The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 18

Thus all things on the island, even the priests of the gods, obey the word of Tembinok'. He can give and take, and slay, and allay the scruples of the conscientious, and do all...

With my superstitious friend, the islander, I fear I am not wholly frank, often leading the way with stories of my own, and being always a grave and sometimes an excited hearer....

_Thursday, July 25_.--The street was this day much enlivened by the presence of the men from Little Makin; they average taller than Butaritarians, and, being on a holiday, went...

The ocean beach of Apemama was our daily resort. The coast is broken by shallow bays. The reef is detached, elevated, and includes a lagoon about knee-deep, the unrestful spendi...

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, nothing so surely unmortars a society; nothing, we might plausibly argue, will so harden and degrade the minds of tho...

Taahauku, on the south-westerly coast of the island of Hiva-oa--Tahuku, say the slovenly whites--may be called the port of Atuona. It is a narrow and small anchorage, set betwee...

_Tuesday, July 16_.--It rained in the night, sudden and loud, in Gilbert Island fashion. Before the day, the crowing of a cock aroused me and I wandered in the compound and alon...

The most careless reader must have remarked a change of air since the Marquesas. The house, crowded with effects, the bustling housewife counting her possessions, the serious, i...

Of the island of Hawaii, though I have passed days becalmed under its lee, and spent a week upon its shores, I have never yet beheld the profile. Dense clouds continued to enshr...

We saw but little of the commons of the isle. At first we met them at the well, where they washed their linen and we drew water for the table. The combination was distasteful; a...

When we left the palace we were still but seafarers ashore; and within the hour we had installed our goods in one of the six foreign houses of Butaritari, namely, that usually o...

By a little before noon we were running down the coast of our destination, Fakarava: the air very light, the sea near smooth; though still we were accompanied by a continuous mu...

Never populous, it was yet by a chapter of accidents that I found the island so deserted that no sound of human life diversified the hours; that we walked in the trim public gar...

We used to admire exceedingly the bland and gallant manners of the chief called Taipi-Kikino. An elegant guest at table, skilled in the use of knife and fork, a brave figure whe...

The impediment of tongues was one that I particularly over-estimated. The languages of Polynesia are easy to smatter, though hard to speak with elegance. And they are extremely...

There is one great personage in the Gilberts: Tembinok' of Apemama: solely conspicuous, the hero of song, the butt of gossip. Through the rest of the group the kings are slain o...

The history of the Marquesas is, of late years, much confused by the coming and going of the French. At least twice they have seized the archipelago, at least once deserted it;...

Over the whole extent of the South Seas, from one tropic to another, we find traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of even a tropical soil were taxed,...

Our first sight of Tembinok' was a matter of concern, almost alarm, to my whole party. We had a favour to seek; we must approach in the proper courtly attitude of a suitor; and...

I have had occasion several times to name the late bishop, Father Dordillon, "Monseigneur," as he is still almost universally called, Vicar-Apostolic of the Marquesas and Bishop...

The bays of Anaho and Hatiheu are divided at their roots by the knife-edge of a single hill--the pass so often mentioned; but this isthmus expands to the seaward in a considerab...

It had chanced (as the _Casco_ beat through the Bordelais Straits for Taahauku) she approached on one board very near the land in the opposite isle of Tauata, where houses were...

On the morrow of our arrival (Sunday, 14th July 1889) our photographers were early stirring. Once more we traversed a silent town; many were yet abed and asleep; some sat drowsi...

Five persons were detailed to wait upon us. Uncle Parker, who brought us toddy and green nuts, was an elderly, almost an old man, with the spirits, the industry, and the morals...

The kingdom of Tebureimoa includes two islands, Great and Little Makin; some two thousand subjects pay him tribute, and two semi-independent chieftains do him qualified homage....

The trader accustomed to the manners of Eastern Polynesia has a lesson to learn among the Gilberts. The _ridi_ is but a spare attire; as late as thirty years back the women went...

The thought of death, I have said, is uppermost in the mind of the Marquesan. It would be strange if it were otherwise. The race is perhaps the handsomest extant. Six feet is ab...

In the early morning of 4th September a whale-boat manned by natives dragged us down the green lane of the anchorage and round the spouting promontory. On the shore level it was...

The port--the mart, the civil and religious capital of these rude Islands--is called Tai-o-hae, and lies strung along the beach of a precipitous green bay in Nuka-hiva. It was m...

The palace, or rather the ground which it includes, is several acres in extent. A terrace encloses it toward the lagoon; on the side of the land, a palisade with several gates....

There was a certain traffic in our anchorage at Atuona; different indeed from the dead inertia and quiescence of the sister-island, Nuka-hiva. Sails were seen steering from its...

The road from Taahauku to Atuona skirted the north-westerly side of the anchorage, somewhat high up, edged, and sometimes shaded, by the splendid flowers of the _flamboyant_--it...

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 it...

For nearly ten years my health had been declining; and for some while before I set forth upon my voyage, I believed I was come to the afterpiece of life, and had only the nurse...

At Honolulu we had said farewell to the _Casco_ and to Captain Otis, and our next adventure was made in changed conditions. Passage was taken for myself, my wife, Mr. Osbourne,...

A step beyond Hookena, a wooden house with two doors stands isolated in a field of broken lava, like ploughed land. I had approached it on the night of my arrival, and found it...

By the Hawaiian tongue, the slope of these steep islands is parcelled out in zones. As we mount from the seaboard, we pass by the region of Ilima, named for a flowering shrub, a...

Kamehameha the first, founder of the realm of the Eight Islands, was a man properly entitled to the style of great. All chiefs in Polynesia are tall and portly; and Kamehameha o...

Our way was northward on the naked lava of the coast. The schoolmaster led the march on a trumpeting black stallion; not without anxious thought, I followed after on a mare. The...

A little apart in the main avenue of Rotoava, in a low hut of leaves that opened on a small enclosure, like a pigsty on a pen, an old man dwelt solitary with his aged wife. Perh...

_The following chapters are selected from a series which was first published partially in 'Black and White' (February to December 1891), and fully in the New York 'Sun' during t...

_Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies have been printed, of which only Two Thousand Copies are fo...