letters from his mother to her relatives and friends in
Scotland, in letters to his literary friends and in that 'Letter' to the
_Times_ from his friend and stepson Mr Lloyd Osbourne to the vast mass
of acquaintances and readers who all claimed him as a loved personal
friend.

From all these sources the manner of his death, and the touching final
tragedy of his pathetic funeral became known to the world of
English-speaking people everywhere, who each and all mourned
individually for the loved and lost author as one near and dear in their
personal regard.

He had always expressed a wish to be buried on the Vaea mountain which
rises immediately behind Vailima, and the summit of which commands a
wide prospect of land and sea and sky. In the spring of 1894, he had
suggested the making of a road, and the planting of the spot which he
had chosen for his resting-place, but, as the idea was painful to his
family, nothing was done in the matter. As soon as he had passed away,
those whom he loved hastened to give effect to his wishes, and Mr Lloyd
Osbourne planned and courageously carried out in an incredibly short
time the forming of a road which made it possible to carry him to the
summit of Vaea, and lay him on the spot that he had chosen. Forty
Samoans with knives and axes cut a path up the mountain side, and Mr
Lloyd Osbourne, with a few specially chosen dependents, dug the grave in
which he was to lie.

Meantime, his body covered with the Union Jack rested in the Samoan home
that he had loved so well, surrounded by the furniture of the old Scotch
home around which his childish feet had played, and on which his
father, and possibly his father's fathers, had daily looked, for his
mother had taken with her to Vailima all that had most of memory and of
family tradition from the house in Heriot Row.

His family lingered in the dear presence, the heartbroken Samoans knelt
and kissed his hands, and at the request of his favourite servant,
Sosima, who was a Romanist, the solemn and touching prayers of the
Church of Rome were, with a certain fitness, repeated over the man who
had been the champion of Father Damien, and among whose friends were
numbered the earnest and faithful Roman Catholic missionary priests of
the South Sea Islands.

On his coffin was laid the 'Red Ensign' that had floated from his mast
on many a cruise, and he was carried up the steep path by those who
loved him. Europeans as well as Samoans toiled up tha