Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
only dollar. Never mind dollar. The
tapo
[village hostess] has pre-
pared
ava
; let us drink and rejoice”.'
24
The Samoan islands were at that time under a rather uneasy tri-
partite protectorate administered by Britain, Germany and the USA.
Slocum was welcomed and entertained by the American consul-gen-
eral and his wife but an invitation from another resident was much
more exciting to the visitor. Mrs Fanny V. de G. Stevenson came down
to the
Spray
in person to ask Captain Slocum to come to her home.
Robert Louis Stevenson, after several years of wandering, had
settled in Samoa with his American wife, his mother and his
stepchildren in 1890. Here he wrote some of his finest works:
Cat-
riona
, several short stories and the fragmentary
Weir of Hermiston.
And here he died suddenly, in December 1894, at the age of forty-
four. It was his widow who now warmly greeted Slocum as a trav-
eller and adventurer after her husband's heart. For Joshua Slocum,
a devotee of Stevenson's books, it was an unbelievable experience
to be entertained in his hero's own home, Vailima, and even to be
invited to sit and write letters at Stevenson's own desk. The most
emotional moment of the entire voyage came when Mrs Stevenson,
whom Slocum describes as a creature with sparkling eyes and an ir-
repressible spirit, presented him with a set of books from the au-
thor's library bearing the inscription:
TO CAPTAIN SLOCUM. These volumes have been read and re-read
many times by my husband, and I am very sure that he would be
pleased that they should be passed on to the sort of seafaring man that
he liked above all others.
Fanny G. de V. Stevenson
25
It is not surprising that, when he left Samoa on 20 August 'a
sense of loneliness seized upon me as the islands faded astern'.
Slocum crammed on sail for Sydney 'but for long days in my dreams
