ong you is so great as Tusitala? What is your love to his
love? Our clan was Mataafa's clan, for whom I speak this day; therein
was Tusitala also. We mourn them both."

A meeting of chiefs was held to apportion the work and divide the men
into parties. Forty were sent with knives and axes to cut a path up the
steep face of the mountain, and the writer himself led another party to
the summit--men chosen from the immediate family--to dig the grave on a
spot where it was Mr. Stevenson's wish that he should lie. Nothing more
picturesque can be imagined than the narrow ledge that forms the summit
of Vaea, a place no wider than a room, and flat as a table. On either
side the land descends precipitously; in front lies the vast ocean and
the surf-swept reefs; to the right and left green mountains rise,
densely covered with the primeval forest. Two hundred years ago the eyes
of another man turned towards that same peak of Vaea as the spot that
should ultimately receive his war-worn body: Soalu, a famous chief.

All the morning, Samoans were arriving with flowers; few of these were
white, for they have not learned our foreign custom, and the room glowed
with the many colours. There were no strangers on that day, no
acquaintances; those only were called who would deeply feel the loss. At
one o'clock a body of powerful Samoans bore away the coffin, hid beneath
a tattered red ensign that had flown above his vessel in many a corner
of the South Seas. A path so steep and rugged taxed their strength to
the utmost; for not only was the journey difficult in itself, but
extreme care was requisite to carry the coffin shoulder-high.

Half an hour later, the rest of his friends followed. It was a
formidable ascent, and tried them hard. Nineteen Europeans, and some
sixty Samoans, reached the summit. After a short rest, the Rev. W. E.
Clarke read the burial service of the Church of England, interposing a
prayer that Mr. Stevenson had written and had read aloud to his family
only the evening before his death:--

We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many
families and nations, gathered together in the peace of this roof;
weak men and women, subsisting under the covert of Thy patience.

Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer--with our broken
purposes of good, and our idle endeavours against evil--suffer us a
while longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better.
Bless to us our extraor