could take one meal so compact and comprehen- "Of making books there is no end," comsive that he should never hunger any more; plained the Preacher; and did not perceive suppose him, at a glance, to take in all the how highly he was praising letters as an occufeatures of the world and allay the desire for pation. There is no end, indeed, to making knowledge; suppose him to do the like in any books or experiments, or to travel, or to gatherprovince of experience-would not that man ing wealth. Problem gives rise to problem. We be in a poor way for amusement ever after? may study for ever, and we are never as learned One who goes touring on foot with a single as we would. We have never made a statue volume in his knapsack reads with circumspec- worthy of our dreams. And when we have distion, pausing often to reflect, and often lay- covered a continent, or crossed a chain of ing the book down to contemplate the landscape mountains, it is only to find another ocean or or the prints in the inn parlour; for he fears another plain upon the further side. In the to come to an end of his entertainment, and be infinite universe there is room for our swiftest left companionless on the last stages of his diligence and to spare. It is not like the works journey. A young fellow recently finished the of Carlyle, which can be read to an end. Even works of Thomas Carlyle, winding up, if we in a corner of it, in a private park, or in the remember aright, with the ten note-books upon neighbourhood of a single hamlet, the weather Frederick the Great. "What!" cried the and the seasons keep so deftly changing that young fellow, in consternation, "is there no although we walk there for a lifetime there will more Carlyle? Am I left to the daily papers?" be always something new to startle and deA more celebrated instance is that of Alex-light us. ander, who wept bitterly because he had no There is only one wish realisable on the more worlds to subdue. And when Gibbon had earth; only one thing that can be perfectly finished the Decline and Fall,3 he had only a attained: Death. And from a variety of cirfew moments of joy; and it was with a "sober cumstances we have no one to tell us whether melancholy" that he parted from his labours. it be worth attaining. Happily we all shoot at the moon with in- A strange picture we make on our way to our effectual arrows; our hopes are set on inac- chimæras, ceaselessly marching, grudging ourcessible El Dorado; we come to an end of selves the time for rest; indefatigable, advennothing here below. Interests are only plucked turous pioneers. It is true that we shall never up to sow themselves again, like mustard. You reach the goal; it is even more than probable would think, when the child was born, there that there is no such place; and if we lived for would be an end to trouble; and yet it is only centuries and were endowed with the powers of the beginning of fresh anxieties; and when you a god, we should find ourselves not much nearer have seen it through its teething and its educa- what we wanted at the end. O toiling hands tion, and at last its marriage, alas! it is only of mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye to have new fears, new quivering sensibilities, know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, with every day; and the health of your chil- you must come forth on some conspicuous hilldren's children grows as touching a concern as top, and but a little way further, against the that of your own. Again, when you have mar-setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. ried your wife, you would think you were got upon a hilltop, and might begin to go downward by an easy slope. But you have only ended courting to begin marriage. Falling in love and winning love are often difficult tasks to overbearing and rebellious spirits; but to keep in love is also a business of some importance, to which both man and wife must bring kindness and goodwill. The true love story commences at the altar, when there lies before the married pair a most beautiful contest of wisdom and generosity, and a life-long struggle towards an unattainable ideal. Unattainable? Ay, surely unattainable, from the very fact that they are two instead of one. 3 A twenty-four years' labor. See Eng. Lit., p. 213. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. THE MAROON* Of the beauties of Anaho books might be written. I remember waking about three, to find the air temperate and scented. The long swell brimmed into the bay, and seemed to fill 4 Ecclesiastes, xii, 12. *A maroon is one who has been "marooned," or abandoned on an island. This chapter is taken from In the South Seas, 1891. Stevenson made a cruise among the South Sea Islands in the yacht Casco, which he chartered at San Francisco in 1888. Anaho is a native village of Nuka-hiva, the chief island of the Marquesas. Kanaka, properly a Sandwich Islander, is a general name for a South Sea Islander or his speech. it full and then subside. Gently, deeply, and | Que le jour me dure2 repeated endlessly. Or silently the Casco rolled; only at times a block1 piped like a bird. Oceanward, the heaven was bright with stars and the sea with their reflections. If I looked to that side, I might have sung with the Hawaiian poet: Ua maomao ka lani, ua_kahaea luna, (The heavens were fair, they stretched above, Many were the eyes of the stars.) And then I turned shoreward, and high squalls were overhead; the mountains loomed up black; and I could have fancied I had slipped ten thousand miles away and was anchored in a Highland loch; that when the day came, it would show pine, and heather, and green fern, and roofs of turf sending up the smoke of peats; and the alien speech that should next greet my ears must be Gaelic, not Kanaka. And day, when it came, brought other sights and thoughts. I have watched the morning break in many quarters of the world; it has been certainly one of the chief joys of my existence, and the dawn that I saw with most emotion shone upon the bay of Anaho. The mountains abruptly overhang the port with every variety of surface and of inclination, lawn, and cliff, and