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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

Pago-Pago, Island of Tutuila, Samoa. Tuesday, October 18th.—

Pago-Pago, Island of Tutuila, Samoa.

Our ship came in to this land-locked harbour at four o'clock this afternoon, and in the lightest clothing we landed and went off to seek Mr. Smith, the postmaster and steamboat agent, to whom we had a letter of introduction from his father at Auckland. We were told that he was busy, as indeed we anticipated, looking after the mails and cargo, but we found his wife, to whom we gave our letter, and were kindly page 40 welcomed by her and taken to her house. She told us that her husband had said that there were 160 tons of copra to go on board, and that the boat could not leave before ten o'clock. We had, indeed, been told that we must be on board again by six, but, as on every previous occasion of visiting a port, we had to wait from an hour and a half to six hours after the time named to us for starting, we had no scruple about making ourselves comfortable for a few hours in a friendly home, especially as we were assured by more than one resident that three steam signals were given before parting, at half hour intervals. So we had a cup of tea and went a short walk with our hostess to see the native village. Just as we were starting the first whistle warned us that we must give up all thought of spending the evening, but we were reassured that we had a full hour yet before us. Presently came the second warning before we expected it, and we turned to flee, though not doubting that we had ample time to reach the ship, which could not have taken more than twenty minutes. Hastily we secured a boat and were on our way when the third whistle sounded; still we made sure to be in time and probably to have an hour or more to spare, when the ship began to move. We urged our rowers to exert themselves, and were within five minutes of the gangway steps when she put on steam and—we were left behind! We might have been excused had we vented our disappointment and amaze in whatever respectable equivalents for cursing and swearing occurred to us. But to what purpose? We burst page 41 out laughing, and laughed again and again till we got used to the novel situation. There was the boat bearing away from us everything we had except the few clothes on us and the contents of pockets lightened of everything we could spare or remembered to leave in our cabin. My watch was gone with my waistcoat; happily I had not thought of leaving my pocket book, which contained fifty dollars in notes, as I did the rest of my money locked in my box, and I had also by mere accident the stylograph, with which I am writing, as well as the Essex Hall Diary, knife, and pocket handkerchief. We might have been the sole survivors of a wreck, except that we were dry and had landed among civilised people and had kind friends to help us.

We learnt on reaching the shore again that the captain had for some reason refused to take more than twenty tons of cargo, and having been detained in Auckland eighteen hours beyond his time, by delay of the Southern mails, was in all haste to get to San Francisco. At Auckland we had gone aboard at night to make sure of not missing the boat, which we were told was to sail at an early hour of the morning, then more definitely at seven o'clock. She did not leave till 8-30.

Well, here we are for better or for worse. It might be indeed much for the worse. But we are resolved to make the best of it, and I think it will not be so difficult. The worst, to my mind, is that I am without any books, save a few novels, which is much as if I were condemned to live for the next three weeks on page 42 spice and sweets. For three whole weeks it must be, as no steamer visits this lonely port for a fortnight, and that is bound for New Zealand. A week later the Sonoma, the sister ship to the one we have left becomes due, and we shall resume our interrupted voyage. Whose fault is it? My hostess would take it all to herself for having given me information which turned out to be mistaken, but she only told us what she had heard from the agent himself, and really we cannot blame her in the least. I could find better excuses than Adam did, who laid the blame on poor Eve's shoulders, but honestly, so far as it was not mere accident, it is only myself I can blame. I ought to have made quite sure and been on board at the hour I was told, though from all previous experience I might reckon on hours of delay before starting.

I shall miss much which I was looking forward to see in the Western States of America, but that I do not altogether regret. The experience of three weeks in this tropical island is perhaps worth more than all I should have gained in many places visited for a day's trip, and it will be more restful by far.

The house which is affording us hospitality in our need consists of two rooms only, bedroom and sitting-room, furnished as nicely as any summer houses on the warmer coasts of England. There is a verandah all round, and a detached kitchen. We have our bedroom in the neighbouring hotel, or rather in what was the hotel, for as no visitors come to stay here it did not pay, and the furniture was put in store. There Mr. Smith has made up for us two good beds, protected page 43 by net curtains all round from the mosquitoes, and with the five windows of the room wide open, and no covering but a sheet, we can keep moderately cool all night, while breezes which come and go among the trees and the water lapping on the shore below make a lullaby for us.

