er night: I felt
that our positions should be changed. It was you, dear Symonds, who
should have gone upon that voyage and written this account. With your
rich stores of knowledge, you could have remarked and understood a
thousand things of interest and beauty that escaped my ignorance; and
the brilliant colours of your style would have carried into a thousand
sickrooms the sea air and the strong sun of tropic islands. It was
otherwise decreed. But suffer me at least to connect you, if only in
name and only in the fondness of imagination, with the voyage of the_
Silver Ship.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

DEAR SYMONDS,--I send you this (November 11th), the morning of its
completion. If I ever write an account of this voyage, may I place this
letter at the beginning? It represents--I need not tell you, for you too
are an artist--a most genuine feeling, which kept me long awake last
night; and though perhaps a little elaborate, I think it a good piece of
writing. We are _in heaven here_. Do not forget.

R. L. S.

Please keep this: I have no perfect copy.

_Tautira, on the peninsula of Taiti._

TO THOMAS ARCHER

_Tautira, Island of Taiti [November 1888]._

DEAR TOMARCHER,--This is a pretty state of things! seven o'clock and no
word of breakfast! And I was awake a good deal last night, for it was
full moon, and they had made a great fire of cocoa-nut husks down by the
sea, and as we have no blinds or shutters, this kept my room very
bright. And then the rats had a wedding or a school-feast under my bed.
And then I woke early, and I have nothing to read except Virgil's
_AEneid_, which is not good fun on an empty stomach, and a Latin
dictionary, which is good for naught, and by some humorous accident,
your dear papa's article on Skerryvore. And I read the whole of that,
and very impudent it is, but you must not tell your dear papa I said so,
or it might come to a battle in which you might lose either a dear papa
or a valued correspondent, or both, which would be prodigal. And still
no breakfast; so I said "Let's write to Tomarcher."

This is a much better place for children than any I have hitherto seen
in these seas. The girls (and sometimes the boys) play a very elaborate
kind of hopscotch. The boys play horses exactly as we do in Europe; and
have very good fun on stilts, trying to knock each other down, in which
they do not often succeed. The children of all ages go to church and are
allow