forest. Not one of these but wore its proper tint of saffron, of sulphur, of the clove, and of the rose. The lustre was like that of satin; on the lighter hues there seemed to float an efflorescence; a solemn bloom appeared on the more dark. The light itself was the ordinary light of morning, colourless and clean; and on this ground of jewels, pencilled out the least detail of drawing. Meanwhile, around the hamlet, under the palms, where the blue shadow lingered, the red coals of cocoa-husk and the light trails of smoke betrayed the awakening business of the day; along the beach men and women, lads and lasses, were returning from the bath in bright raiment, red and blue and green, such as we delighted to see in the coloured little pictures of our childhood; and presently the sun had cleared the eastern hill, and the glow of the day was over all. The glow continued and increased, the business, from the main part, ceased before it had begun. Twice in the day there was a certain stir of shepherding along the seaward hills. At times a canoe went out to fish. At times a woman or two languidly filled a basket in the cotton patch. At times a pipe would sound out of the shadow of a house, ringing the changes on its three notes, with an effect like 1 pulley at times, across a corner of the bay, two natives might communicate in the Marquesan manner with conventional whistlings. All else was sleep and silence. The surf broke and shone around the shores; a species of black crane fished in the broken water; the black pigs were continually galloping by on some affair; but the people might never have awaked, or they might all be dead. My favourite haunt was opposite the hamlet, where was a landing in a cove under a lianaed3 cliff The beach was lined with palms and a tree called the purao, something between the fig and mulberry in growth, and bearing a flower like a great yellow poppy with a maroon heart. In places rocks encroached upon the sand; the beach would be all submerged; and the surf would bubble warmly as high as to my knees, and play with cocoa-nut husks as our more homely ocean plays with wreck and wrack and bottles. As the reflux drew down, marvels of colour and design streamed between my feet; which I would grasp at, miss, or seize: now to find them what they promised, shells to grace a cabinet or be set in gold upon a lady's finger; now to catch only mayat of coloured sand, pounded fragments and pebbles, that, as soon as they were dry, became as dull and homely as the flints upon a garden path. I have toiled at this childish pleasure for hours in the strong sun, conscious of my incurable ignorance; but too keenly pleased to be ashamed. Meanwhile, the blackbird (or his tropical understudy) would be fluting in the thickets overhead. A little further, in the turn of the bay, a streamlet trickled in the bottom of a den,5 thence spilling down a stair of rock into the sea. The draught of air drew down under the foliage in the very bottom of the den, which was a perfect arbour for coolness. In front it stood open on the blue bay and the Casco lying there under her awning and her cheerful colours. Overhead was a thatch of puraos, and over these again palms brandished their bright fans, as I have seen a conjurer make himself a halo out of naked swords. For in this spot, over a neck of low land at the foot of the mountains, the trade-wind streams into Anaho Bay in a flood of almost constant volume and velocity, and of a heavenly coolness. It chanced one day that I was ashore in the cove with Mrs. Stevenson and the ship's cook. 2 "How heavy hangs the day on me!" 3 Covered with lianas, or tropical vines. 4 illusion (Hindu philosophy) 5 glen, dingle with its guards, and the great hotel, and Mr. Berger's band with their uniforms and outlandish instruments; or what he would think to see the brown faces grown so few and the white so many; and his father's land sold for planting sugar, and his father's house quite perished, or perhaps the last of them struck leprous and immured between the surf and the cliffs on Molokai.1 So simply, even in South Sea Islands, and so sadly, the changes come. Except for the Casco lying outside, and a crane | carried there indeed, and see the modern town or two, and the ever-busy wind and sea, the of Honolulu brisk with traffic, and the palace face of the world was of a prehistoric emptiness; life appeared to stand stockstill, and the sense of isolation was profound and refreshing. | On a sudden, the trade-wind, coming in a gust over the isthmus, struck and scattered the fans of the palms above the den; and, behold! in two of the tops there sat a native, motionless as an idol, and watching us, you would have said, without a wink. The next moment the tree closed, and the glimpse was gone. This discovery of human presences latent overhead in a place where we had supposed ourselves alone, the immobility of our tree-top spies, and the thought that perhaps at all hours we were similarly supervised, struck us with a chill. Talk languished on the beach. As for the cook (whose conscience was not clear), he never afterwards set foot on shore, and twice, when the Casco appeared to be driving on the rocks, it was amusing to observe that man's alacrity; death, he was persuaded, awaiting him upon the beach. It was more than a year later, in the Gilberts, that the explanation dawned upon myself. The natives were drawing palm-tree wine, a thing forbidden by law; and when the wind thus suddenly revealed them, they were doubtless more troubled than ourselves. Tari was poor, and poorly lodged. His house was a wooden frame, run up by Europeans; it was indeed his official residence, for Tari was the shepherd of the promontory sheep. I can give a perfect inventory of its contents: three kegs, a tin biscuit-box, an iron sauce-pan, several cocoa-shell cups, a lantern, and three bottles, probably containing oil; while the clothes of the family and a few mats were thrown across the open rafters. Upon my first meeting. with this exile he had conceived for me one of the baseless island friendships, had given me nuts to drink, and carried me up the den "to see my house"-the