after she had carefully instructed
Lafaele, her gardener, how to plant a patch of vanilla, she was
disgusted to find that he had planted them all upside down. After
giving him a thorough scolding, she dismissed him and replanted them
all herself, right side up. What were her feelings to find the next
day that Lafaele, chagrined by his stupidity, had risen in the night
and planted them all upside down again! This Lafaele was a huge
mutton-headed Hercules, an out-islander, who spoke no English, and as
Mrs. Stevenson never learned Samoan, the two had perforce to invent a
sort of pidgin dialect of their own, in which they jabbered away
successfully but which no one else could understand. She later found
an intelligent Samoan named Leuelu who understood her pidgin Samoan
perfectly and learned to carry out all her orders. He was small and
not strong, but with the help of the dull but faithful Lafaele he
soon had a wonderful garden.

One week her special task was to superintend the boys in putting a
culvert into the new road to carry off the rain in the wet season. She
also devised and carried out a scheme of water-works for the place
which was a great boon and comfort to all the family, and enabled them
to sprinkle their lawn in civilized fashion. A large cemented
reservoir was built at a spring on the mountain and the water carried
down from it in pipes and distributed through the house and grounds.

One of her few failures was trying to make beer out of bananas. The
stuff, after being bottled, blew up with a great noise and a
dissemination of the astonishingly offensive odour of the fermented
fruit that seemed to spread for acres about. On the other hand, her
attempt at making perfume from the moso'oi flower (said to be the real
ylang-ylang) was a distinct success. She had to get permission from
the government to import the small still she set up in a corner of the
garden. The flowers were boiled and distilled, and as the oil rose to
the top of the water it was removed with a medicine-dropper. It was a
charming sight to see her working in her little distillery, while
processions of pretty Samoan girls came with their huge baskets of
flowers and scattered them in piles around her. Long afterwards when
she was in New York she took a sample of the perfume to Colgates, who
pronounced it the best they had ever seen.

[Illustration: The house at Vailima with the additions made to the
first structure.]

In the midst of all t