APIA AND STEVENSON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19133, 26 September 1925, Page 1 (Supplement)

APIA AND STEVENSON.

TO THE MASTER'S TOMB.

BY LEWIS It. FREEMAN*.

British Apu ol to-day does not differ greatly from 'he German Apia which 1 knew in the course of my South Pacific yachting cruise oi 20 years ago. Save for | a few Hags and officials, the picturesque little town was more British than German right up to the time the events follow ing the outbreak of tho late war, put an end to the Kaiser's dream of dominat ing the Pacific The principal change one notes from the former regime is that most of the few tvhings that were German have gone by the board with the black and red flag and tho heel-click ing officials. The bay of Apia, like that of Papeete. Tahiti, is a typical South Pacific harboui —an open roadstead on the leeward side of an island, with a reef cutting it off from the sea, and giving good protection in ordinary weathers, and almost no protection in bad. The only reason that there have not been other great disasters like that of 1889 is because there has never again chanced to be so many .large ships in the harbour when a hurricane chanced along The hurricanes still blow up every now and then, and, just as in the his toric storm of 35 years ago, all the ship ping that cannot go to sea goes ashore —or to the bottom. The floor of Apia Bay is almost as thickly littered with tiading schooner wreckage as with pink coral. The town of Apia, though picturesque —what South Sea village is not so ?—has scarcely the fascinating charm of Papeete, with its crumbling sea-wall, its avenues ol giant trees and its wealth of traditions The business section of the town con sists of a half-mile straggle of galvanised iron stores, following the line of the beach road with numerous copra warehouses and several stubby piers breaking the sweep of tho foreshore. The houses of the natives' are scattered about through the coco palms on tho fiat, while the residences of the Europeans, bright blocks of white against green, dot the slopes of the mountain be yond. Higher still, through rifts in the encompassing verdure, glimpses may be had of the broad porticoes of Villa Vailima, the old home of Robert Louis Stevenson, the loved Tusitala of the Samoans. Tlie Pathway to a Shrine. Towering above Vailima to the north is an abrupt-sided mountain, running up the slopes of which your glass reveals the scars of a roughly-graded path. Straight up it goes, without zig-zag or spiral, until it disappears in the mists about the cloud wreathed summit. If there were poles, it might be the clearing for a telegraph line to a signal station; if it were broader, a fire-break. It is neither of these utilitarian things, however, but rather the pathway to a shrine. Up that precarious fl6od-torn and creeper-hung footway was borne with ten der care the man who understood and loved Samoa and the Samoans as no other has understood and loved them. You have discovered the pathway to Steven son's tomb, for up there where the shift mg draperies of the clouds have blown back to show a dull blur of grey through the wall of green that fronts the sky line is where the "sailor home from the seais lying on the spot which he chose for his final resting place. It is fitting that the pathway to a shrine should be a haid one, for to the man filled with the true passion of pilgrimage the pangs of a journey are a substantial part of the reward for making it, Tho one who loves Stevenson and his South Seas will also love every stone upon which ho stumbles, every cl-eeper that rasps his cheek, every throb of his overworked heart, every acho in his racked muscles in that soul —and bodytrying climb to the summit of the mountain where the Master sleeps. I had seen pilgrims of one kind or another stumbling on their way many times previous to that stormy afternoon on which I first climbed the height behind Vailima, but always without comprehending what it was that urged them on That day knowledge sCamo, and when, in tho year that followed, I met Nepalese and Burman plodding the dusty ( river road to Buddh-Gaya, or Turk and Arab trudg ing south from Damascus on the last teg of the Mecca Hadj, it was to greet them with the sympathetic smile that said, "1 too, know why." And, to-day, I have made again that slipping, sweating, stumbling climb to the tomb of tht 'Master. Even with the added weight of 20 moro years and 40 more pounds, it has still proved a good thing to do. There were more slips, more stumbles, moro pauses to ease the throbbing heart and gasping lungs; and there is a deeper-seaced ache in the bones tonight. But tho higher toll only seemed to make attainment the richer and more worth while. In body or soul, I have resolved to make the pilgrimage every 20 years. The World He Won at His Feet. Of the Great Ones of the earth only Cecil John Rhodes, looking forth Across the world he won—l'hc granite of the ancient NorthGreat Bpaces washed with sun, sleeps as appropriately surrounded as does Stevenson. But Tusitala (I have seen the tears start to the eyes of. those great chiefs, Maa taefa and Seumanu, at the mention of that magic name), has also the world he won at his feet and in it the people he won. For StevensDn's soul is as much a part of thi soul of Samoa of to-day as his body is a part of its soil. One has to climb the mountain to rea lise the peculiar and distinctive fitness of the words on Stevenson's tombj a verse as deathless as the fame of the gentlo soul that sleeps beneath. Tusitala's self-corn posed epitaph, read from a printed page, is an unblemished jewel of verse, no more, no less: read from the bronze tablet of the tomb by the climber to the heights, to the requiems of the trade-winds in the trees and the mutter of the distant surf, it is as though breathed by the spirit of the Master himself. Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me He. Glad did I live and ffla y die. And 1 lay me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here be Hes where he longed to be Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.