Wednesday, 19th.—Spent the day on the verandah, reading a novel and laying it down to gaze and wonder. The house stands low down on the hillside, for all is hillside here, except for one level space about a quarter of a mile square, on which are the buildings belonging to the U.S. Naval Station, and this has, I learn, been constructed for the purpose by quarrying the rock which surrounds it. It seems like the crater of a long extinct volcano, broken down just at one point so that the sea has made a way in. A path a yard wide is the only road. On one side of it lap the shallow waters; from the other the hills begin to mount, thick clothed in trees up to the top, 1000 to 2000 feet above. Wherever a bit of coral reef has risen above the sea, the natives have built their houses or rather shelters. They are circular or oblong in shape, a roof of thatch made from palm leaves supported all round by posts four feet high The floor is paved with small stones or broken coral, on which are laid the mats which serve for bedding, for partitions, and for outside screens against sun or rain. The pillow is a thick bamboo raised on prongs an inch or two above the ground, and on this they rest their necks, and find bed and bolster so comfortable that they spend day as well as night on them, for though a finely formed people and of erect page 44 bearing they are averse to exertion, and seem to be perfectly happy sitting on the ground with their backs to the house posts, or stretched at full length on their hard couches. Tables and chairs there are none, only a box or two for their bits of finery and a few cooking utensils. The native dress is a loin cloth reaching from the waist to the knees, but many have added to this bits of European costume, which spoil their appearance, and render them liable to consumption and pneumonia, for in this rainy climate (the rainfall is just 200 inches in the year) they are continually exposed to get drenched and have not yet got into the way of changing for dry clothing, if indeed they have any to change. They are a happy folk, always talking and often singing, polite to strangers, and of gentle manners. Few have as yet learned any English, and they show no inclination to trouble themselves with the foreign tongue. Nature provides her dear brown children here with all they want almost for the asking. The palm supplies them with meat and drink, and fibre for their mats and cloths, and leaves for thatch and basket, and the milk of the cocoa nut is their drink, and its meat cut into slices and dried in the sun, is bought up by the dealers in "copra", and adds to their resources money to buy some of the white man's cottons and tinned goods brought over from San Francisco.

The sea suddenly deepens at the edge of the coral reef and then half a mile off the hill rises steep again, with the path at the base and a few scattered houses, among them a French Roman Catholic Mission Church, page 45 and a Mormon Temple, for these are the only two religions which are represented here by regular services and a resident ministry. (I have since learnt that there is a native missionary and a church, supported by the London Missionary Society, at the Naval Station).

And here am I with no business of any kind to keep me, but if I had a thousand pounds to spare I could not get away, nor even get into touch with the great world out of which I have dropped.

Thursday, 20th.—Awoke by the rain beating on the galvanized iron roof. The mist sweeps in from the sea and covers the hill top. The tall cocoanut palms sway their long fronds in the trade wind which brings us no trade and no message save of the lonely sea outside. In the afternoon we paid a call on Captain Underwood, the Commandant, and arranged with him for a Sunday service. Then on Mr. Frederic, the astronomer, engaged in building an observatory in this, the only South Equatorial possession of the United States, for the observation of the southern stars. Found some scraps of solid reading in the July number of The National Review, especially an article by Churton Collins on "Miltonic Myths and their Authors," which made me feel intellectually at home. I read also H. G. Wells' "The Wonderful Visit," which suggested some vague sense of a world unseen which lies near to this, and if known would explain the mystery which environs us. For the present all my world is this narrow gulf, its shores sparsely habited by strange men, with whom I can have no converse beyond a smile and a word of Samoan greet- page 46 ing picked up from their lips. The few white men are strangers come to stay as short a while as they can, and having their home and all their interests elsewhere. And man brown or white counts for so little. His path and the few houses which border it, a patch of stony garden or little plantation of tara or bananas on the hill side is all the mark he makes on soil teeming with life from shore to highest summit.

Friday, 21st.—Awoke in the night by a downfall of rain which seemed to threaten universal deluge. In the morning the sun was shining and the only sign of the night's storm was the fulness of the brook which comes down beside the hotel. In the evening went on board the steamer where we sat with the Commandant and Mrs. Underwood and Lieutenant and Mrs. Parmenter, listening to the band. Began "The Story of the Mormons," by Wm. Alex. Lynn, which I had noted at the Leeds Library as a book to be read when leisure offered, little dreaming of the too ample leisure I was to suffer here. A very warm, close afternoon.

Saturday, 22nd.—It was impressed upon me to-day how indeed we are living in the crater of an old volcano. About one o'clock I was puzzled by a noise like that of a big vessel letting off steam, but there was no such vessel in the harbour to account for it. Nothing but the gunboat always at anchor by the wharf and the little trading schooner which collects copra for the mail boats. Then I found that it must be the switching of rain, only where I sat and on the water and the shore beyond the sun was shining and page 47 no drop of rain fell. Then I looked up and saw that the sound came from the mountain tops beyond. There a heavy cloud was caught among the trees and emptying itself in a rush of rain. In a few minutes it had crossed the narrow sea and the hills were hidden bom view. Then came thunder echoing from side to side of our deep dwelling, and so in shifting mist lit up by red lightning and pouring rain, the afternoon passed and night fell upon the gloom which seemed reminiscent of the dread scenes of a former world. For once lava glowed red where now the calm water makes a way for native canoes, and steam and smoke filled up the space within the black caldron, where to-day a thousand men, women, and children make their home between the forest and the sea.