only entertainment that he had to offer. He liked the "Amelican," he said, and the "Inglisman," but the "Flessman" was his abhorrence; and he was careful At the top of the den there dwelt an old, to explain that if he had thought us "Fless,'' melancholy, grizzled man of the name of Tari we should have had none of his nuts, and never (Charlie) Coffin. He was a native of Oahu, in a sight of his house. His distaste for the the Sandwich Islands; and had gone to sea in French I can partly understand, but not at his youth in the American whalers; a circum- all his toleration of the Anglo-Saxon. The stance to which he owed his name, his English, next day he brought me a pig, and some days his down-east twang, and the misfortune of his later one of our party going ashore found him innocent life. For one captain, sailing out of in act to bring a second. We were still New Bedford, carried him to Nuka-hiva and strange to the islands; we were pained by the marooned him there among the cannibals. The poor man's generosity, which he could ill motive for this act was inconceivably small; afford; and by a natural enough but quite poor Tari's wages, which were thus economised, unpardonable blunder, we refused the pig. Had would scarce have shook the credit of the New Tari been a Marquesan we should have seen Bedford owners. And the act itself was sim-him no more; being what he was, the most mild, ply murder. Tari's life must have hung in the beginning by a hair. In the grief and terror of that time, it is not unlikely he went mad, an infirmity to which he was still liable; or perhaps a child may have taken a fancy to him and ordained him to be spared. He escaped at least alive, married in the island, and when I knew him was a widower with a married son and a granddaughter. But the thought of Oahu haunted him; its praise was for ever on his lips; he beheld it, looking back, as a place of ceaseless feasting, song and dance; and in his dreams I dare say he revisits it with joy. I wonder what he would think if he could be 2 The farewell visit of the natives, mentioned in long-suffering, melancholy man, he took a revenge a hundred times more painful. Scarce had the canoe with the nine villagers put off from their farewell before the Casco was boarded from the other side. It was Tari; coming thus late because he had no canoe of his own, and had found it hard to borrow one; coming thus solitary (as indeed we always saw him), because he was a stranger in the land, and the dreariest of company. The rest of my family basely fled from the encounter. I must 1 An island on which the lepers are isolated, a little to the southeast of Oahu. a preceding chapter. girl-mother of her own tiny flesh and blood, affected me strangely; they spoke of so tranquil a despair. Meanwhile the husband smil struggled to reach a pot of raspberry jam, friendship's offering, which 1 had just brought up the den; and in a perspective of centuries I saw their case as ours, death coming in like a tide, and the day already numbered when there should be no more Beretani, and no more of any race whatever, and (what oddly touched me) no more literary works and no readers. receive our injured friend alone; and the inter- | then dead. All the Kanaques die. Then no view must have lasted hard upon an hour, for more. The smile, and this instancing by the he was loath to tear himself away. "You go 'way. I see you no more-no, sir!" he lamented; and then looking about him with rueful admiration, "This goodee ship!-no, sir!-ingly made his sack; and the unconscious babe goodee ship!" he would exclaim: the "no, sir,'' thrown out sharply through the nose upon a rising inflection, an echo from New Bedford and the fallacious whaler. From these expressions of grief and praise, he would return continually to the case of the rejected pig. "I like give plesent all the same you," he complained; "only got pig: you no take him!" he was a poor man; he had no choice of gifts; he had only a pig, he repeated; and I had refused it. I have rarely been more wretched than to see him sitting there, so old, so grey, so poor, so hardly fortuned, of so rueful a countenance, and to appreciate, with growing keenness, the affront which I had so innocently dealt him; but it was one of those cases in which speech is vain. Tari's son was smiling and inert; his daughter-in-law, a girl of sixteen, pretty, gentle, and grave, more intelligent than most Anaho women, and with a fair share of French; his grandchild, a mite of a creature at the breast. I went up the den one day when Tari was from home, and found the son making a cotton sack, and madame suckling mademoiselle. When 1 had sat down with them on the floor, the girl began to question me about England; which I tried to describe, piling the pan and the cocoa shells one upon another to represent the houses, and explaining, as best I was able, and by word and gesture, the over-population, the hunger, and the perpetual toil. "Pas de cocotiers? pas de popoi?'' she asked. I told her it was too cold, and went through an elaborate performance, shutting out draughts, and crouching over an imaginary fire, to make sure she understood. But she understood right well; remarked it must be bad for the health, and sat a while gravely reflecting on that picture of unwonted sorrows. I am sure it roused her pity, for it struck in her another thought always uppermost in the Marquesan bosom; and she began with a smiling sadness, and looking on me out of melancholy eyes, to lament the decease of her own people. "Ici pas de Kanaques,'' said she; and taking the baby from her breast, she held it out to me with both her hands. "Tenez5-a little baby like this; THE VAGABOND Give to me the life I love, And the byway nigh me. Let the blow fall soon or late, Nor a friend to know me; And the road below me. Or let autumn fall on me Biting the blue finger: Not to winter even! Let the blow fall soon or late, more 6 I. e., Britanni, Britons. The language of the Kanakas being so largely vocalic, they find it difficult to pronounce two consonants in succession without interposing a vowel. 7 The leave, the rest; a familiar word in Burns. |