blew in the woods, and the
boys were pretty merry and busy. Now I had a private design:-
[Map which cannot be reproduced]
The Vaita'e I had explored pretty far up; not yet the other stream, the
Vaituliga (g=nasal n, as ng in sing); and up that, with my wood knife, I
set off alone. It is here quite dry; it went through endless woods; about
as broad as a Devonshire lane, here and there crossed by fallen trees;

huge trees overhead in the sun, dripping lianas and tufted with orchids,
tree ferns, ferns depending with air roots from the steep banks, great
arums - I had not skill enough to say if any of them were the edible
kind, one of our staples here! - hundreds of bananas - another staple -
and alas! I had skill enough to know all of these for the bad kind that
bears no fruit. My Henry moralised over this the other day; how hard it
was that the bad banana flourished wild, and the good must be weeded
and tended; and I had not the heart to tell him how fortunate they were
here, and how hungry were other lands by comparison. The ascent of
this lovely lane of my dry stream filled me with delight. I could not but
be reminded of old Mayne Reid, as I have been more than once since I
came to the tropics; and I thought, if Reid had been still living, I would
have written to tell him that, for, me, IT HAD COME TRUE; and I
thought, forbye, that, if the great powers go on as they are going, and
the Chief Justice delays, it would come truer still; and the war-conch
will sound in the hills, and my home will be inclosed in camps, before
the year is ended. And all at once - mark you, how Mayne Reid is on
the spot - a strange thing happened. I saw a liana stretch across the bed
of the brook about breast-high, swung up my knife to sever it, and -
behold, it was a wire!