r must here draw a picture.

--Your respected Uncle,
O TUSITALA.

V

TO AUSTIN STRONG

_Vailima, November_ 15, 1892.

My dear Austin,--The new house is begun. It stands out nearly half way
over towards Pineapple Cottage--the lower floor is laid and the uprights
of the wall are set up; so that the big lower room wants nothing but a
roof over its head. When it rains (as it does mostly all the time) you
never saw anything look so sorry for itself as that room left outside.
Beyond the house there is a work-shed roofed with sheets of iron, and in
front, over about half the lawn, the lumber for the house lies piled. It
is about the bringing up of this lumber that I want to tell you.

For about a fortnight there were at work upon the job two German
overseers, about a hundred Black Boys, and from twelve to twenty-four
draught-oxen. It rained about half the time, and the road was like
lather for shaving. The Black Boys seemed to have had a new rig-out.
They had almost all shirts of scarlet flannel, and lavalavas, the Samoan
kilt, either of scarlet or light blue. As the day got warm they took off
the shirts; and it was a very curious thing, as you went down to Apia on
a bright day, to come upon one tree after another in the empty forest
with these shirts stuck among the branches like vermilion birds.

I observed that many of the boys had a very queer substitute for a
pocket. This was nothing more than a string which some of them tied
about their upper arms and some about their necks, and in which they
stuck their clay pipes; and as I don't suppose they had anything else to
carry, it did very well. Some had feathers in their hair, and some long
stalks of grass through the holes in their noses. I suppose this was
intended to make them look pretty, poor dears; but you know what a Black
Boy looks like, and these Black Boys, for all their blue, and their
scarlet, and their grass, looked just as shabby, and small, and sad, and
sorry for themselves, and like sick monkeys as any of the rest.

As you went down the road you came upon them first working in squads of
two. Each squad shouldered a couple of planks and carried them up about
two hundred feet, gave them to two others, and walked back empty-handed
to the places they had started from. It wasn't very hard work, and they
didn't go about it at all lively; but of course, when it rained, and the
mud was deep, the poor fellows were unhappy enough. This was in