's Shrine_; _the Record of a Pilgrimage_,
illustrates the same devotion. On the top of Mount Vaea, she writes, is
the massive sarcophagus, "not an ideal structure by any means, not even
beautiful, and yet in its massive ruggedness it somehow suited the man
and the place."

"The wind sighed softly in the branches of the 'Tavau' trees, from out
the green recesses of the 'Toi' came the plaintive coo of the
wood-pigeon. In and out of the branches of the magnificent 'Fau' tree,
which overhangs the grave, a king-fisher, sea-blue, iridescent, flitted
to and fro, whilst a scarlet hibiscus, in full flower, showed up royally
against the gray lichened cement. All around was light and life and
colour, and I said to myself, 'He is made one with nature'; he is now,
body and soul and spirit, commingled with the loveliness around. He who
longed in life to scale the height, he who attained his wish only in
death, has become in himself a parable of fulfilment. No need now for
that heart-sick cry:--

"'Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?'

No need now for the despairing finality of:

"'I have trod the upward and the downward slope,
I have endured and done in the days of yore,
I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope,
And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door.'

"Death has set his seal of peace on the unequal conflict of mind and
matter; the All-Mother has gathered him to herself.

"In years to come, when his grave is perchance forgotten, a rugged
ruin, home of the lizard and the bat, Tusitala--the story-teller--'the
man with a heart of gold' (as I so often heard him designated in the
Islands), will live, when it may be his tales have ceased to interest,
in the tender remembrance of those whose lives he beautified, and
whose hearts he warmed into gratitude."

The chiefs have prohibited the use of firearms or other weapons on Mount
Vaea, "in order that the birds may live there undisturbed and unafraid,
and build their nests in the trees around Tusitala's grave."

Miss Stubbs has many records of the impression produced on those he came
in contact with in Samoa--white men and women as well as natives. She
met a certain Austrian Count, who adored Stevenson's memory. Over his
camp bed was a framed photograph of R. L. Stevenson.

"So," he said, "I keep him there, for he was my saviour, and I wish
'good-night' and 'good-morning,' every day,