Sunday, 23rd.—The storm of yesterday has cleared the air, and to-day the sun shines out of a clear blue sky. At ten o'clock I held service in the Court House, there were about forty sailors from the U.S. gunboat and some twenty others, officials, Ac., with half-a-dozen ladies. Moody and Sankey's Hymn Books were provided, and I made a false start by selecting the only rational hymn I could hit upon in turning over the pages, which the Commandant told me they could not sing; so I left the choice to him, and we began with "Rock of Ages." There had been some difficulty in procuring a Bible, the one used for oaths in court, on which I relied, being in Samoan, but there would have been a choice of two or three if the need had been foreseen. I read verses of Isaiah x., and of the sermon on the mount as Jesus' comment page 48 on it, and preached on the Gospel as I had been sent to preach it, i.e., that the infinite and incomprehensible God was our Father in Heaven. The last hymn chosen was the American National Anthem, with which I expressed my deepest sympathy, as embodying the highest ideals of all English speaking peoples.

After service we went up to the Commandant's house, built upon the broken down lip of one of the craters, just above the inner channel. For it is evident upon further survey that the gulf is formed out of three or more centres of volcanic activity, each successive eruption breaking into the crater formed by those which went before. Where we live is in the innermost and most perfect. But for the coral insect, which has built up its reef abodes almost to the water's level, so that it is easy to form land by cutting down the hillside and laying the hard basaltic rock upon the coral—but for this tiny builder of islands out of the deep, this place where we dwell and all the shore round, twelve miles in circumference, would have been uninhabitable—steep cliffs descending abruptly into a deep sea, just as the miniature craters at Auckland, perfect to-day as when first formed, some of them, though raised high above the sea, can be made no use of because of their smooth cuplike sides, which afford no footing even for sheep. Volcanic action here would seem to have been of earlier date than at Auckland, and tropical rains have so scored the craters that an abundant vegetation has got hold and clothed them up to the highest summit, 2,100 feet above sea level.

page 49

Such were my reflections as I reclined in the verandah of the Residence, now looking out to the ocean beyond the gates of rock, now around to mark on every side the cuplike forms of the enclosing hills, and now rising to look over the parapet into the sea beneath just covering the rugged reef of coral, and beyond to the deep channel by which the great ships go in and out.

We had lunch, cooked by a Chinese cook and served by a Japanese waiter, both belonging to the American Navy, with Captain Underwood and his wife, affable and intelligent people, whom it was a privilege to meet here. Mr. Underwood's father was a Congregational minister, who lived to keep his hundredth birthday in full possession of his intellectual faculties, then, having attained the limit of his desire, gave up and died in three weeks.

Monday, 24th.—Another beautiful day, not so hot as many a sultry summer's day I have had in England. A French war ship had come in last night, so the two ships must needs exchange a salute of seventeen guns, a very juvenile proceeding it seemed to me, but worth hearing for the way the hills took up the loud pop of the small cannon, and flung it from side to side, and I rolled it on from one to another till it became a rumble as of thunder and died away in the recesses of the mountains.

In the morning I walked three miles along the northern shore to the little church of the Roman i Catholic Mission, where I was told I should find two French priests, but church and presbytery were both page 50 deserted, the fathers having gone, I presume, to visit the ship. I returned the same way, for it was the only one, between the forest and the sea, and spent a hot afternoon reading of the Mormons and a tale of a Virginian family, lent to me by Mrs. Underwood.

Tuesday, 25th.—We are informed that the French cruiser will take letters to Tahiti, where they will catch the mail for San Francisco and give information of us to friends in England a few days earlier than they would get it by the mail boat we are patiently waiting for. A week has now passed since we were stranded here, and we have everything to be thankful for, especially for kind friends who supply us with clothes as well as food and shelter. I have nothing on of my own. In white boots, pants, and shirt, which are more than sufficient clothing for this climate, and all from the wardrobe of my host, I make a figure very unlike that of the Rev. Charles Hargrove, as known at home. We could be happy enough, spite of the heat and langour of mind and body which comes with it, were it not for the mosquitos, which keep us in a state of constant irritation and alertness. The nimble foe is ubiquitous, and only by careful scrutiny to be shut outside of the curtains which enclose our beds. After dark we can do nothing. A light in the open would be a signal for all the insects of the neighbourhood; and to close our five windows and sit down inside secure from their attacks would be to take a Turkish Bath with our clothes on.

But though a pest, the mosquitos are not in the numbers I have known and heard of them elsewhere, page 51 and it is curious how free the island is from venomous creatures of any kind. The cockroaches and spiders, if big and objectionable, are not harmful, and the ants are small and only attack food. Fleas there are none, nor worse human parasites. Centipedes we do not come across, and scorpions and dangerous snakes are unknown. Had we business here we might make ourselves fairly comfortable—and so indeed, up to the present, we have done, though counting the slow days which part us from our home and work.

C. H.