was not nearly so large as it afterwards became; Mr.
Burlingame, as representative of the house of Scribner, receiving the
lion's share next to myself.

For the love of Stevenson I will ask readers to take the small amount of
pains necessary to grasp and remember the main facts of Samoan politics
in the ten years 1889-99. At the date when he settled in Vailima the
government of the islands had lately been re-ordered between the three
powers interested--namely, Germany, England, and the United States--at
the Convention of Berlin (July 14, 1889). The rivalries and jealousies
of these three powers, complicated with the conflicting claims of
various native kings or chiefs, had for some time kept the affairs of
the islands dangerously embroiled. Under the Berlin Convention, Malietoa
Laupepa, who had previously been deposed and deported by the Germans in
favour of a nominee of their own, was reinstated as king, to the
exclusion of his kinsman, the powerful and popular Mataafa, whose titles
were equally good and abilities certainly greater, but who was
especially obnoxious to the Germans owing to his resistance to them
during the troubles of the preceding years. In the course of that
resistance a small German force had been worsted in a petty skirmish at
Fagalii, and resentment at this affront to the national pride was for
several years one of the chief obstacles to the reconciliation of
contending interests. For a time the two kinsmen, Laupepa and Mataafa,
lived on amicable terms, but presently differences arose between them.
Mataafa had expected to occupy a position of influence in the
government: finding himself ignored, he withdrew to a camp (Malie) a
few miles outside the town of Apia, where he lived in semi-royal state
as a sort of passive rebel or rival to the recognised king. In the
meantime, in the course of the year 1891, the two white officials
appointed under the Berlin Convention--namely, the Chief Justice, a
Swedish gentleman named Cedercrantz, and the President of the Council,
Baron Senfft von Pilsach--had come out to the islands and entered on
their duties. These gentlemen soon proved themselves unfitted for their
task to a degree both disastrous and grotesque. Almost the entire white
community were soon against them; with the native population they had no
influence or credit; affairs both political and municipal went from bad
to worse; and the consuls of the three powers, acting as an official
board of adviser