g from Sydney at the end of October 1890, Stevenson and his wife
at once took up their abode in the wooden four-roomed cottage, or "rough
barrack," as he calls it, which had been built for them in the clearing
at Vailima during the months of their absence at Sydney and on their
cruise in the _Equator_. Mr. Lloyd Osbourne in the meantime had started
for England to wind up the family affairs at Bournemouth. During the
first few months, as will be seen by the following letters, the
conditions of life at Vailima were rough to the point of hardship. But
matters soon mended; the work of clearing and planting went on under the
eye of the master and mistress diligently and in the main successfully,
though not of course without complications and misadventures. Ways and
means of catering were found, and abundance began to reign in place of
the makeshifts and privations of the first days. By April a better
house, fit to receive the elder Mrs. Stevenson, had been built; and
later in the year plans for further extension were considered, but for
the present held over. The attempt made at first to work the
establishment by means of white servants and head-men indoors and out
proved unsatisfactory, and was gradually superseded by the formation of
an efficient native staff, which in course of time developed itself into
something like a small, devoted feudal clan.

During the earlier months of 1891 Stevenson was not in continuous
residence on his new property, but went away on two excursions, the
first to Sydney to meet his mother; the second, in company of the
American Consul Mr. Sewall, to Tutuila, a neighbouring island of the
Samoan group. Of the latter, to him very interesting, trip, the
correspondence contains only the beginning of an account abruptly broken
off: more, will be found in the extracts from his diary given in Mr.
Graham Balfour's _Life_ (ed. 1906, pp. 312 f.). During part of the
spring he was fortunate in having the company of two distinguished
Americans, the painter Lafarge and the historian Henry Adams, in
addition to that of the local planters, traders, and officials, a
singular and singularly mixed community. After some half-year's
residence he began to realise that the arrangements made for the
government of Samoa by treaty between the three powers England, Germany,
and America were not working nor promising to work well. Stevenson was
no abstracted student or dreamer; the human interests and human duties
lying imm