8th of June 1888 that he started from
the harbour of San Francisco on what was only intended to be a health
and pleasure excursion of a few months' duration, but turned into a
voluntary exile prolonged until the hour of his death. His company
consisted, besides himself, of his wife, his mother, his stepson Mr.
Lloyd Osbourne, and the servant Valentine Roch. They sailed on board the
schooner yacht _Casco_, Captain Otis, and made straight for the
Marquesas, dropping anchor on the 28th of July in Anaho Bay, the harbour
of the island of Nukahiva. The magic effect of this first island
landfall on his mind he has described in the opening chapter of his book
_In the South Seas_. After spending six weeks in this group they sailed
south-eastwards, visiting (a sufficiently perilous piece of navigation)
several of the coral atolls of the Paumotus or Low Archipelago. Thence
they arrived in the first week of October at the Tahitian group or
"Society" islands. In these their longest stay was not at the chief
town, Papeete, where Stevenson fell sharply ill, but in a more secluded
and very beautiful station, Tautira, whither he went to recruit, and
where they were detained by the necessity of remasting the schooner.
Here Stevenson and one of the local chiefs, Ori a Ori, made special
friends and parted with heartfelt mutual regret. Mrs. Stevenson is good
enough to allow me to supplement the somewhat fragmentary account of
these adventures given in his letters with one or two of her own, in
which they are told with full vividness and detail.

Sailing from Tahiti due northwards through forty degrees of latitude,
the party arrived about Christmas at Honolulu, the more than
semi-civilised capital of the Hawaiian group (Sandwich Islands), where
they paid off the yacht _Casco_ and made a stay of nearly six months.
Here Stevenson finished _The Master of Ballantrae_ and _The Wrong Box_;
and hence his mother returned for a while to Scotland, to rejoin her
son's household when it was fairly installed two years later at Vailima.
From Honolulu Stevenson made several excursions, including one, which
profoundly impressed him, to the leper settlement at Molokai, the scene
of Father Damien's ministrations and death.

This first year of cruising and residence among the Pacific Islands had
resulted in so encouraging a renewal of health, with so keen a zest
added to life by the restored capacity for outdoor activity and
adventure, that Stevenson determin